Innovative organizing strategies in the labor movement are being driven by the realization that labor law is of virtually no help in helping workers exercise their rights. Unions are increasingly designing strategies that go beyond traditional workplace tactics and draw on a wide range of social actors and relationships in an effort to find and harness new leverage sources. Service Employees International Union Local 1199 Florida provides one such example. 1199 Florida has a multilayered, multifaceted organizing strategy that attempts to (...) surmount the obstacles of employer resistance and weak labor laws by mobilizing a range of allies and engaging political and regulatory actors. (shrink)

Growing evidence suggests that natural environments – whether in outdoor or indoor settings – foster psychological health and physiological relaxation, indicated by increased wellbeing, reduced stress levels, and increased parasympathetic activity. Greater insight into differential psychological aspects modulating psychophysiological responses to nature-based relaxation videos could help understand modes of action and develop personalized relaxation interventions. We investigated heart rate variability as an indicator of autonomic regulation, specifically parasympathetic activity, in response to a 10-min video intervention in two consecutive studies as (...) well as heart rate. We hypothesized that a nature-based relaxation video elicits HRV increase and HR decrease, with response magnitude being affected by aspects of early life adversity and trait mindfulness. In Study 1, N = 60 participants watched a relaxation video intervention depicting different natural scenery. We analyzed changes in HR and respiratory sinus arrhythmia as a standard HRV measure, both based on 3-min segments from the experimental session, in multiple growth curve models. We found a decrease in HR and increase of RSA during the video intervention. Higher paternal care and lower trait mindfulness observing skills were associated with higher RSA values before but not during video exposure. In Study 2, N = 90 participants were assigned to three video conditions: natural scenery from Study 1, meditation video, or short clip from “The Lord of the Rings.” Again, HR decreased, and RSA increased during video segments, yet without expected group differences across different video types. We found higher parental care and lower parental overprotection to predict higher RSA at different times during the experiment. Interestingly, lower paternal overprotection predicted overall higher RSA. These results suggest a generic relaxation effect of video interventions on autonomic regulation that we discuss in light of different theories mapping restorative effects of natural environments. Further, psychological characteristics like aspects of early life adversity and trait mindfulness could contribute to individual differences in autonomic regulation. This study contributes to a better understanding of autonomic and psychological responses to relaxation videos. (shrink)

In this paper several problems are raised concerning Ian Barbour's four ways of interrelating science and religion—Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and Integration—as put forward in such publications as his highly influential Religion in an Age of Science (1990) and widely adopted by other writers in this field. The authors argue that this taxonomy is not very useful or analytically helpful, especially to historians seeking to understand past engagements between science and religion.

L ' amour de Dieu, chez les mystiques, se caractérise par la réciprocité. Nous aimons Dieu, et Dieu nous aime. Réciprocité rencontrée chez un disciple de François de Sales, Jean - Pierre Camus. Lui - même procéderait des moines du désert, aux textes recueillis dans la Philocalie... Curieusement, on retrouve, au - delà d ' un amor Dei classique, où Dieu ne répond pas à notre amour, un amor intellectualis Dei, retrouvant la réciprocité, enfin de l ' Éthique de Spinoza. (...) Paradoxalement celui - ci annonce un même amour, plus la prise en compte de la souffrance, propre à Simone Weil, aujourd ' hui. God's love with the mystics is characterized by reciprocity. We love God and God loves us. Such a reciprocity is to be met with a disciple of François de Sales, Jean - Pierre Camus. He would most probably proceed from the monks from the desert, with the texts gathered in Philocalia. Strangely enough beyond a classical amor Dei in which God does not answer our love, i. e. an amor intellectualis Dei, recapturing reciprocity as at the end of Spinoza's Ethics. Paradoxically, the latter foretells a very same love, adding the taking into account of pain, which is today typical of Simone Weil's thought. (shrink)

Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language learning experiment, (...) we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language learning experiment, (...) we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

?After the fall of the wall, the East German center of PEN, the worldwide association of writers, came under criticism. Its members were accused of collaboration with the dictatorial state power and of having failed as intellectuals. The book starts with considerations about the discourse on intellectuals and writers. On the basis of comprehensive source studies, it gives an overview of fifty years of East German PEN history, from the beginning of the German PEN and from its division as a (...) result of the Cold War to the reunification of the two German centers. (shrink)

