Educational transitions play a pivotal role in shaping educational careers, and ultimately social inequality. Whereas parental socioeconomic status (SES) and cognitive ability have long been identified as key determinants of successful educational transitions, much less is known about the role of socio-emotional skills. To address this gap, the present study investigated whether Big Five personality traits predict success in the transition from secondary school to vocational education and training (VET) above and beyond SES, cognitive ability, and other covariates. Using data (...) from Starting Cohort 4 of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; N = 4,137), we defined seven indicators of successful transition: obtaining a VET position, number of acceptances for VET positions, starting a VET position, (the absence of) dropout intentions and actual dropout, final VET grade, and satisfaction with VET. The results revealed that some Big Five traits were incrementally associated with several indicators of transition success. Conscientiousness emerged as the single most relevant trait, predicting all the transition success indicators but one (dropout intentions). The other Big Five traits had much weaker and less consistent links with transition success. Extraversion predicted the final VET grade and obtaining a VET position; Agreeableness was linked to a higher risk of dropout. Openness and Emotional Stability had no incremental effects on transition success. There was also some evidence for both compensatory and synergistic interactive effects, with Openness moderating mainly the effects of parental SES (on dropout intentions, actual dropout, and number of acceptances), and Agreeableness moderating the effects of cognitive ability (on obtaining a VET position, number of acceptances, and satisfaction with VET). Although individual effect sizes were small, the Big Five’s joint contribution to transition success was non-negligible, and often larger than that of sociodemographic characteristics and cognitive ability. Our results suggest a hitherto underappreciated contribution of personality to successful transitions to VET. (shrink)

Ethical concerns regarding agricultural practices can be found to co-evolve with technological developments. This paper aims to create an understanding of ethics that is helpful in debating technological innovation by studying such a co-evolution process in detail: the development and adoption of the milking robot. Over the last decade an increasing number of milking robots, or automatic milking systems (AMS), has been adopted, especially in the Netherlands and a few other Western European countries. The appraisal of this new technology in (...) ethical terms has appeared to be a complicated matter. Compared to using a conventional milking parlor, the use of an AMS entails in several respects a different practice of dairy farming, the ethical implications and evaluation of which are not self-evident but are themselves part of a dynamic process. It has become clear that with its use, the entire practice of dairy farming has been reorganized around this new device. With a robot, cows must voluntarily present themselves to be milked, whereby an ethical norm of (individual) freedom for cows can be seen to emerge together with this new technology. But adopting a robot also implies changes in what is considered to be a good farmer and an appropriate relation between farmer and cow. Through interviews, attending “farmers’ network” meetings in the Netherlands, and studying professional literature and dedicated dairy farming web forums, this paper traces the way that ethical concerns are a dynamic part of this process of rearranging a variety of elements of the practice of dairy farming. (shrink)

Recently, two apparently quite different duality-based approaches to automata minimisation have appeared. One is based on ideas that originated from the controllability-observability duality from systems theory, and the other is based on ideas derived from Stone-type dualities specifically linking coalgebras with algebraic structures derived from modal logics. In the present paper, we develop a more abstract view and unify the two approaches. We show that dualities, or more generally dual adjunctions, between categories can be lifted to dual adjunctions between categories (...) of coalgebras and algebras, and from there to automata with initial as well as final states. As in the Stone-duality approach, algebras are essentially logics for reasoning about the automata. By exploiting the ability to pass between these categories, we show that one can minimize the corresponding automata. We give an abstract minimisation algorithm that has several instances, including the celebrated Brzozowski minimisation algorithm. We further develop three examples that have been treated in previous works: deterministic Kripke frames based on a Stone-type duality, weighted automata based on the self-duality of semimodules, and topological automata based on Gelfand duality. As a new example, we develop alternating automata based on the discrete duality between sets and complete atomic Boolean algebras. (shrink)

The occurrence of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 at the end of 2019 comes along with many challenges. Besides worry for one’s own health and the well-being of the family, all measures applied to limit the spread of the coronavirus affected daily life. School closures, economic shutdown and contact restrictions have led to high levels of stress. The impact on health and families has been widely discussed. However, population-based data are scarce. Here, we have assessed health, quality of (...) life and intrafamilial relations depending on the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a three-step random-route approach, a population-based sample of 2,515 persons was recruited during the second COVID-19 wave in Germany in winter 2020/21. While the majority of participants reported no change in their health status and the relationship with their partner and children, more than half of participants reported a decreased quality of life since the beginning of the pandemic. Female gender, age above 60 years, a low household income, not living with a partner and the experience of childhood adversity were associated with a higher risk for a worsening of health, quality of life and intrafamilial relations. These had already been well-established risk factors ahead of the pandemic. In order to avoid further increase of inequality in our society and more devastating impact of the pandemic on health and intrafamilial relations, low-level support and intervention programs are urgently needed. (shrink)

This book collects the work of leading scholars on Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel, creating a dialogue between, and a critical appraisal of, these two central figures in European philosophy.

