A Jewish Israeli journalist for the newspaper Ha'aretz offers a portrait of the daily experiences of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

Abraham Ibn Daud critica duramente a Ibn Gabirol en su Fe Exaltada. En este artículo, tengo la intención de demostrar que el objeto genuino de esta crítica es Dominicus Gundissalinus, coautor, junto a Ibn Daud de la traducción de la Shifa’ de Avicena del árabe al latín. Además de su trabajo como traductores, Gundissalinus e Ibn Daud también escribieron obras propias. En este artículo, discuto la definición de materia prima utilizada por Avicena e Ibn Gabirol, adoptada por Ibn Daud y (...) Gundissalinus. Aporto pruebas textuales para demostrar que en la mayoría de los casos en que Ibn Daud critica a Ibn Gabirol, en realidad se está refiriendo a los casos en que Gundissalinus abandona los puntos de vista de Avicena y en su lugar adopta los puntos de vista de Ibn Gabirol. (shrink)

The present study aimed to investigate three questions concerning Kahneman’s Endowment Effect. (a) Does the Endowment Effect apply to negotiations on intangible items such as intellectual resources and time invested in academic chores? (b) Does the sequence in which proposals are presented to the negotiators influence the Endowment Effect and, if so, how? (c) Does the Endowment Effect have the same impact in on-going negotiations as in one-shot negotiations? The investigation focused on the trade-off made by students between advanced courses (...) and seminars, which we term as Academic Chores Trade-Off (ACTO). The results indicated the existence of the Endowment Effect in negotiations on the above intangible items (ACTO) but could also be partially interpreted as reflecting the negotiators attempts to improve their positions. The results also supported the existence of a Sequence Effect combined with an intensification of the Endowment Effect. The Endowment Effect in on-going negotiations was not found to be significantly different from that in the one-shot format. (shrink)

Unsere von den Medien gelenkte Aufmerksamkeit gilt zumeist den grossen Themen aus Politik, Okonomie und Gesellschaft. Das Kleine, Einfache, Banale und lebensweltlich Ubersehene hingegen erscheint kaum der Beachtung wert. In diesem Buch werden vier alltagliche Situationen herumraumlichen Erlebens zum Anlass phanomenologischer Reflexion - ein zufallig angreifender aversiver Geruch, das Warten in Airport-Lounges, das Wehen des Windes und das Gebannt-werden von Atmospharen der Stille. Mikrologische Beschreibungen detaillierten Situationserlebens lassen uns hinsehen, wo es schein- bar nichts zu sehen gibt. Im Fokus steht (...) potentiell alles, was sich in wacher Achtsamkeit erkunden lasst. Die phanomenologische Durchquerung des Einfachen und scheinbar Banalen eroffnet nicht nur Einblicke ins Ubersehene auf Seiten der Objekte. Auf der Subjektseite scharft sie das Selbst-Bewusstsein und macht alltaglich gelebte Beziehungen zum eigenen Selbst wie zum Herumwirklichen dem Nachdenken zuganglich. (shrink)

Peter Abelard's autobiography, the Historia calamitatum, is one of the best-known medieval texts, especially because of the story of his love for Heloise which it recounts. In recent decades, there was so much controversy about the authenticity of the documents concerning Abelard and Heloise that the critical interpretation of the texts was relegated to the sidelines. The present volume provides a way out of this impasse. In it, the famous text is subjected to a series of exemplary analyses from the (...) perspectives of seven different 20th century literary theories (aesthetics of reception, Foucault, Gender Studies, Rhetorical Stylistic Analysis, Psychology of Literature, Cultural Studies, Deconstruction). The analyses are preceded by the Latin text of the Historia calamitatum with a modern German translation. This is thus the first time that the Historia calamitatum has been presented in a bilingual edition. (shrink)

How do we talk meaningfully about the sacred in contexts where conventional religious expression has so often lost its power? Inspired by the influential work of David Jasper, this important volume builds on his thinking to identify sacrality in a world where the old religious and secular debates have exhausted themselves and theology struggles for a new language in their wake. Distinguished writers explore here the idea of the sacred as one that exists, paradoxically, in a space that is both (...) possible and impossible: profoundly theological on the one hand, but also deeply this-worldly and irreligious on the other. This is a sacredness that is simultaneously 'present' and 'absent': one which encompasses – as Jasper himself characterises it – 'the impossible possibility of an absolute vision'. The book teaches us that the sacred assumes a renewed potency when fully engaged with the creativity that happens across religion, literature, philosophy and the arts. (shrink)