Is self-consciousness intentional? Consciousness of oneself-as-object is, in the sense that the subject is there taken as its own object of intentional consciousness. Contrastively, it has been argued that consciousness of oneself-as-subject is not intentional, precisely in that it does not involve taking oneself as an intentional object. Here, it is rather proposed that consciousness of oneself-as-subject is tied to intentionality in that it involves being conscious of oneself as an intentional subject, i.e. as a subject directed at intentional objects (...) transcending oneself-as-subject. This form of self-consciousness is neither reflective, in the sense that it does not involve to take oneself as an object of reflection, nor reflexive, in the sense that it does not involve to be related to oneself but to what-one-is-not, i.e. to the transcending intentional object. It is further argued that consciousness of oneself-as-subject involves two dynamics, as the subject would be indicated to himself by the objects towards which he directs himself. These considerations are here unfolded to consider in particular bodily self-consciousness. (shrink)

How does the clinical encounter work? To tackle this question, the present study centers on the paradigmatic clinical encounter, namely, psychoanalysis, paradigmatic in that it is structured by the encounter itself. Our question thus becomes: how does the clinical encounter work, when its only modality is speech? By reading Jacques Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas together, we better identify how speech sets up as subjects those who address one another and how this subjectivation touches the suffering body specifically. In this framework, (...) a definition of the encounter is put to work: The encounter of a sufferer and a listener, that is, the clinical encounter, is the opening of an inter-human space beyond suffering. This conception of the encounter permits a specifying of the violence it avoids—respecting the transcendence of the other irreducibly other—but also the violence that it mobilizes—through a presumption of subjectivity imposed upon the other, by which the subjectivation at work in the encounter is, by definition, a subjection to the other. This outlines, then, an ethics of the clinical encounter: a relationship of man to man commanded by one sensing body to another, i.e. a minimal and therefore radical ethics that is structured as a sensible ethics between speaking bodies. (shrink)

This case study documents a high-profile incident involving the world-famous auto maker Daimler Benz with its customers in China. On the one hand, angry customers felt victimized by the auto maker's lack of willingness to take responsibility and its double standard between industrialized markets and emerging economies in dealing with customer complaints; on the other hand, the auto maker also felt frustrated at how this product warranty matter quickly escalated into a public relations nightmare. The case illustrates the complexity (...) of operating in emerging markets where institutional environments are vastly different, and the difficulty of balancing business interests with social responsibility. It also illustrates the urgent needs for emerging markets to develop institutional infrastructure to protect consumer rights, and to offer proper channel for conflict resolution. (shrink)

Conventional economic theory assumes that people care only about ultimate outcomes and are indifferent to the decision and allocation processes by which outcomes are brought about. Building on Sen (1997), I relax this assumption, and investigate the formal and philosophical issues that arise. I extend the formal apparatus of preference theory to analyse how processes may enter preferences, and investigate whether traditional invariance requirements like the Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference are still satisfied in this new setting. I show that (...) it is, provided certain conditions of separability hold, and I discuss the plausibility of these conditions. Further, I argue that processes are often valued in a mode that diverges from the conventional modes of instrumental and intrinsic/independent valuation. I introduce the notion of dependent non-instrumental valuation, and show how processes could depend on their instrumental function for their value – making their value dependent – and yet derive their value from something else – making it non-instrumental. Dependent non-instrumental value, I argue, can be explained by symbolic and evidential relations between processes and outcomes. (Published Online July 31 2007) Footnotes1 This article is based on the third chapter of my Ph.D. dissertation (Sandbu 2003). I would like to thank Richard Tuck for many discussions over several years, which helped me develop and elaborate the ideas presented here. I am also very grateful to Amartya Sen, Nien-hê Hsieh, Luc Bovens, and Xaq Pitkow for their close readings of various versions of the paper and their incisive comments, questions, and suggestions. Further thanks go to Christopher Avery, Matthias Benz, Jerry Green, Waheed Hussain, David Laibson, Robert Sugden, Alan Strudler, Justin Wolfers, and seminar participants at Harvard University and the Wharton School of Business. Akshay Jashnani provided helpful research assistance. Most of the ideas in the present article were developed while I was the recipient of a doctoral grant from the Research Council of Norway, which I gratefully acknowledge. (shrink)

