Bioethical debates on the use of human embryos and oocytes for stem cell research have often been criticized for the lack of empirical insights into the perceptions and experiences of the women and couples who are asked to donate these tissues in the IVF clinic. Empirical studies that have investigated the attitudes of IVF patients and citizens on the donation of their embryos and oocytes have been scarce and have focused predominantly on the situation in Europe and Australia. This article (...) examines the viewpoints on the donation of embryos for stem cell research among IVF patients and students in China. Research into the perceptions of patients is based on in-depth interviews with IVF patients and IVF clinicians. Research into the attitudes of students is based on a quantitative survey study. The empirical findings in this paper indicate that perceptions of the donation of human embryos for stem cell research in China are far more diverse and complex than has commonly been suggested. Claims that ethical concerns regarding the donation and use of embryos and oocytes for stem cell research are typical for Western societies but absent in China cannot be upheld. The article shows that research into the situated perceptions and cultural specificities of human tissue donation can play a crucial role in the deconstruction of politicized bioethical argumentation and the assumptions about “others” that underlie socio-ethical debates on the moral dilemmas of technology developments in the life sciences. (shrink)

Several theories of emergence will be distinguished. In particular, these are synchronic, diachronic, and weak versions of emergence. While the weaker theories are compatible with property reductionism, synchronic emergentism and strong versions of diachronic emergentism are not. Synchronice mergentism is of particular interest for the discussion of downward causation. For such a theory, a system's property is taken to be emergent if it is irreducible, i.e., if it is not reductively explainable. Furthermore, we have to distinguish two different types of (...) irreducibility with quite different consequences: If, on the one hand, a system's property is irreducible because of the irreducibility of the system's parts' behavior on which the property supervenes, we seem to have a case of "downward causation". This kind of downward causation does not violate the principle of the causal closure of the physical domain. If, on the other hand, a systemic property is irreducible because it is not exhaustively analyzable in terms of its causal role, downward causation is not implied. Rather, it is dubitable how unanalyzable properties might play any causal role at all. Thus, epiphenomenalism seems to be implied. The failure to keep apart the two kinds of irreducibility has muddled recent debate about the emergence of properties considerably. (shrink)

The emerging consensus in the philosophy of cognition is that cognition is situated, i.e., dependent upon or co-constituted by the body, the environment, and/or the embodied interaction with it. But what about emotions? If the brain alone cannot do much thinking, can the brain alone do some emoting? If not, what else is needed? Do (some) emotions (sometimes) cross an individual's boundary? If so, what kinds of supra-individual systems can be bearers of affective states, and why? And does that make (...) emotions ?embedded? or ?extended? in the sense cognition is said to be embedded and extended? Section 2 shows why it is important to understand in which sense body, environment, and our embodied interaction with the world contribute to our affective life. Section 3 introduces some key concepts of the debate about situated cognition. Section 4 draws attention to an important disanalogy between cognition and emotion with regard to the role of the body. Section 5 shows under which conditions a contribution by the environment results in non-trivial cases of ?embedded? emotions. Section 6 is concerned with affective phenomena that seem to cross the organismic boundaries of an individual, in particular with the idea that emotions are ?extended? or ?distributed.? (shrink)

This article examines for the first time the jihadist global hegemonic masculinity of Osama bin Laden. Based on Bin Laden’s public statements translated into English, the authors examine how in the process of constructing a rationale for violent attacks primarily against the United States, he simultaneously and discursively formulates a jihadist global hegemonic masculinity. The research adds to the growing interest in discursive global hegemonic masculinities, as well as jihadist masculinities in the Middle East, by scrutinizing how Bin Laden’s jihadist (...) global hegemonic masculinity is produced in and through his public statements. The authors close their discussion by demonstrating how Bin Laden’s discursive practices are embedded in a clash of competing global hegemonic masculinities on the world stage. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to examine moods, mostly in comparison to emotions. Nearly all of the features that allegedly distinguish moods from emotions are disputed though. In a first section I comment on duration, intentionality, and cause in more detail, and develop intentionality as the most promising distinguishing characteristic. In a second section I will consider the huge variety of moods, ranging from shallow environmentally triggered transient moods to deep existential moods that last much longer. I will explore (...) what their sources are, and how they impact one another, other affective processes, and our being in the world. I follow several eminent emotion researchers and try to carve out their insights, many seemingly mutually excluding each other. As it will turn out, most of them are, in fact, not excluding each other, but contribute to a layered picture of moods that fits well in between emotions and personality traits. Eventually, I will shortly discuss what we can do with our moods. (shrink)

