The Cambridge Journal of Economics witnessed an important debate between Mark Pernecky and Paul Wojick on the one side and Rod Thomas on the other about the usefulness of Thomas Kuhn's sociology and philosophy of science in explaining why Keynes's revolutionary ideas exposed in the General Theory have been 'lost in translation'. This brief note is an attempt to reconcile Pernecky and Wojick's claim that Keynes's new economics of the General Theory and Walrasian General Equilibrium are incommensurable paradigms in a (...) Kuhnian understanding and Thomas's critique that – if they were incommensurable – Pernecki and Wojick's appraisal of Keynes's paradigm as a better approximation to the 'real world' than Walsrasian General Equilibrium is inconsistent within that very Kuhnian framework. (shrink)

Walras' law is a central tenet of economic theory. For mainstream economics, it is a 'plausibility check' for model-building; for heterodox economists, the refutation of Walras' law is key to understanding Keynes' revolutionary contribution to a new economic paradigm. The purpose of this short research note is to elaborate on the possibility of a refutation of Walras' law and to inquire into its preconditions. It will be argued that this can be achieved on the basis of an alternative pre-analytic vision (...) of a genuine monetary economy as foreshadowed by John Maynard Keynes. (shrink)

Dass man eine musikalische Form auberschaubaro - und nicht etwa auberhorbaro - nennt, mutet ebenso selbstverstandlich an wie der immer wieder formulierte Vergleich zwischen Musik und Architektur.

Many consumers implicitly associate sustainability with lower product strength. This so-called ethical = less strong intuition (ELSI) poses a major threat for the success of sustainable products. This article explores this pervasive lay theory and examines whether it is a key barrier for sustainable consumption patterns. Even more importantly, little is known about the underlying mechanisms that might operate differently at the implicit and explicit levels of the consumer’s decision-making. To fill this gap, three studies examine how the implicit judgments (...) that consumers activate automatically shape their consumption behaviors, in concert with their more controlled explicit beliefs about sustainable products. The Main Study investigates the ELSI’s imprint on actual shopping patterns and disentangles the implicit and explicit mechanisms of the lay theory. This paper also asks how this negative influence can be attenuated by examining whether the consumer’s interest in sustainable consumption reduces reliance on the ELSI. Two follow-up studies confirm the robustness from different methodological and practical perspectives. Implications for companies and policy makers are derived. (shrink)

Recent theoretical and empirical work in cognitive science and neuroscience is brought into contact with the concept of the flow experience. After a brief exposition of brain function, the explicit–implicit distinction is applied to the effortless information processing that is so characteristic of the flow state. The explicit system is associated with the higher cognitive functions of the frontal lobe and medial temporal lobe structures and has evolved to increase cognitive flexibility. In contrast, the implicit system is associated with the (...) skill-based knowledge supported primarily by the basal ganglia and has the advantage of being more efficient. From the analysis of this flexibility/efficiency trade-off emerges a thesis that identifies the flow state as a period during which a highly practiced skill that is represented in the implicit system’s knowledge base is implemented without interference from the explicit system. It is proposed that a necessary prerequisite to the experience of flow is a state of transient hypofrontality that enables the temporary suppression of the analytical and meta-conscious capacities of the explicit system. Examining sensory-motor integration skills that seem to typify flow such as athletic performance, writing, and free-jazz improvisation, the new framework clarifies how this concept relates to creativity and opens new avenues of research. (shrink)

Contrary to assumptions that changes in brain networks are possible only during crucial periods of development, research in the past decade has supported the idea of a permanently plastic brain. Novel experience, altered afferent input due to environmental changes and learning new skills are now recognized as modulators of brain function and underlying neuroanatomic circuitry. Given findings in experiments with animals and the recent discovery of increases in gray and white matter in the adult human brain as a result of (...) learning, the old concept of cognitive reserve, that is the ability to reinforce brain volume in crucial areas and thus provide a greater threshold for age-dependent deficits, has been reinforced. The challenge we face is to unravel the exact nature of the dynamic structural alterations and, ultimately, to be able to use this knowledge for disease management. Understanding normative changes in brain structure that occur as a result of environmental changes and demands is pivotal to understanding the characteristic ability of the brain to adapt. (shrink)