In this text Hasse presents a new, inclusive, posthuman learning theory, designed to keep up with the transformations of human learning resulting from new technological experiences, as well as considering the expanding role of cyborg devices and robots in learning. This ground-breaking book draws on research from across psychology, education, and anthropology to present a truly interdisciplinary examination of the relationship between technology, learning and humanity. Posthumanism questions the self-evident status of human beings by exploring how technology is changing what (...) can be categorised as "human". In this book, the author applies a posthumanist lens to traditional learning theory, challenging conventional understanding of what a human learner is, and considering how technological advances are changing how we think about this question. Throughout the book Hasse uses vignettes of her own research and that of other prominent academics to exemplify what technology can tell us about how we learn and how this can be observed in real-life settings. Posthumanist Learning is essential reading for students and researchers of posthumanism and learning theory from a variety of backgrounds, including psychology, education, anthropology, robotics and philosophy. (shrink)

Le 13 novembre 2015, beaucoup d'acteurs politiques, médiatiques ou de témoins des attentats parisiens répétaient en boucle : " Nous sommes en guerre. " Cette expression ambigüe n'a pas permis de mieux comprendre ce qui s'était passé. Elle interroge d'autant plus si l'on considère que, durant les années 2000, l'on avait annoncé la fin de la guerre au profit de l'avènement d'" opérations de police " et d'" états de violence ". En s'attachant à restituer ce qui fut pensé sous (...) le nom de guerre à partir des écrits de Clausewitz, Mao, Schmitt et l'administration Bush, Catherine Hass nous montre que la guerre n'apparaît pas ou ne disparaît pas selon les périodes mais qu'elle change de mode selon la politique à l'oeuvre, redistribuant ses catégories - ami, ennemi, antagonisme, nation, révolution, terrorisme... Le pari de ce livre est que des pensées révolues de la guerre peuvent constituer une forme de recours pour réfléchir notre contemporain, à l'instar de la Syrie ou de Daech. Docteure en anthropologie politique, Catherine Hass est spécialisée dans l'étude du contemporain. Après avoir mené des enquêtes essentiellement sur les jeunes issus des quartiers populaires, ses recherches portent, depuis plus de dix ans, sur le nom de guerre et l'examen de quelques-unes de ses configurations politiques, actuelles comme révolues. (shrink)

The way people live is neither a task, nor an action, nor a function. Rather, living expresses how people carry out their lives in places and spaces. One’s home in the broader sense (beyond ‘one's own four walls’) is the earth as a whole. In order for living to be successful on both a local and global scale, and for the earth not to become overly inhabited, people must live in a good way. But where extraction (from the resources of (...) nature as well as the social sphere) breaks the principle of conservation, living becomes a matter of care for the habitability of the earth in the future. That is why today an ethical revision of all the ways and means in which people are on the earth is required. (shrink)

Cette finitions de la substance et de l'accident telles qu'elles apparaissent dans le livre d'lbn Daud intitule la Foi exaltee. Acheve en 1160, ce livre fut composcut grbreu (datant l'une et l'autre de la fin du XTVe situde je suggtique du texte arabe sur la base d'une ample comparaison entre, d'une part, des prcesseurs musulmans d'lbn Daud tels qu'Alfarabi, Avicenne et Alghazali et, d'autre part, les traductions en hre apporter plus de lumipendance d'lbn Daud par rapport aux sources non-juives dans (...) sa tentative d'etablir une synthritable signification philosophique incarnfinitions de substance et d'accident. (shrink)

On the productive-operative approach to the foundations of geometry in protophysics. Attempts to establish a foundation to elementary geometry as a theory of spatial figures in Protophysics are surveyed in Section 1. An idea suggested by H. Dingler was to extract the basic properties of the geometrical primitive notions from descriptions of the operations performed in the ‘first’ production of the corresponding objects. P. Janich presents this ‘productive-operative’ approach as a succesful methodical alternative to the ‘geometry of forms’ of R. (...) Inhetveen and P. Lorenzen (Section 2). However, in his work not even one fundamental task seems to be achieved in a satisfactory manner. The article evaluates Janich’s contributions (Section 3) and discusses the shortcomings of his approach (Section 4). In this process a ‘functional-operative’ alternative emerges (Section 5). (shrink)

