Escalation of commitment causes people to continue a failing course of action. We study the role of construal level in such escalation of commitment. Consistent with the widely held view of construal level as a primed effect, we employed a commonly used prime for manipulating this construct in a laboratory experiment. Our findings revealed that the prime failed to produce statistically significant differences in construal level, which was measured using the Behavior Identification Form. Furthermore, there was no effect of the (...) prime on escalation of commitment, or on constructs that have previously been linked to construal level such as the perceived importance of feasibility considerations relative to desirability considerations, and the number of pros and cons that subjects can think of.Interestingly, however, subjects’ actual construal level scores on the BIF were found to significantly affect escalation. Specifically, our findings show that people with a low construal level are less willing to continue a failing project. This relation is mediated by the perceived importance of the feasibility of the project relative to its desirability. For people with a low construal level, the perceived importance of feasibility relative to desirability is higher, which in turn makes escalation of commitment less likely.Our findings are consistent with prior research suggesting that priming construal level may not always be effective. Thus, while construal level has typically been regarded as a state-like variable that can be primed, in this study, we show that construal level may also be considered as a trait. (shrink)

Wichtige Aspekte der Spinoza-Rezeption sind lange Zeit im Hintergrund geblieben. Spinoza galt seit dem öffentlich gemachten Bekenntnis des Aufklärers Lessing zum Hen kai Pan als Vertreter einer Substanzenontologie für Atheisten. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi war es, der 1785 und 1789 eine breite Debatte um Pantheismus, Atheismus, letztbegründende Prinzipien der Metaphysik, ferner um Freiheit und Notwendigkeit auslöste. Spinozas Trieb- und Affektenlehre blieb in der Forschung weitgehend unbeachtet. Weniger lautstark als im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert, aber durchaus wirksam, ist Spinoza im 20. und 21. (...) Jahrhundert durch Denker wie Gilles Deleuze oder den Neurologen Antonio Damasio erneut in den Fokus der Aufmerksamkeit geraten. Diesmal ist es Spinozas vormals wenig beachtete Affektenlehre, die für Theorien vom ganzen, nicht bloß vom einseitig rationalen Menschen Interesse weckte. Galt das Interesse der Aufklärung der Rationalität des Denkens, die gegen Aberglauben und Irreführungen der Vernunft ins Recht zu setzen war, so wenden sich das 20. und das 21. Jahrhundert der Entdeckung der Intelligenz und Rationalität der Gefühle zu – zuerst in der Psychologie, bald auch in der Philosophie. Der Band nimmt das neue Interesse an Spinoza zum Anlass zu untersuchen, ob und inwieweit im Deutschen Idealismus, in der Romantik und im 19. Jahrhundert bis heute der andere Spinoza, der Spinoza einer bemerkenswerten Trieb- und Affektenlehre sowie des amor Dei intellectualis, wahrgenommen wurde. Die Beiträge zu Spinoza selbst, zu Jacobi, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Hardenberg/Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, Schleiermacher, schließlich zu Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze zeigen, dass dieser andere Spinoza durchaus in der einen oder anderen Weise gesehen wurde. Mit Beiträgen von Karl Ameriks, Andreas Arndt, Ulrich Barth, Wolfgang Bartuschat, Arno Böhler, Konrad Cramer, Bärbel Frischmann, Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch, Ulrike Kadi, Thomas Kisser, Jane Kneller, Konrad P. Liessmann, Elizabeth Millán, Ursula Renz, Helma Riefenthaler, Violetta L. Waibel, Reiner Wiehl und Jure Zovko. (shrink)

This contribution investigates the idea that an act of signification can be understood in terms of the self-referentiality that is typical of the biological organization. The capacity of a living being to interpret and appreciate its own environment can be understood as being grounded in its ability to perform self-referential experiences. We may call this the living being’s capacity of sense. In any act that generates sense, it is possible to distinguish a process of signification from its outcome, but such (...) a distinction between logical levels inevitably demands an external observer’s point of view. Hence, the concept of ‘subjectivity’ can be defined in terms of an absence of such distinction between logical levels. This absence is considered pivotal both for the self-referential organization of the living and for the generation of sense. A case example from the field of psychotherapy is added to illustrate the distinction as well as the non-distinction between logical levels of description. (shrink)