Partant du constat d'une école en souffrance qui affecte les élèves, les enseignants et les parents, Dorothée Muraro analyse à travers des situations concrètes les effets pervers d'un système scolaire capable de provoquer le décrochage comme les difficultés d'apprentissage. L'orthopédagogie, la philosophie et la psychanalyse permettent de quitter les préjugés liés aux ratages, aux erreurs et aux incompétences de chacun pour repenser le courage de l'héroïsme, le sens de la responsabilité et le goût de l'inventivité indispensables pour apprendre et progresser. (...) Car enseigner et apprendre relèvent d'un droit de grandir, de dire. Ils posent un acte civilisateur que l'on peut appeler un acte pédagogique. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper I characterize a minimal form of self-consciousness, namely pre-reflective self-consciousness. It is a constant structural feature of conscious experience, and corresponds to the consciousness of the self-as-subject that is not taken as an intentional object. In the second part, I argue that contemporary cognitive neuroscience has by and large missed this fundamental form of self-consciousness in its investigation of various forms of self-experience. In the third part, I exemplify how the notion of pre-reflective (...) self-awareness can be of relevance for empirical research. In particular, I propose to interpret processes of sensorimotor integration in light of the phenomenological approach that allows the definition of pre-reflective self-consciousness. (shrink)

Qua hermeneutic-linguistic-pragmatic turn wurde die Freisetzung kommunikativen Handelns kommunikationslogisch, entwicklungstheoretisch und diskursethisch entwickelt und die Form der Verstandigung intersubjektivitatstheoretisch als Moglichkeit sozialer Identitat bestimmt. Mit Peirce kann man das Verstandigungstheorem als Intersubjektivitatsrelation lesen, Intersubjektivitat selbst strukturlogisch "deduzieren". So prazisiert wird die von Habermas vollzogene Umstellung von Subjektivitat auf formale Intersubjektivitat uber Kant, Hegel, Husserl und Mead rekonstruierbar. Dabei kann das begrundungstheoretische Defizit des nur postulierten Formganzen gesellschaftlicher Rationalitat behoben, der formalpragmatisch ausgedunnte Lebensweltbegriff substantiiert und die nicht konsequent ausgefuhrte Methodologie mit (...) der Trias von Metatheorie, empirischer Soziologie und Gesellschaftstheorie scharfer gestellt werden. Die relationenlogische Analyse drangt zur Neulekture des Intersubjektivitatsgedankens. (shrink)

Philosophical considerations as well as several recent studies from neurophysiology, neuropsychology, and psychophysics converged in showing that the peripersonal space is structured in a body-centred manner and represented through integrated sensory inputs. Multisensory representations may deserve the function of coding peripersonal space for avoiding or interacting with objects. Neuropsychological evidence is reviewed for dynamic interactions between space representations and action execution, as revealed by the behavioural effects that the use of a tool, as a physical extension of the reachable space, (...) produces on visual–tactile extinction. In particular, tool-use transiently modifies action space representation in a functionally effective way. The possibility is discussed that the investigation of multisensory space representations for action provides an empirical way to consider in its specificity pre-reflexive self-consciousness by considering the intertwining of self-relatedness and object-directness of spatial experience shaped by multisensory and sensorimotor integrations. (shrink)

While written by a prominent and active scientist, this book is based on personal experience and biblical theology. It doesn't try to derive God s existence from science and it's critical of scientific inferences on the notion of God (Natural Theology). Cosmic fine-tuning and other coincidences are no proof of God, but are amazing, astounding and will never be fully explained. Amazement is the appropriate emotional perception of reality. The objective world is not a matter of course and may well (...) not exist at all; thus reality, at times, is experienced to be very special. Human life, the beauty of nature, the habitability of planet Earth can be considered undeserved gifts. In the light of these gifts, the universe is metaphorically interpreted and existentially believed as a divine Creation. Science cannot create such faith but can foster it. Is God necessary to explain the universe? Is the idea of a Creator excluded by modern science? Why continue speaking of a Creator and to believe (trust and hope) in His continuing creation when God cannot be demonstrated in scientific data? Arnold Benz, a renowned astrophysicist and Christian, insists that human perception reaches further than science and demonstrates this in various examples, personal, biblical, and literary.". (shrink)

Sportsoziologie, Sozialpsychologie, Methodologie, Leistungsmotivation, Interaktion, Wettkampfsport, Unterricht, Soziales-lernen, Lernziel, Koedukation, DDR, Spitzensport, Sozialismus.