Als atmospharisch bergendes Gefuhl steht Heimat in einem fruchtbaren Spannungsfeld vielfaltiger gesellschaftlicher Einflusse. In Zeiten der Globalisierung verandern sich die Voraussetzungen fur die Konstitution von Heimat insbesondere durch Mobilitat, Migration, soziale Unsicherheit und Ideologisierung. Die Beitrage des Bandes diskutieren das Spannungsfeld von Eigenem und Fremdem aus verschiedenen theoretischen Perspektiven. Mit Beitragen von Amalia Barboza, Gernot Bohme, Simone Egger, Jurgen Hasse, Karen Joisten, Reinhard Knodt, Hermann Schmitz, Carolin Stapenhorst und Nina Trcka.

To examine the cultural limitations and implications in the applicability of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 8-items —a shortened version of the DASS-21 recently introduced in an Arab sample—this study evaluated its psychometric properties, including measurement invariance, among healthy subjects from the United States, Australia, and Ghana. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed good fit of the DASS-8 relative to a 12-item version. Both the DASS-8 and the DASS-12 were invariant at all levels across genders, employment status, and students vs. non-students. The (...) DASS-8/DASS-12 also expressed invariance at the configural and metric levels across all countries, albeit scalar invariance was not maintained due to misspecification of the factor loadings in the Ghanian sample. Mann–Whitney U test revealed significantly lower levels of mental symptomatology on the DASS measures among Ghanian students than in English-speaking respondents. The DASS-8 expressed excellent internal consistency, good convergent validity—noted by high values of item-total correlations, good predictive validity—indicated by significantly strong correlation with the DASS-21 and its subscales, and adequate discriminant validity—indicated by heterotrait–monotrait ratio of correlations <0.85. The DASS-8 correlated with the Internet Gaming Disorder-9, the Adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder Self-Report Scale, and the Individualism and Collectivism Scale/Culture Orientation Scale at the same level as the DASS-21 and the DASS-12, denoting its adequate criterion validity. The DASS-8 can be used as a brief alternative to the DASS-21 to screen for mental symptomatology in English-speaking and African cultures. However, the same scores on the DASS-8 and the DASS-12 may not always indicate the same level of symptom severity in subjects from different countries. Further inter-cultural evaluations of the DASS-8 are needed. (shrink)

(2010). A Review of “Making Sense of Race, Class, and Gender: Commonsense, Power, and Privilege in the United States”. Educational Studies: Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 139-144.

This paper examines a looming reproducibility crisis in the core of the hard sciences. Namely, it concentrates on molecular modeling and simulation (MMS), a family of methods that predict properties of substances through computing interactions on a molecular level and that is widely popular in physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering. The paper argues that in order to make quantitative predictions, sophisticated models are needed which have to be evaluated with complex simulation procedures that amalgamate theoretical, technological, and social factors (...) – leading to problems with reproducibility. Thus, for methodological reasons, the predictive success causes a reproducibility problem. (shrink)

Baron d’Holbach was a critic of established religion, or a philosophe, in late 18 th -century France. His work is often perceived as less inventive than the work of other materialist philosophes, such as Helvétius and Diderot. However, I claim that d’Holbach makes an original, unjustly overlooked move in the criticism of religious moral teaching. According to the materialist philosophes, this teaching claims that true happiness is only possible in the afterlife. As an alternative, Helvétius and Diderot offer theories according (...) to which the experience of pleasure constitutes happiness, the end of all human desire. In contemporary terms, these theories would represent psychological hedonism. But, as Diderot himself admits, they have a problem in accounting for why people seem to naturally regard some pleasures as preferable to others. I argue that in response to this challenge, instead of accepting the psychological hedonism of his fellow materialists, d’Holbach shows how one can abstain from reducing happiness to pleasure and yet remain a materialist. (shrink)