This paper revisits the often debated question Can machines think? It is argued that the usual identification of machines with the notion of algorithm has been both counter-intuitive and counter-productive. This is based on the fact that the notion of algorithm just requires an algorithm to contain a finite but arbitrary number of rules. It is argued that intuitively people tend to think of an algorithm to have a rather limited number of rules. The paper will further propose a modification (...) of the above mentioned explication of the notion of machines by quantifying the length of an algorithm. Based on that it appears possible to reconcile the opposing views on the topic, which people have been arguing about for more than half a century. (shrink)

This essay explores how indigenous knowledge about plant and animal remedies was gathered, classified, tested, and circulated across wide networks of exchange for natural knowledge between Europe and the Americas. There has been much recent interest in the “bioprospecting” of local natural resources—medical and otherwise—by Europeans in the early modern world and the strategies employed by European travellers, missionaries, or naturalists have been well documented. By contrast, less is known about the role played by indigenous and Creole intermediaries in this (...) process. And yet, the transmission of knowledge between indigenous communities and the European cabinet was neither transparent nor natural, and often involved epistemological, linguistic, and religious obstacles. Drawing on printed and manuscript collections of indigenous remedies, written in colonial Mexico between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, I focus on how local intermediaries, like creoles scholars, sought to overcome such obstacles by observing indigenous uses of remedies, by studying indigenous languages and by producing natural histories and pharmacopoeias in indigenous languages. Ultimately, behind the Creole participation in the transmission of indigenous remedies, one can point to political and cultural interests and to inclusive definitions of knowledge, which cut across oppositions between science and superstition, cabinet and field, centre and periphery. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Eine Karriere im Hochleistungssport ist mit hohen zeitlichen Belastungen verbunden. Da die Spitzensport- Karriere lebenszeitlich beschränkt ist und in der Regel in der vierten Lebensdekade beendet wird, stellt sich die Frage nach den Auswirkungen eines Engagements im Hochleistungssport auf die Berufskarriere. Hierzu wurden im Rahmen einer quantitativ orientierten Kohortenanalyse ehemalige Spitzensportler zu ihrem beruflichen Werdegang und möglichen Einflussfaktoren des Hochleistungssports retrospektiv befragt. Die Befunde der beiden Teiluntersuchungen zeigen, dass die hohen zeitlichen Anforderungen des Spitzensports den beruflichen Werdegang nur zum (...) Teil beeinträchtigen. Dies gilt nicht nur für sehr erfolgreiche Sportler, sondern auch für Hochleistungssportler, die weniger erfolgreich sind, sowie für Profisportler, die besonders intensiv in das System Hochleistungssport eingebunden sind. Dabei wirken sich Faktoren, wie institutionelle Unterstützungsmaßnahmen, Bekanntheit und soziale Kontakte sowie die Chance im Berufsfeld Spitzensport zu arbeiten, positiv auf die Berufskarriere aus. Allerdings haben sich aufgrund der Professionalisierung des Hochleistungssports die Risiken im kohortenspezifischen Vergleich vergrößert. (shrink)

Einleitung - S. Peetz: Subjekt und Freiheit. Antike Grundlagen moderner Konzeptionen der Willensfreiheit - G. Schmidt: Die Paradoxie des Subjekts - A. Friedrich Koch: Die Logik des Scheinens und der Sinn von "ich" - B. Tuschling: Epochen, Stufen und Dimensionen von Subjektivität und Transzendentalität bei Kant: 1770, 1781/87, 1790, 1799/1800 - M. Baum: Person und Persönlichkeit bei Kant - S. Sedgwick: Die Leerheit des 'Ich': Kants Transzendentale Deduktion in "Glauben und Wissen" - E. Düsing: Subjektivität und göttliches Sein bei Fichte (...) - mit Ausblicken auf Kierkegaard - J. Engfer: Kants Konzeption der menschlichen Vernunft und Plessners Begriff der Exzentrizität - T. Nenon: Freiheit, Verantwortung und Selbstbewusstsein bei Husserl - R. Cristin: Die Abenteuer des Bewusstseins. Zum Subjektbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger - C.-A. Scheier: Über logische und andere Subjekte. (shrink)

Der Begriff der LebensqualitätLebenLebensqualität wird für eine Bewertung von Lebensabschnitten oder des Lebens einer oder mehrerer Personen verwendet, wobei die Lebensqualität sowohl positiv als auch negativ sein kann. Zur Lebensqualität trägt bei, was letzten Endes für eine Person gut ist; verwandte Begriffe sind die des WohlergehensWohlbefinden, Wohlergehen oder des GlücksGlückglückliches Leben (s. a. Lebensqualität). Der Maßstab für die Ermittlung von Lebensqualität ist der Lebensstandard.