This paper deals with some formal properties of objects that are supposed to be internal to persons, that is, mental structures and mental functions. Depending on the ways of talking about these internal objects, they will appear different. Two types of discourse will be presented, to be called the realist and the nominalist discourses, and for eachdiscourse I will focus upon the construction of `self'.The realist discourse assumes an identity between the person and his construction of himself. I will illustrate (...) this discourse in terms of Descartes' ideas on himself as a `thinking substance'. The nominalist discourse assumes an impossibility to attain this identity, and instead to imply a complementarity between the person and his self-construction. I will illustrate this discourse in terms of the problems both William James and Sartre discerned when a conscious person chases after his own consciousness (termed `judging thought' and `pour-soi' respectively). (shrink)

As in literature poetry precedes prose, so in poetry a special and ‘heightened’ diction seems to precede everyday language. Mr.T.S.Eliot has put it thus: ‘Every revolution in poetry is apt to be, and sometimes to announce itself as, a return to common speech.’ How does this apply to Greek and Latin ? There are objections to considering words in isolation from this point of view, since neutral ones are apt to go now grey, now purple, according to their company; but (...) if we do not do so, we deny ourselves the only considerable method of investigation that is still open to us. Again, we must recognize that most poems are composed largely of ordinary words, though these are often used in a way that is not ordinary. (shrink)

Some of the problems associated with the construction of a manifestly covariant relativistic quantum theory are discussed. A resolution of this problem is given in terms of the off mass shell classical and quantum mechanics of Stueckelberg, Horwitz and Piron. This theory contains many questions of interpretation, reaching deeply into the notions of time, localizability and causality. A proper generalization of the Maxwell theory of electromagnetic interaction, required for the well-posed formulation of dynamical problems of systems with electromagnetic interaction is (...) discussed, and some of the significance of recently found (classical) relativistic chaotic behavior is pointed out. Many results of a technical nature have been achieved in this framework; in this paper, some of these are reviewed, but I shall concentrate on a discussion of the basic ideas and foundations of the theory. (shrink)

The gauge compensation fields induced by the differential operators of the Stueckelberg-Schrödinger equation are discussed, as well as the relation between these fields and the standard Maxwell fields; An action is constructed and the second quantization of the fields carried out using a constraint procedure. The properties of the second quantized matter fields are discussed.

It is well known that when resolution occurs in the stichic iambics and trochaics of tragedy word-end is not found between the two shorts so produced: w or, more accurately, that the first short of resolution must not be the last syllable of a polysyllabic word. Moreover, the syllables in resolution most often form part of the same word as the following short or anceps, e.g.: Ion 1143.

In C.Q. xliii , p. 39, Mr. J. H. Quincey quotes the opening lines of Catalepton 5 as, Ite hinc,-inanes, ite, rhetorum ampullae, inflata rhoso* non Achaico verba, and adds, ‘the second line is corrupt and no satisfactory emendation has been proposed’. The MS. readings are: rhorso B, roso Mu, om. in lacuna Ar. In face of these voces nihili many have fallen back on the rore of the Aldine edition of 1517. But this does not really help, for one (...) does not inflate with dew: orators are not dew-bags, but wind-bags. It occurred to me some years ago that what is needed is some word meaning breath or wind to go with inflata, and that in view of the rh in rhorso it was probably a Greek word which a scribe had failed to recognize. I conjectured οζ, and found subsequently that this had been proposed by K. Münscher in Hermes, xlvii , pp. 153–4. οȋζος used of any rushing sound, is applied to speech by Philostratus , and by Pollux . It is easy to see how rhoezo could degenerate into rhoeso-rhoso-roso. (shrink)