When the social relevance of robotic applications is addressed today, the use of assistive technology in care settings is almost always the first example. So-called care robots are presented as a solution to the nursing crisis, despite doubts about their technological readiness and the lack of concrete usage scenarios in everyday nursing practice. We inquire into this interconnection of social robotics and care. We show how both are made available for each other in three arenas: innovation policy, care organization, and (...) robotic engineering. First, we analyze the discursive “logics” of care robotics within European innovation policy, second, we disclose how care robotics is encountering a historically grown conflict within health care organization, and third we show how care scenarios are being used in robotic engineering. From this diagnosis, we derive a threefold critique of robotics in healthcare, which calls attention to the politics, historicity, and social situatedness of care robotics in elderly care. (shrink)

Introduction: Expressions of dignity as a clinical phenomenon in nursing homes as expressed by caregivers were investigated. A coherence could be detected between the concepts and phenomena of existence and dignity in relationships and caring culture as a context. A caring culture is interpreted by caregivers as the meaning-making of what is accepted or not in the ward culture. Background: The rationale for the connection between existence and dignity in relationships and caring culture is that suffering is a part of (...) existence, as well as compassion in relieving suffering, and ontological interdependency. Aim: To describe different expressions of dignity in relationships and existence in context of caring cultures from the perspective of the caregivers. Research design: The methodology and method are hermeneutic. The method used was to merge the theoretical preunderstanding as one horizon of understanding with empirical data. Participants and research context: Focus group interviews with caregivers in nursing homes. Ethical considerations: The principles of the Helsinki Declaration have been followed to, for example, preserve self-determination, integrity, dignity, confidentiality and privacy of the research persons. Findings: Data interpretation resulted in four themes: Encountering existential needs that promote dignity in a caring culture; To amplify dignity in relationships by the creative art of caring in a caring culture; Violation of dignity by ignorance or neglect in a non-caring culture and The ethic of words and appropriated ground values in a caring culture. Discussion: Dignity-promoting acts of caring, or dignity-depriving acts of non-caring are adequate to see from the perspective of dignity in relationships and existence and the caring culture. Conclusions: Dignity in relationships seems to touch the innermost existential life, as the existential life is dependent on confirmation from others. (shrink)

_In Perception, Empathy, and Judgment_ Arne Johan Vetlesen focuses on the indispensable role of emotion, especially the faculty of empathy, in morality. He contends that moral conduct is severely threatened once empathy is prevented from taking part in an interplay with cognitive faculties in acts of moral perception and judgment. Drawing on developmental psychology, especially British "object relations" theory, to illuminate the nature and functioning of empathy, Vetlesen shows how moral performance is constituted by a sequence involving perception, judgment, (...) and action, with an interplay between the agent's emotional and cognitive faculties occurring at each stage. In the powerful tradition from Kant to present-day theorists such as Kohlberg, Rawls, and Habermas, reason is privileged over feeling and judgment over perception, in such a way that basic philosophical questions remain unasked. Vetlesen focuses our attention on these questions and challenges the long-standing assertion that emotions are damaging to moral response. In the final chapter he relates his argument to recent feminist critiques that have also castigated moral theorists in the Kantian tradition for their refusal to recognize a role for emotion in morality. While the book's argument is philosophical, its method and scope are interdisciplinary. In addition to critiques of such philosophers as Arendt, MacIntyre, and Habermas, it contains discussions of specific historical, ideological, and sociological factors that may cause "numbing"—selective or broad-ranging, pathological insensitivity—in humans. The Nazis' mass killing of Jews is studied to illuminate these and other relevant empirical aspects of large-scale immoral action. (shrink)

This first collection of essays, by renowned critics and philosophers, outlines the central tenets of Simondon's thought, the implications of his work in numerous disciplines and his relationship to other thinkers such as Heidegger, Deleuze ...