Modern theories of authoritarianism have stressed the importance of threat to the expression of authoritarian attitudes and intolerance. Arguably, authoritarian tendencies may have increased during COVID-19 pandemic, a major threat to life and security. One issue arising when comparing mean scores is that of measurement invariance. Meaningful comparisons are only possible, if latent constructs are similar between groups and/or across time. This prerequisite is rarely ever tested in research on authoritarianism. In this study, we aim to analyze the short scale (...) for authoritarianism KSA-3 by investigating its measurement invariance on two levels and latent mean changes using two German representative samples. Specifically, we look at differences before and during the pandemic. While measurement invariance holds across both levels in all conditions, we find a decrease in latent means in 2020, contrary to expectations and established theories. Moreover, latent means differ with regard to gender, education, and east–west Germany. We conclude that analyses of latent means and measurement invariance instead of mean comparisons with composites should become the standard. Future studies should focus on threat as a moderator between authoritarianism and intolerance, and on possible interactions with context variables. (shrink)

In Brasilien wird Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) zuweilen als brasilianischer Philosoph besprochen, in Deutschland wird sein Werk dagegen dem mitteleuropäisch-jüdischen Ideenraum zugeordnet. Fest steht: Der gebürtige Prager Vilém Flusser verbrachte mehr als dreissig Jahre in Brasilien. Auch seine Ideen sind hiervon nicht unberührt geblieben. Vorliegende Studie verbindet Werkanalyse, Biographie und Zeitgeschichte und geht zudem der Frage nach, inwiefern Flussers Texte als Arbeit an einer eigenständigen Kulturphilosophie in und für Brasilien zu verstehen sind, die anders als die marxistische Kulturkritik Frankfurter Prägung sich (...) als ein ideologiefreies, der geschichtlichen Entwicklung enthobenes Denken betrachtet. Mittels einer an der Konstellationsforschung orientierten Methode greift sie Flussers interdisziplinäre und entgrenzende Denkweise auf, rekonstruiert sein weitverzweigtes intellektuelles Netzwerk und beleuchtet dabei auch weniger bekannte Akteure der zweiten Reihe. Der historischen und philosophischen Kontextualisierung übergeordnet ist der Ansatz der Verschränkung brasilianischen und mitteleuropäischen Denkens, das sich bei Flusser durch das kulturtheoretische Konzept der Anthropophagie des brasilianischen Modernismus und Hegels Begriff des Geistes illustriert findet. (shrink)

This review article offers a discussion of some aspects of the historical and conceptual context when the term “ontology” (Lat. ontologia) was first introduced in the scholarly circles of the early 17th century. In particular, Barry Smith's (2022) analysis of the birth of ontology provides a springboard for some further remarks on the author of the work with the first known occurrence of the word “ontologia”, Jacob Lorhard, including an analysis of his relationship with earlier philosophers Petrus Ramus and (...) class='Hi'>Clemens Timpler. (shrink)

Introduction and translation of “The Four Phases of Philosophy” by Franz Brentano.

Is God's foreknowledge compatible with human freedom? One of the most attractive attempts to reconcile the two is the Ockhamistic view, which subscribes not only to human freedom and divine omniscience, but retains our most fundamental intuitions concerning God and time: that the past is immutable, that God exists and acts in time, and that there is no backward causation. In order to achieve all that, Ockhamists distinguish ‘hard facts’ about the past which cannot possibly be altered from ‘soft facts’ (...) about the past which are alterable, and argue that God's prior beliefs about human actions are soft facts about the past. (shrink)