The study’s two aims are: to investigate whether groups, as compared to individuals, show a different degree of Endowment Effect during the negotiating of intangible assets, such as leisure time and to gain some insight into the underlying mechanism behind groups’ decision-making processes. A total of 138 graduate students were randomly assigned to 35 groups of 3 members each; and 33 were randomly labeled as “individuals.” The study simulated two scenarios in which the students, both individuals and groups, had to (...) decide what their demands from the university authorities were—once as “sellers” and another time as “buyers” in regard to their own leisure time. The findings indicate the presence of an Endowment Effect in both individuals and groups. However, groups significantly amplified the Endowment Effect in comparison to individuals. The mechanism which best explains why groups tend to amplify negotiating decisions was found to be the “Majority Rule,” but the “leader” also influences such amplification. (shrink)

Autonomy was an important political concept in ancient Greece. Kant made it the ground of morality: only acting motivated by autonomous reason is moral. But he admits that reason does not have a power to motivate us: desires can always override it. Thus it seems that human reason is not autonomous. The principle of autonomy, however, is an intrinsic part of Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” and his rationalism about the grounding of morality. Questioning the former would lead to fideism or to (...) skepticism while rejecting the latter to reductionism. Neither course is less problematic for grounding morality than the principle of autonomy is. I suggest that Aristotle can help us to see how this dilemma can be avoided. Unlike Kant and many others, he does not seek to ground morality beyond our experience. The Aristotelian understanding of human beings as capable of evaluating one another’s actions with the language of purposefulness can explain which actions are moral without falling into the dilemma implied by the Kantian principle of autonomy. (shrink)

W niniejszym artykule analizuję koncepcję Arystotelesa dotyczącą wymagań epistemicznych koniecznych do identyfikacji czynów moralnie dobrych. W Etyce Nikomachejskiej, Arystoteles zdaje się twierdzić, że jesteśmy w stanie rozpoznawać takie czyny, nie mając wiedzy o tym, dlaczego są one dobre. Inne twierdzenia zawarte w tych dziele, nie pozwalają jednak na bezkrytyczne przyjęcie tej tezy. Zdaniem Johna McDowella, Arystoteles uważał, iż dobro etyczne czynu jest zależne od kontekstu. Gdyby tak było, by rozpoznać dany czyn jako dobry, musielibyśmy wiedzieć jakie cechy danej sytuacji czynią (...) go dobrym. Bronię tezy, że nawet jeśli dobro czynu byłoby zależne od kontekstu, Arystoteles nie uważałby znajomości tego kontekstu za jedyny sposób rozpoznania czynu jako dobry. By tego dowieść, sięgam do dorobku współczesnej filozofii. Realizm wewnętrzny Hilarego Putnama pozwala wyjaśnić w jaki sposób podmiot rozpoznaje egzemplarze należące do danego rodzaju naturalnego, bez znajomości definicji tego rodzaju naturalnego. David Charles pokazuje, że Arystoteles podziela podobny pogląd, choć nie uważa, że podmiot musi zakładać, iż istnieje definicja danego rodzaju. Twierdzę, że ten aspekt teorii Arystotelesa może być zastosowany także do identyfikacji czynów moralnie dobrych. Jednostka może rozpoznawać dobre czyny jako czyny konieczne do prowadzenia cnotliwego życia. Nie musi wiedzieć dlaczego określone czyny są dobre. Wystarczy, że ma wizję dobrego życia, którą – jak twierdzi Arystoteles – może rozwinąć poprzez naśladowanie tych, którzy mają „oko doświadczenia”. (shrink)