Ästhetisches Erleben ist ein komplexes Zusammenspiel aus ineinandergreifenden Prozessen. Wahrnehmungsprozesse entschlüsseln die Struktur und regen an, sich über inhaltliche Aspekte Gedanken zu machen. Die Lerngeschichte eines Betrachters bestimmt dabei seine Seh- und Denkgewohnheiten. Motivation bestimmt, ob und wie lange der Rezipient sich auf das ästhetische Erleben einlassen will, und wie intensiv die daraus resultierenden Emotionen sind. Jede ästhetische Reaktion ist eine individuelle Mischung aus all diesen Prozessen, die sich gegenseitig hervorrufen und bedingen. Diese Arbeit entwickelt ein theoretisches Modell zur Erklärung (...) dieser komplexen, dynamischen Abläufe. Durch theoriegeleitete Einzelfallanalysen gelingt es, die verschiedenen beteiligten psychischen Prozesse und Strukturen in ihrem Zusammenwirken zu formalisieren. Aus diesem Modell lassen sich individuelle ästhetische Reaktionen erklären und prognostizieren. (shrink)

It has been argued that some animals are moral subjects, that is, beings who are capable of behaving on the basis of moral motivations. In this paper, we do not challenge this claim. Instead, we presuppose its plausibility in order to explore what ethical consequences follow from it. Using the capabilities approach, we argue that beings who are moral subjects are entitled to enjoy positive opportunities for the flourishing of their moral capabilities, and that the thwarting of these capabilities entails (...) a harm that cannot be fully explained in terms of hedonistic welfare. We explore the implications of this idea for the assessment of current practices involving animals. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 22 Heft: 2 Seiten: 294-313.

Dorothee Gelhard ergänzt die Untersuchungen zu Walter Benjamin und dem Phänomen des Darstellbaren in Sprache und Bild. Sie zeigt, dass sich Benjamin mit dem Thema der Erfahrung und der Wahrnehmung im Kontext der Malerei tiefgehend auseinandergesetzt hat. Die Beschäftigung mit Kandinsky, dem Blauen Reiter und Chagall hat bei Benjamin zu einem Nachdenken über Farben und Formen geführt. In den Texten über Phantasie und Wahrnehmung verbindet er seine Beobachtungen der modernen Malerei mit den aus den frühen phänomenologischen Studien gewonnenen Erkenntnissen, (...) sodass sich schliesslich der Begriff des "Denkbildes" und des "dialektischen Bildes" immer klarer herausbildet. Diese frühen Überlegungen Benjamins haben sein Passagen-Werk vorbereitet, in dem er das Nachleben der Vergangenheit in der modernen Grossstadt aufspürt und nach dem Verbleib des Bildbewusstseins des Einzelnen in einer immer technischer werdenden Moderne fragt. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel methodological approach of how to design, conduct and analyse robot-assisted play. This approach is inspired by nondirective play therapy. The experimenter participates in the experiments, but the child remains the main leader for play. Besides, beyond inspiration from non-directive play therapy, this approach enables the experimenter to regulate the interaction under specific conditions in order to guide the child or ask her questions about reasoning or affect related to the robot. This approach has been tested (...) in a long-term study with six children with autism in a school setting. An autonomous robot with zoomorphic, dog-like appearance was used in the studies. The children’s progress was analyzed according to three dimensions, namely, Play, Reasoning and Affect. Results from the case-study evaluations have shown the capability of the method to meet each child’s needs and abilities. Children who mainly played solitarily progressively experienced basic imitation games with the experimenter. Children who proactively played socially progressively experienced higher levels of play and constructed more reasoning related to the robot. They also expressed some interest in the robot, including, on occasion, affect. Keywords: Human–Robot Interaction, Robot-Mediated Therapy, Robot-Assisted Play, Non-Directive Play Therapy, Assistive Technology, Autism, Children. (shrink)

Empirical and experiential investigations allow the distinction between observational and non-observational forms of subjective bodily experiences. From a first-person perspective, the biological body can be (1) an "opaque body" taken as an intentional object of observational consciousness, (2) a "performative body" pre-reflectively experienced as a subject/agent, (3) a "transparent body" pre-reflectively experienced as the bodily mode of givenness of objects in the external world, or (4) an "invisible body" absent from experience. It is proposed that pre-reflective bodily experiences rely on (...) sensori-motor integrative mechanisms that process information on the external world in a self relative way. These processes are identification-free in that the self is not identified as an object of observation. Moreover, it is defended that observational self-consciousness must be grounded on such identification-free processes and pre-reflective forms of bodily experience. (shrink)

Parallel zur Philosophie der symbolischen Formen publizierte Cassirer in den 20er Jahren mehrere Aufsätze zur Kunst, die klarer noch als in den philosophischen Darstellungen die Rolle der Literatur als Vermittlerin zwischen der Naturerkenntnis und dem Sittlichen thematisieren. Die Autorin untersucht, wie Cassirers Blick auf die Kultur dabei vor allem von Goethes naturwissenschaflichen Schriften geprägt ist. Sie zeigt, wie Cassirer in den Jahren des Exils den Dialog mit Aby Warburg fortsetzte, mit dessen Kulturwissenschaftlicher Bibliothek er bis zu deren Übersiedlung nach London (...) eng zusammengearbeitet hat. Dort entwickelte er in erneuter Lektüre Goethes, Schillers, Corneilles und Thomas Manns eine Kulturwissenschaft, in der Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften einander nicht gegenüberstehen, sondern sich ergänzen"--Back cover. (shrink)