Many sentences can be interpreted both as a metaphor and as a literal claim, depending on the context. The aim of this paper is to show that there are discourse-based systematic constraints on the identification of an utterance as metaphorical, literal, or both (as in the case of twice-apt metaphors), from a normative point of view. We claim that the key is contextual coherence. In order to substantiate this claim, we introduce a novel notion of context as a rich and (...) heterogeneous body of information, including previous discourse, elements coming from the surroundings of the utterance, background information, and Questions Under Discussion (QUD) issued from these three sources. We then define contextual coherence as a relation between what we call the minimal paraphrase of the metaphor and the context, and argue that for an interpretation to be coherent two conditions must be met. First, the minimal paraphrase must address some question in the QUD stack. Second, it must be externally consistent, i.e. consistent with the available contextual information. Finally, we argue that an approach based on contextual coherence is better suited to deal with twice-true and twice-apt metaphors than traditional approaches based on semantic deviance or pragmatic lack of fit. (shrink)

We are living in a time of acute vulnerability. From climate change to drone warfare, terrorist attacks to mass shootings, safe spaces to trigger warnings, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, homo vulnerabilis is once again coming to terms with the fact that it can be wounded, or even killed. Against such finitude, sovereignty is now reasserting itself as a political power that might save us from our ontological state. The irony is, of course, that such sovereignty – for example (...) through camps, walls, police violence, or drones – is also the underlying, historical cause of many of our most intense contemporary experiences of vulnerabilization. Interrupting the dialectic by which sovereignty manages to be both the cause of our vulnerabilization and the phantasmatic tool of its prevention, in Being Vulnerable Arne De Boever explores how today’s experiences of vulnerabilization can be translated into a collective human power that dismantles the form of sovereignty that is producing this state of affairs. Focused on theories, paradigms, and alternative formations of sovereignty, Being Vulnerable reconsiders the tradition of thinking through a political concept in order to approach it anew. (shrink)

This anthology deals with the changing state of the arts and the incorporation and relevance of the aesthetic dimension in daily life in general. The articles are not restricted to the arts, but emphasis is given to aesthetics at work including art interaction, new aesthetical forms, new aesthetical activities, media and expressions including aesthetical dimensions in current economical and technological development â?? all the aesthetical tendencies that contribute to our world today. The book represents a decisive development in existing theories (...) of art, taking a serious look at the expanding field of aesthetics. The contributors represent aesthetic studies, musicology, art history, literature, and media. Together they have published widely within the aesthetics field and they all take part in the development of an aesthetics program at the University of Oslo. (shrink)

Evil is a poorly understood phenomenon. In this provocative 2005 book, Professor Vetlesen argues that to do evil is to intentionally inflict pain on another human being, against his or her will, and causing serious and foreseeable harm. Vetlesen investigates why and in what sort of circumstances such a desire arises, and how it is channeled, or exploited, into collective evildoing. He argues that such evildoing, pitting whole groups against each other, springs from a combination of character, situation, and social (...) structure. By combining a philosophical approach inspired by Hannah Arendt, a psychological approach inspired by C. Fred Alford and a sociological approach inspired by Zygmunt Bauman, and bringing these to bear on the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Vetlesen shows how closely perpetrators, victims, and bystanders interact, and how aspects of human agency are recognized, denied, and projected by different agents. (shrink)

Excessive fear generalisation is a feature characteristic of clinical anxiety and has been linked to its aetiology. Previous animal studies have shown that the mere passage of time increases fear generalisation and that brief exposure to training cues prior to long-term testing reverses this effect. The current study examined these phenomena in humans. Healthy participants learned the relationship between the presentation of a picture of a neutral male face and the delivery of a mild shock. One group was immediately tested (...) with a novel picture of a somewhat different male face (generalisation test). Another group was tested one week later. A third group was also tested one week later and was additionally exposed to the training picture prior to testing. During picture presentations, shock-expectancy ratings were obtained as a measure of fear. Fear generalisation increased from the immediate test to the 1-week follow-up test. This result could not be attributed to level of neuroticism or a general increase in fear (incubation). Furthermore, the time-dependent increase in fear generalisation vanished following brief exposure to the training picture. Results indicate that human fear generalisation is a temporally dynamic process and that memory for stimulus details can be re-established following a reminder treatment. (shrink)