Review of the following books (in German): -/- Michael Ruoff: Foucault-Lexikon, München 2007. Fink/UTB. -/- Clemens Kammler, Rolf Parr und Ulrich Johannes Schneider (Hrsg.): Foucault-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, Stuttgart 2008. Metzler. -/- Paul Veyne: Foucault. Der Philosoph als Samurai, Stuttgart 2009. Reclam. -/- Thomas Lemke: Gouvernementalität und Biopolitik, Wiesbaden 2007. VS Verlag. -/- Patricia Purtschert, Katrin Meyer und Yves Winter (Hrsg.): Gouvernementalität und Sicherheit. Zeitdiagnostische Beiträge im Anschluss an Foucault, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Daniel Hechler und Axel (...) Philipps (Hrsg.): Widerstand denken. Michel Foucault und die Grenzen der Macht, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Jeffrey T. Nealon: Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and its Intensifi cations since 1984, Stanford 2008. Stanford University Press. -/- Amy Allen: The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, New York 2008. Columbia University Press. -/- Wendy Brown: Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, Princeton 2006. Princeton University Press. -/- Giorgio Agamben: Was ist ein Dispositiv?, Zürich-Berlin 2008. Diaphanes. -/- Philipp Sarasin: Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie, Frankfurt/M. 2008. Suhrkamp. (shrink)

Plato's Timaeus contains a powerful and influential myth, of the construction of the universe by a divine craftsman. A god imposes reason on necessity, to bring order from a primeval 'receptacle' of disordered matter. There results the 'child' that is the cosmos - a copy of an eternally-existing perfect model. Here eight new essays from a distinguished international cast, explore aspects of this challenging work: the principles of the mythical narrative, how the world soul and human body are formed, implications (...) for illness - mental and physical, the importance of music and harmonious proportion. Later developments are also treated: Aristotle's theory of generation, the commentary of Proclus and elements of modern evolutionary theory. (shrink)

This is the first of two companion articles drawn from a larger project, provisionally entitled Undisciplining Moral Epistemology. The overall goal is to understand how moral claims may be rationally justified in a world characterized by cultural diversity and social inequality. To show why a new approach to moral justification is needed, it is argued that several currently influential philosophical accounts of moral justification lend themselves to rationalizing the moral claims of those with more social power. The present article explains (...) how discourse ethics is flawed just in this way. The article begins by identifying several conditions of adequacy for assessing reasoning practices designed to achieve moral justification and shows that, when used in contexts of cultural diversity and social inequality, discourse ethics fails these conditions. It goes on to argue that the failure of discourse ethics is rooted in its reliance on a broader conception of moral epistemology that is invidiously idealized. It concludes by pointing to the need to rethink both the mission and the method of moral epistemology. (shrink)

According to the standard analysis of degree questions, the logical form of a degree question contains a variable that ranges over individual degrees and is bound by the degree question operator how. In contrast with this, we claim that the variable bound by the degree question operator how does not range over individual degrees but over intervals of degrees, by analogy with Schwarzschild and Wilkinson's proposal regarding the semantics of comparative clauses. Not only does the interval-based semantics predict the existence (...) of certain readings that are not predicted under the standard view, it is also able, together with other natural assumptions, to account for the sensitivity of degree questions to negative islands, as well as for the fact, uncovered by Fox and Hackl, that negative islands can be obviated by some properly placed modals. Like Fox and Hackl, we characterize negative island effects as arising from the fact that the relevant question, due to its meaning alone, can never have a maximally informative answer. Contrary to Fox and Hackl, however, we do not need to assume that scales are universally dense, nor that the notion of maximal informativity responsible for negative islands is blind to contextual parameters. (shrink)

Review of the following books: -/- Michael Ruoff: Foucault-Lexikon, München 2007. Fink/UTB. -/- Clemens Kammler, Rolf Parr und Ulrich Johannes Schneider (Hrsg.): Foucault-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, Stuttgart 2008. Metzler. -/- Paul Veyne: Foucault. Der Philosoph als Samurai, Stuttgart 2009. Reclam. -/- Thomas Lemke: Gouvernementalität und Biopolitik, Wiesbaden 2007. VS Verlag. -/- Patricia Purtschert, Katrin Meyer und Yves Winter (Hrsg.): Gouvernementalität und Sicherheit. Zeitdiagnostische Beiträge im Anschluss an Foucault, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Daniel Hechler und Axel Philipps (Hrsg.): (...) Widerstand denken. Michel Foucault und die Grenzen der Macht, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Jeffrey T. Nealon: Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and its Intensifi cations since 1984, Stanford 2008. Stanford University Press. -/- Amy Allen: The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, New York 2008. Columbia University Press. -/- Wendy Brown: Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, Princeton 2006. Princeton University Press. -/- Giorgio Agamben: Was ist ein Dispositiv?, Zürich-Berlin 2008. Diaphanes. -/- Philipp Sarasin: Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie, Frankfurt/M. 2008. Suhrkamp. (shrink)