Among the readers of Swedenborg, the Swedish thinker’s ‘theory of correspondences’ is often interpreted as treating empirical realities as only imperfect manifestations of spiritual realities. This interpretation that ascribes idealism to Swedenborg was originally proposed by Kant in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer. Although Kant criticizes Swedenborg’s theory, he considers it no inferior to the theories of Leibniz and Wolf, which can entice a reader of Swedenborg to take Kant’s interpretation at face value: even if Kant did not agree with (...) Swedenborg, at least he took him to be on par with these ‘serious’ philosophers. However, this paper attempts to show that unless a reader of Swedenborg is willing to endorse Kant’s disdain towards ‘enthusiasm’, Swedenborg should not be interpreted as a Platonic idealist, because he devised his theory of correspondences precisely in order to avoid such idealism. As few scholars have recently pointed out, Swedenborg, like Kant, thinks that all our cognitive abilities operate in the limits of time and space, i.e. in the empirical world, but for Swedenborg, as opposed to Kant, this does not imply that we cannot acquire knowledge of the spiritual world. According to these scholars, Swedenborg thinks that such knowledge can only be acquired mystically, which would render him a Platonic idealist, just as Kant claimed. However, this paper claims that pace the aforementioned scholars, this is not the only or even the default way of coming to know the spiritual world according to Swedenborg. The paper argues that when positing that every empirical and spiritual reality ‘correspond’ with one another, Swedenborg uses the Latin word correspondere in a technical sense. In other words, he thinks that any human cognition is both spiritual in the sense of involving a logical relationship between extension and spirit, and empirical by occurring in time and space. Thus, by cognising something in the empirical world, we also cognise something in the spiritual world, even if we were not capable of knowing spiritual realities in themselves. This element of Swedenborg’s theory distances him from Platonic idealism. The paper concludes with a suggestion that Kant might have perceived the limitations of his interpretation of Swedenborg later on, as signalled by the fact that in the early 1780s, Kant extended his conception of Platonism to include all philosophy other than his own. However, taking this road would make Platonic idealism an uninformative concept for an interpreter of Swedenborg and apt to be replaced by the term ‘enthusiasm’–the concept that Kant used when describing those with whom he disagreed. (shrink)

This article investigates the question why even the existence of “moral conscience” became regarded with serious doubts among radical eighteenth-century French philosophes La Mettrie, d’Holbach, Diderot, and Voltaire, from the vantage point of conceptual history. The philosophes’ stance of regarding moral conscience only as a name for certain acquired prejudices both fails to engage with the conception of moral conscience upheld by their theistic opponents and stands in a sharp contrast to the moral thought of Protestant reformation, which – less (...) than two centuries earlier – had elevated moral conscience to a position of an infallible moral authority. The article argues, however, that, in spite of the opposition between these two conceptions of conscience, they might be connected, and that the former might have even been a consequence of the latter. It will be shown that the pre-Reformation conception of moral conscience, crystallized in Aquinas, presents it being based on our natural attraction to “the human good”. However, as this conception was not created by medieval theologians, but was inherited from non-theistic ancient philosophy, in principle it would have been as compatible with the deistic and atheistic worldviews of the philosophes as the other ancient philosophical concepts, such as “the human good” and “human nature”, that the philosophes continued using in their original, teleological senses. Having presented a brief overview of the history of moral conscience, the article proceeds to show how the Protestant reformers removed the attraction to the human good from moral conscience while making its normative guidance infallible. The article will suggest that, due to the prevalence of this, exclusively theological, conception of moral conscience in the intellectual environment shaped by Protestantism, several British thinkers of the seventeenth century, including Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, who could not endorse the theological aspects of moral conscience, gradually reduced it into a mere acquired “sentiment”. As their philosophy was a major influence on the philosophes, the article concludes that the loss of a rational justification for moral conscience in the works of the British philosophers could have also been what motivated the philosophes to question moral conscience. (shrink)

Certain passages of Nicomachean Ethics seem to suggest a model of moral education that excludes those who have been misguided by their educators from being responsible for their character. I will argue, however, that this impression may result from misinterpreting the method of Aristotle’s moral educators. It is often thought, at least since Myles Burnyeat’s classic paper, ‘Aristotle on Learning to Be Good’1, that according to Aristotle, a moral educator should tell to moral students which actions are good so that (...) they could begin to practice performing them. I will show that this interpretation is both exegetically problematic, and the likely cause of the above, uncharitable impression. I will argue that it would be more justifiable to interpret Aristotle to be maintaining that the moral students should discover good actions themselves, though trial and error, and that the moral educator might only be needed to keep them away from acting too badly, as Howard Curzer has proposed2. Since in order to discover good actions on his own, a moral student needs to exercise moral discernment, he could be held responsible of the character that he will develop even if his moral educators were misguided him. I will suggest that Aristotle might think that what enables even morally misled people to become morally discerning learners is synesis–ability to identify good actions on the basis of other people’s opinions. (shrink)