A central problem for the international governance of heritable germline gene editing is that there are important differences in attitudes and values as well as ethical and health care considerations around the world. These differences are reflected in a complicated and diverse regulatory landscape. Several publications have discussed whether reproductive uses would be legally permissible in individual countries and whether clinical applications could emerge in the context of regulatory gaps and gray areas. Systematic comparative studies that explore issues related to (...) the governance of this technology from different national and international perspectives are needed to address the lack of knowledge in this area. In this research report, we contribute to filling this gap by presenting views of stakeholders in the United Kingdom on challenges to the governance of heritable genome editing. We present findings from a multistakeholder study conducted in the United Kingdom between October 2016 and January 2018 and funded by the Wellcome Trust. This research included interviews, literature analysis, and a workshop. We involved leading U.K. scientists, in vitro fertilization clinicians, and representatives from regulatory bodies, patient organizations, and other civil societal organizations, as well as fertility companies. Part one of this article explores stakeholder perceptions of possible global developments in heritable genome editing and associated risks and governance challenges. Part two presents a range of policy options that were generated during the workshop in relation to the challenges discussed in part one. (shrink)

This article focuses on existential feelings. To begin with, it depicts how they differ from other affective phenomena and what type of intentionality they manifest. Furthermore, a detailed analysis shows that existential feelings can be subdivided, first, into elementary and nonelementary varieties, and second, into three foci of primary relatedness: oneself, the social environment, and the world as such. Eventually, five strategies of emotion regulation are examined with respect to their applicability to existential feelings. In the case of harmful existential (...) feelings, it turns out that none seems fitting except one, attentional deployment. (shrink)

We generalise the concept of clique width to structures of arbitrary signature and cardinality. We present characterisations of clique width in terms of decompositions of a structure and via interpretations in trees. Several model-theoretic properties of clique width are investigated including VC-dimension and preservation of finite clique width under elementary extensions and compactness.

Review by: Achim Blumensath The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 19, Issue 3, Page 394-396, September 2013.

According to Kant, the moral worth of an action depends on its maxim. As he explains, particularly in the Groundwork, moral worth accrues to an action when the action rests on a maxim selected for its accordance with the moral law. With respect to Religion, however, Kant modifies his understanding of the moral worth of actions. He now expresses the view that an agent acts morally worthy only if he possesses a moral Gesinnung as a character trait. According to this (...) opinion, only such persons can act in a manner that has moral worth who own a good Gesinnung and seek to express it in their actions. But to be in possession of a good Gesinnung depends, according to Kant, on strict conditions that ordinary actors will not realistically be able to fulfil. This accords with Kant's verdict that moral progress has not yet taken place because the conversion in Gesinnung that it would require is still outstanding. (shrink)

The concept of emergence is widely used in both the philosophy of mind and in cognitive science. In the philosophy of mind it serves to refer to seemingly irreducible phenomena, in cognitive science it is often used to refer to phenomena not explicitly programmed. There is no unique concept of emergence available that serves both purposes.

According to Humeanism, actions cannot be adequately explained without reference to the desires of an agent. Desires are viewed as sources of motivation or as motivating states and thus as having an indispensable role to play in the explanation of actions. One of the main rivals of Humeanism is pure cognitivsm. According to this view, actions are to be explained exclusively by beliefs. The present paper's focus is on arguments Jonathan Dancy has put forward in favor of this pure cognitivist (...) picture. His main line of argument tries to convince us of the claim that desires have no explanatory value at all as regards the explantion of an agent's actions. I argue that none of Dancy's arguments against Humeanism is successful, and moreover that the pure cognitivists position fails on its own terms because pure cognitivism is unable to provide an account of desires that makes intelligible their role in the mental economy of agents. (shrink)

In dieser Arbeit wird gezeigt, daß der Hegelsche Anspruch, allein aus dem Anfang als dem Abstrakten und Unmittelbaren das Konkretere und Reichere zu entwickeln, nicht aufrechtzuhalten ist. Damit wird nicht die Dialektik, und insbesondere nicht die Dialektik des Anfangs, preisgege- ben. Es wird aufgezeigt, wie Hegel bei Entwicklung der Kategorien in der Wissenschat'tder Logik stets Bezug nehmen muß auf ein heteroge- nes Etwas. Er versucht dies zu kaschieren. Der Unterschied der ersten Kategorien Sein und Nichts ist aus der unbestimmten Unmittelbarkeit (...) von Sein und Nichts nicht zu begründen. Für den Unterschied von Sein und Nichts muß ein Etwas zitiert werden. Erst dieses Zitat eines Hetero- genen ermöglicht den Fortgang der systematischen Darstellung. Damit ist die idealistische Dialektik in der Darstellung aufgehoben; sie ist negiert und vernichtet, weil sie als falsche aufgezeigt ist, und sie ist aufbewahrt und bestimmend für die Darstellung, weil die Kritik des Fal- schen konstitutiv für das Weitere ist. Im Folgenden werden die Übergänge zu den Kategorien Sein, Nichts, Werden, Entstehen, Vergehen, Nicht-Werden und Dasein analysiert, und es wird aufgezeigt, an welchen Stellen ein heterogenes Etwas zitiert werden muß, um eine korrekte systematische Entwicklung der Katego- rien zu erhalten. (shrink)