Taking the individual human being as a point of reference, this paper examines the sustainability of oneself as a contribution to human society and the biosphere in an evolving world. The proactive role as inquirer/researcher alias designer leads to active inquiry and design of one's life with influential consequences on the lives of other human beings and planetary life forms. To sustain a tenable position between the constructive and destructive forces of contemporary existence, a conscientious and ethical stance becomes central (...) in one's self?understanding of life fulfillment and the pragmatic nature of one's actions in the world. (shrink)

Michael S. Gazzaniga, a pioneer and world leader in cognitive neuroscience, has made an initial attempt to develop neuroethics into a brain-based philosophy of life that he hopes will replace the irrational religious and political belief-systems that still partly govern modern societies. This article critically examines Gazzaniga’s proposal and shows that his actual moral arguments have little to do with neuroscience. Instead, they are based on unexamined political, cultural and moral conceptions, narratives and values. A more promising way of interpreting (...) the belief-forming system of the brain is to say that we cannot avoid thinking in terms of wider frameworks and narratives that are socially embedded and historically developed; consequently, any moral discussion has to be in terms of these frameworks and narratives. (shrink)

Die Gesundheitsreformen der vergangenen Jahrzehnte haben die Organisation Krankenhaus einem grundlegenden Wandel unterzogen. Neben offenkundig notwendigen und sinnvollen Veränderungen hat es aber auch solche gegeben, die die Frage aufwerfen, welchen gesellschaftlichen Aufgaben das Krankenhaus in Zukunft dienen soll. Pointiert gefragt: Welcher Effektivität soll die seit Jahren betriebene Effizienzsteigerung in der Organisation Krankenhaus dienen außer der Begrenzung eines allgemeinen Kostenanstiegs? Es ergibt sich ein paradoxer Befund: Der Wandel der Organisation Krankenhaus scheint sich maßgeblich der Ökonomisierung zu verdanken, die zugleich das Mittel (...) darstellt, mit dem der Wandel bewältigt werden soll. In diesem Beitrag werden organisations- und institutionstheoretische Entwicklungen auf den Prozess der Ökonomisierung abgebildet und aus einer ethischen Perspektive reflektiert. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss an approach called grounded action cognition, which aims to provide a theory of the interdependencies between motor control and action-related cognitive processes, like perceiving an action or thinking about an action. The theory contrasts with traditional views in cognitive science in that it motivates an understanding of cognition as embodied, through application of Barsalou’s general idea of grounded cognition. To guide further research towards an appropriate theory of grounded action cognition we distinguish between grounding qua (...) acquisition and grounding qua constitution. On this basis, we distinguish three possible theoretical conceptions of grounded action cognition. In addition to these methodological and conceptual analyses, we draw on recent empirical evidence to motivate our inclination towards a particular theory. According to this theory certain representations are involved in action cognition and action perception that are not modality-specific as usually proposed by advocates of grounded cognition. Further, the evidence is in favor of our more specific theory stating that for some cognitive abilities, some motor abilites are constitutive. (shrink)

Die menschliche Begeisterung fur Garten reicht historisch weit zuruck und ist bis in die Gegenwart ungebrochen. Dieser Band versammelt Beitrage zu einem bisher jedoch wenig beachteten Themenfeld. Der Begriff des Gartens war immer auch ein zentraler Bestandteil philosophischer und theologischer Diskurse und Kristallisationspunkt von Selbstverstandigungen des Menschen uber die Bedingungen gluckenden Lebens und uber zentrale Inhalte religiosen Glaubens. Die Beitrage des Bandes untersuchen derartige Gartendiskurse mit verschiedenen historischen Schwerpunkten, die von biblischer Zeit bis in die Gegenwart reichen. Erganzt wird dies (...) durch zwei exemplarische Untersuchungen uber die mediale Transformation, in der philosophische und theologische Gartendiskurse in Literatur und Musik eingegangen sind.". (shrink)

Big Data and biopolitics are two major issues currently attracting attention in public health discourse, but also in sociology of knowledge, STS Studies as well as in philosophy of science and bioethics. The paper considers big data to be a new form and instrument of biopolitics which addresses both the categories of body and space. It is expected to fundamentally transform health care systems, domestic environments and practices of self-observation and reflection. Accordingly the paper points out some problems and pitfalls (...) as well as open questions that have emerged in the field of AAL, which merit more attention in future public and academic debate. (shrink)