Among the readers of Swedenborg, the Swedish thinker’s ‘theory of correspondences’ is often interpreted as treating empirical realities as only imperfect manifestations of spiritual realities. This interpretation that ascribes idealism to Swedenborg was originally proposed by Kant in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer. Although Kant criticizes Swedenborg’s theory, he considers it no inferior to the theories of Leibniz and Wolf, which can entice a reader of Swedenborg to take Kant’s interpretation at face value: even if Kant did not agree with (...) Swedenborg, at least he took him to be on par with these ‘serious’ philosophers. However, this paper attempts to show that unless a reader of Swedenborg is willing to endorse Kant’s disdain towards ‘enthusiasm’, Swedenborg should not be interpreted as a Platonic idealist, because he devised his theory of correspondences precisely in order to avoid such idealism. As few scholars have recently pointed out, Swedenborg, like Kant, thinks that all our cognitive abilities operate in the limits of time and space, i.e. in the empirical world, but for Swedenborg, as opposed to Kant, this does not imply that we cannot acquire knowledge of the spiritual world. According to these scholars, Swedenborg thinks that such knowledge can only be acquired mystically, which would render him a Platonic idealist, just as Kant claimed. However, this paper claims that pace the aforementioned scholars, this is not the only or even the default way of coming to know the spiritual world according to Swedenborg. The paper argues that when positing that every empirical and spiritual reality ‘correspond’ with one another, Swedenborg uses the Latin word correspondere in a technical sense. In other words, he thinks that any human cognition is both spiritual in the sense of involving a logical relationship between extension and spirit, and empirical by occurring in time and space. Thus, by cognising something in the empirical world, we also cognise something in the spiritual world, even if we were not capable of knowing spiritual realities in themselves. This element of Swedenborg’s theory distances him from Platonic idealism. The paper concludes with a suggestion that Kant might have perceived the limitations of his interpretation of Swedenborg later on, as signalled by the fact that in the early 1780s, Kant extended his conception of Platonism to include all philosophy other than his own. However, taking this road would make Platonic idealism an uninformative concept for an interpreter of Swedenborg and apt to be replaced by the term ‘enthusiasm’–the concept that Kant used when describing those with whom he disagreed. (shrink)

Among the readers of Swedenborg, the Swedish thinker’s ‘theory of correspondences’ is often interpreted as treating empirical realities as only imperfect manifestations of spiritual realities. This interpretation that ascribes idealism to Swedenborg was originally proposed by Kant in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer. Although Kant criticizes Swedenborg’s theory, he considers it no inferior to the theories of Leibniz and Wolf, which can entice a reader of Swedenborg to take Kant’s interpretation at face value: even if Kant did not agree with (...) Swedenborg, at least he took him to be on par with these ‘serious’ philosophers. However, this paper attempts to show that unless a reader of Swedenborg is willing to endorse Kant’s disdain towards ‘enthusiasm’, Swedenborg should not be interpreted as a Platonic idealist, because he devised his theory of correspondences precisely in order to avoid such idealism. As few scholars have recently pointed out, Swedenborg, like Kant, thinks that all our cognitive abilities operate in the limits of time and space, i.e. in the empirical world, but for Swedenborg, as opposed to Kant, this does not imply that we cannot acquire knowledge of the spiritual world. According to these scholars, Swedenborg thinks that such knowledge can only be acquired mystically, which would render him a Platonic idealist, just as Kant claimed. However, this paper claims that pace the aforementioned scholars, this is not the only or even the default way of coming to know the spiritual world according to Swedenborg. The paper argues that when positing that every empirical and spiritual reality ‘correspond’ with one another, Swedenborg uses the Latin word correspondere in a technical sense. In other words, he thinks that any human cognition is both spiritual in the sense of involving a logical relationship between extension and spirit, and empirical by occurring in time and space. Thus, by cognising something in the empirical world, we also cognise something in the spiritual world, even if we were not capable of knowing spiritual realities in themselves. This element of Swedenborg’s theory distances him from Platonic idealism. The paper concludes with a suggestion that Kant might have perceived the limitations of his interpretation of Swedenborg later on, as signalled by the fact that in the early 1780s, Kant extended his conception of Platonism to include all philosophy other than his own. However, taking this road would make Platonic idealism an uninformative concept for an interpreter of Swedenborg and apt to be replaced by the term ‘enthusiasm’–the concept that Kant used when describing those with whom he disagreed. (shrink)