We review connections between the metric of spacetime and the quantum fluctuations of fields. We start with the finding that the spacetime metric can be expressed entirely in terms of the 2-point correlator of the fluctuations of quantum fields. We then discuss the open question whether the knowledge of only the spectra of the quantum fluctuations of fields also suffices to determine the spacetime metric. This question is of interest because spectra are geometric invariants and their quantization would, therefore, have (...) the benefit of not requiring the modding out of diffeomorphisms. Further, we discuss the fact that spacetime at the Planck scale need not necessarily be either discrete or continuous. Instead, results from information theory show that spacetime may be simultaneously discrete and continuous in the same way that information can. Finally, we review the recent finding that a covariant natural ultraviolet cutoff at the Planck scale implies a signature in the cosmic microwave background that may become observable. (shrink)

Several species concepts are generally discussed and evaluated. Then the new definition, the pheno-genetic species concept, is developed; it reads: a species is the largest possible, regional evolutionary unit of pheno-genetically equal (in the typical, specific characters), identically reproducing demes. It is separated from sympatric species by a reproductive isolation that guarantees a unique evolution, an evolution different from that of other species and sufficiently uninfluenced, and that is accompanied by another distinctive pheno-genetic gap. It is separated from allopatric species (...) by a distinctive pheno-genetic gap that - in the case of missing reproductive isolation in bisexual forms — allows the conclusion that such an isolation would have developed, if the species had been sympatric with the allopatric species. This definition is applied to several situations of evolution. The effects of the concepts on the classification of lizards are demonstrated by examples. (shrink)

This paper presents a new theory of connection between neurophysiological facts and the psychological inductive method. Based on the nature of synaptic transmission as a fundamental principle, this theory offers an explanation of abstraction, inductive thinking and any form of learning.

There is widespread belief among realists that it is consistent to think of the world as a totality of absolute facts and of our representation of the world as perspectival. As a pluralist Michael Lynch has challenged this view by arguing that relativism about representational content en tails relativism about facts. Lynch's 'T-argument' is presented and discussed in detail. It is argued not only that the 'T-argument' fails and that content relativism and fact absolutism are compatible, but also that content (...) absolutism entails fact absolutism. These two points add up to a serious challenge of pluralists in committing them to the view that there are many actual worlds. (shrink)

The invention in 1986 of scanning force microscopy (SFM) provided a new and powerful tool for the investigation of biological structures. SFM yields a three‐dimensional view at nanometer resolution of the surface topography associated with biological objects. The potential for imaging either macromolecules or biomolecules and cells under native (physiological) conditions is currently being exploited to obtain functional information at the molecular level. In addition, the forces involved in individual bimolecular interactions are being assessed under static and dynamic conditions. In (...) this report we focus on the imaging capability of the SFM. The rather broad spectrum of applications represented is intended to orient the prospective user of biological SFM. (shrink)

Nach einer weit verbreiteten Überzeugung beruht der Wert von fiktionaler Literatur wenigstens zum Teil darauf, dass Leser durch sie zu Wissen gelangen. Warum aber kommt fiktionale Literatur für den Erwerb von Wissen in Frage? Einige Autoren verweisen darauf, dass Literatur zwar kein propositionales Wissen im Sinne des Überzeugungswissens, aber ein nicht-propositionales Wissen im Sinne des Wissens von subjektiven Perspektiven oder von Fertigkeiten vermittelt. Der Beitrag argumentiert dafür, dass sich zusätzlich zu nicht-propositionalem Wissen auch propositionales Wissen durch Literatur erwerben lässt. Leser (...) können ihr propositionales Wissen erweitern, weil literarische Werke Behauptungen über Allgemeines enthalten. Anhand impliziter und durch Interpretation erschließbarer allgemeiner Aussagen wird die Auffassung verteidigt, dass Literatur eine wahrheitssuchende Institution darstellt. (shrink)