It has been pointed out to me that in my article on ‘The Augustan Rules for Dactylic Verse’ I misrepresented an observation of Maas as reported by Wilamowitz in his Griechische Verskunst, p. 53. Wilamowitz' words are: ‘Wenn Tibull und Ovid den Pentameter so bauen, dass die vorletzte Silbe betont wird, tun sie das nach dem Vorgange gleichzeitiger griechischer Epigrammatiker.’ This means, of course, that the Greek writers mentioned ended with a paroxytone word, not necessarily with a disyllable, as I (...) assumed it to mean, and I apologize for the oversight. (shrink)

The elements which every schoolboy learns on beginning Latin Verse Composition include a number of rules which seem arbitrarily designed to make the game harder. In hexameters, he is told, he must have a masculine caesura either in the third foot or in the second and fourth, and end normally with a disyllabic or a trisyllable; in pentameters he must end with a disyllabic; and in neither line may a single monosyllable stand at the end. Rarely, in my experience, is (...) any reason given him by way of redress, and he will search for one in vain in most of the school text-books, in introductions like Postgate's to Tibullus and Propertius, and in histories of Latin literature like Wight Duff's and Mackail's. This reticence may be due to the dissensions of experts on this subject and on the subject of Latin accentuation in general, but the theory that predominates in England, among those who hold a theory at all, explains so many of the phenomena that it deserves to be more widely and precisely known. The most detailed exposition of it is by E. H. Sturtevant, who summed up his analyses in a pair of articles in the Transactions of the American Philological Association in 1923–4. While his careful work is invaluable as marshalling the statistics and evidence, it errs on the side of excessive minuteness, and leaves room not merely for some additions, but for a different kind of treatment concerned less with bare statistics and more with poetic principles and historical development. Since Latin Verse Composition plays such an important part in English higher classical education, it seems desirable that a less technical and more accessible account should be available for English readers. Such an account I attempt to give here, keeping separate as far as possible the exposition and the consideration of the criticisms and rival theories that have been advanced. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind pronounced the “official doctrine” regarding the nature of the mind and the body as “hailing chiefly from Descartes.” That doctrine, anathematized by Ryle as “the dogma of the ghost in the machine,” is said to hold that every human being is composed of a body and a mind, that the body is physical whereas the mind is not, and that the mind may continue to exist when the body is destroyed. Ryle’s famous attack (...) on the official doctrine has undoubtedly stimulated Cartesian studies, both in those who wish to understand Descartes better in order to make the defense of the doctrine more effective and in those who wish to attack it, sometimes even with arguments which Ryle himself would have rejected. Occasionally, one reads a reference to “Platonic dualism,” not so much as a clearly defined alternative to Cartesian dualism but rather as an inchoate or loose version of Descartes’ doctrine. A recent exception is Richard Rorty who in the first chapter of his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature has insisted on the difference between the Platonic and the Cartesian positions, although it should perhaps be added that his hostility to the former is if anything greater than his hostility to the latter. Without suggesting that there are not obvious similarities in the Platonic and Cartesian versions of dualism, it will perhaps be useful to try to penetrate beneath the slogans in order to get a clearer picture of the arguments which impelled Plato to hold a position the strangeness which was evident even to his contemporaries. (shrink)

In this paper we show that the prime ideal space of an MV-algebra is the disjoint union of prime ideal spaces of suitable local MV-algebras. Some special classes of algebras are defined and their spaces are investigated. The space of minimal prime ideals is studied as well.

The fragmentary columns of the Fourth Book of Philodemus' περ μονσικς were the first-fruits of Herculaneum, published in 1793, with venturesome reconstructions and learned notes, by the Academici of Naples. Fragments of the other books occur in four volumes of the Collectio Altera of 1862–5. A. Teubner Text by J. Kemke, a pupil of Bücheler, appeared in 1884, upon which Gomperz made a number of improvements in a pamphlet published in the following year. Otherwise, save for a few pages in (...) H. Abert's Die Lehre vom Ethos in der griechischen Musik published in 1899, the work has attracted very little attention; which is scarcely surprising in view of the state of the text and the peculiar awkwardness of Philodemus' Greek. (shrink)