This article argues that contrary to a received interpretation, Emanuel Swedenborg’s doctrine of correspondences, according to which each empirical reality has a corresponding spiritual reality, is closer to Spinozistic monism than Neoplatonic idealism. According to the former, there is only one substance: God, which we can cognize through its spir­itual and material aspects. According to the latter, the material world consists of substances that receive their form through participation in the ideas of the spiri­tual world. The article will show that (...) although some of Swedenborg’s claims can appear as expressing Neoplatonic idealism, his reading of the Bible as a guide for moral improvement, his rejection of the religious mysteries that cannot be rationally understood, his various examples of correspondences, his view that we can cognize God by studying the correspondences, and his definition of God as the only substance, make evident that he does not consider the spiritual realities ideas in the Neoplatonic sense. The article will interpret Swedenborg to think that the spiritual realities are learned concepts that enable us to describe and experience the world as having spiritual significance and thus acquire a fuller cognition of God. (shrink)

We claim that adjustable parameters play a crucial role in building and applying simulation models. We analyze that role and illustrate our findings using examples from equations of state in thermodynamics. In building simulation models, two types of experiments, namely, simulation and classical experiments, interact in a feedback loop, in which model parameters are adjusted. A critical discussion of how adjustable parameters function shows that they are boon and bane of simulation. They help to enlarge the scope of simulation far (...) beyond what can be determined by theoretical knowledge, but at the same time undercut the epistemic value of simulation models. (shrink)

Background: Treating medication-refractory freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease remains challenging despite several trials reporting improvements in motor symptoms using subthalamic nucleus or globus pallidus internus deep brain stimulation. Pedunculopontine nucleus region DBS has been used for medication-refractory FoG, with mixed findings. FoG, as a paroxysmal phenomenon, provides an ideal framework for the possibility of closed-loop DBS.Methods: In this clinical trial, five subjects with medication-refractory FoG underwent bilateral GPi DBS implantation to address levodopa-responsive PD symptoms with open-loop stimulation. Additionally, PPN (...) DBS leads were implanted for CL-DBS to treat FoG. The primary outcome of the study was a 40% improvement in medication-refractory FoG in 60% of subjects at 6 months when “on” PPN CL-DBS. Secondary outcomes included device feasibility to gauge the recruitment potential of this four-lead DBS approach for a potentially larger clinical trial. Safety was judged based on adverse events and explantation rate.Findings: The feasibility of this approach was demonstrated as we recruited five subjects with both “on” and “off” medication freezing. The safety for this population of patients receiving four DBS leads was suboptimal and associated with a high explantation rate of 40%. The primary clinical outcome in three of the five subjects was achieved at 6 months. However, the group analysis of the primary clinical outcome did not reveal any benefit.Interpretation: This study of a human PPN CL-DBS trial in medication-refractory FoG showed feasibility in recruitment, suboptimal safety, and a heterogeneous clinical effect in FoG outcomes. (shrink)

Firm managers make ethical decisions regarding the form and quality of disclosure. Disclosure can have long-term implications for performance, earnings manipulation, and even fraud. We investigate the impact of venture capital (VC) backing on the quality and informativeness of disclosure controls and procedures for newly public companies. We find that these controls and procedures are stronger, as evidenced by fewer material weaknesses in internal control under Section 302 of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, when companies are VC-backed. Moreover, these disclosures are informative (...) and are more likely to be followed by subsequent financial statement restatements than are disclosures made by non-VC-backed IPO companies. (shrink)

Dusky groupers (Epinephelus marginatus) are characterized by a complex sex allocation strategies and overexploitation of bigger individuals. We developed an individual based model to investigate the long-term effects of density dependence on grouper population dynamics and to analyze the variabilities of extinction probabilities as a result of interacting mortalities at different life stages. We conduct several simulations with different forms of sex allocation functions and different combinations of mortality rates. The model was parametrized using data on dusky grouper populations from (...) the literature. The most important insights produced by this simulation study are that density dependence of sex allocation is an evolutionarily stable strategy, increases the population biomass, mitigates the effect of the removal of large male and indicates a need for protection of females and flexible stages. (shrink)