In french and english speaking countries, the articulation between epistemological beliefs, conceptions of teaching and learning and pedagogical practices of secondary school teachers in the natural sciences and humanities has been little studied (Araújo-Oliveira, 2012 ; Bartos et Lederman, 2014 ; Wanlin et al., 2019). Yet, while teachers display predominantly constructivist beliefs about teaching and learning, their teaching practices remain rather passive (OECD, 2019). Like in Therriault et al. (2018-2023), this article explores the characteristics of epistemological beliefs, conceptions of teaching (...) and learning, and teaching practices among a population of 112 secondary school teachers (beginners, intermediate and experienced) in the humanities and natural sciences in French-speaking Belgium. In a second step, we explore the articulations between these three theoretical constructs either from statistical analyses or from a more interpretative perspective. Quantitative analysis of the data (PCA, factorial ANOVA, correlations and Chi-square) show that teachers’ epistemological beliefs are rather refined, that there is an effect of professional seniority on these beliefs and that there is a link between refined epistemological beliefs and traditional conceptions of teaching and learning. Finally, teachers’ self-reported practices appear to be insensitive to the discipline being taught. (shrink)

Two classes of account have been proposed to explain the memory processes subserving the processing of reflexive-antecedent dependencies. Structure-based accounts assume that the retrieval of the antecedent is guided by syntactic tree-configurational information without considering other kinds of information such as gender marking in the case of English reflexives. By contrast, unconstrained cue-based retrieval assumes that all available information is used for retrieving the antecedent. Similarity-based interference effects from structurally illicit distractors which match a non-structural retrieval cue have been interpreted (...) as evidence favoring the unconstrained cue-based retrieval account since cue-based retrieval interference from structurally illicit distractors is incompatible with the structure-based account. However, it has been argued that the observed effects do not necessarily reflect interference occurring at the moment of retrieval but might equally well be accounted for by interference occurring already at the stage of encoding or maintaining the antecedent in memory, in which case they cannot be taken as evidence against the structure-based account. We present three experiments (self-paced reading and eye-tracking) on German reflexives and Swedish reflexive and pronominal possessives in which we pit the predictions of encoding interference and cue-based retrieval interference against each other. We could not find any indication that encoding interference affects the processing ease of the reflexive-antecedent dependency formation. Thus, there is no evidence that encoding interference might be the explanation for the interference effects observed in previous work. We therefore conclude that invoking encoding interference may not be a plausible way to reconcile interference effects with a structure-based account of reflexive processing. (shrink)

We examine corporate governance diversity within a Coasian framework of stakeholder rights, where the central role of governance is to ensure that necessary firm-specific investments are made. This Coasian perspective on stakeholder theory offers a unifying framework towards a global theory of comparative corporate governance, bridging the gap between economic theories of the firm and stakeholder theory, also offering an economics-based alternative to agency theory that explicitly accounts for stakeholder rights. The Coasian perspective encompasses a diversity of corporate governance systems, (...) but does not imply a unique global corporate governance benchmark. We posit that governance is firm dependent and endogenous conditional on the constraints imposed by a national governance system; consequently, there should be no systematic relationship between governance and firm performance once the national constraints are controlled for. However, the same national corporate governance system constraints confer comparative advantages to firms whose efficient levels of firm-specific investments are favored. (shrink)

Inhalt: - Systemtheorie und klassische Philosophie - Systemtheorie und transklassische Philosophie - Materiale, metatheoretische und ideologische Aspekte der Systemtheorie.

Unquestioning obedience - in politics, religion, and gender roles - leads to disaster. But how are we to overcome these pernicious traditions without hurtling toward anarchy and antinomianism? In this updated edition of a classic text, theologian Dorothee Solle examines historical patterns of obedience and oppression and suggests a model of timeless "creative disobedience" that leads to liberation for all. Appealing to the figure of Jesus, whose earthly ministry was marked by submission to the will of God, not to (...) oppressive institutions. Solle reminds us that this kind of revolutionary response is required of all of us. She also offers a revealing account of her own evolution as a female scholar searching for the meaning of God - a search that led not to a rejection of her faith, but to the theological justification of faithful and creative disobedience. (shrink)