Das Handbuch führt erstmals die vielseitigen Traditionen der Emotionsforschung zusammen. Den Anfang macht eine historische Betrachtung der Emotions- und Affekttheorien von der Antike bis zur Moderne. Dem folgt eine umfassende Übersicht zentraler Emotionskonzepte der Gegenwart, wie sie in Psychologie und Philosophie diskutiert werden. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Konzepte und ihrer historischen Verortung entfaltet das Handbuch eine umfassende Typologie der Emotionen. Verschiedenste Komplexe – wie etwa Trauer, Melancholie und Depression oder Freude, Glück und Wohlbefinden – werden jeweils in den Sichtweisen unterschiedlicher (...) Disziplinen dargelegt, darunter Ethnologie, Philosophie, Literaturwissenschaft, Soziologie, Psychologie. Abschließend werden entlang zentraler Konzepte wie Sprache, Kultur, Politik und Medien vier wesentliche Fluchtlinien aktueller Emotionsforschung entfaltet, welche den Horizont einzelner Disziplinen überschreiten und entsprechend in interdisziplinärer Perspektive erschlossen werden. (shrink)

Die Frage, wie sich Aussagen uber Fahigkeiten von Personen zu Aussagen uber Moglichkeiten von Zustanden in der Welt verhalten, ist fur unser menschliches Selbstverstandnis zentral. Der vorliegende Band versammelt unter dieser Frage durchweg Originalbeitrage in historisch-systematischer Absicht; sie behandeln die Geschichte der Metaphysik und Ontologie von Parmenides bis Heidegger.INHALT: VORWORT - Klaus Jacobi: Das Konnen und die Moglichkeiten. Potentialitat und Possibilitat - Mischa von Perger: Moglichkeit, Parmenideisch - Ulrich Nortmann: 'Das Saatkorn ist dem Vermogen nach eine Pflanze'. Uber ontologische und (...) logische Aspekte Aristotelischer Moglichkeitssatze - Sang-Jin Kang: Anselm und die modallogische Betrachtung der gottlichen Notwendigkeit - Michael Astroh: Petrus Abaelardus on Modalities de re and de dicto - Christopher Martin: Peter Abaelard on Modality. Some Possibilities and Some Puzzles - Allan Back: Avicenna and Averroes: Modality and Theology - Seung-Chan (Elias) Park: Die Differenz von personlicher und unpersonlicher Moglichkeit bei Thomas von Aquin - Charles Lohr: 'Art' and Possibility: The Rule Concerning Possibility in the Ars lulliana - Peter King: Duns Scotus on Possibilities, Powers, and the Possible - Matthias Kaufmann: Gottes Allmacht und die Wahrheit modaler Satze. Potentialitat und Possibilitat bei Wilhelm von Ockham - Simo Knuuttila: On the History of Theory of Modality as Alternativeness - Stephan Meier-Oeser: Potentia versus Possibilitas? Posse! Zur cusanischen Konzeption der Moglichkeit - Dominik Perler: Cartesische Moglichkeiten - Hans Poser: Leibniz'sche Handlungsmodi zwischen Ontologie und Deontologie - Wilhelm Metz: Der transzendentale Moglichkeitsbegriff bei Kant und Fichte - Rainer Marten: Heidegger: Die eigenste eigentliche Moglichkeit - Tilman Borsche: Moglichkeiten des Seins, Moglichkeiten des Denkens - Thomas Buchheim: Zwischen Antinomie und Kompatibilitat: Versuch uber die naturliche Einbettung unserer Handlungsfreiheit - Kuno Lorenz: Dynamis und Energeia. Zur Aktualitat eines begrifflichen Werkzeugs von Aristoteles. (shrink)

BackgroundRelatives have no formal position in the practice of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (EAS) according to Dutch legislation. However, research shows that physicians often involve relatives in EAS decision-making. It remains unclear why physicians do (not) want to involve relatives. Therefore, we examined how many physicians in the Netherlands involve relatives in EAS decision-making and explored reasons for (not) involving relatives and what involvement entails.MethodsIn a mixed-methods study, 746 physicians (33% response rate) completed a questionnaire, and 20 were interviewed. The (...) questionnaire included two statements on relatives’ involvement in EAS decision-making. Descriptive statistics were used, and multivariable logistic regression analyses to explore characteristics associated with involving relatives. In subsequent interviews, we explored physicians’ views on involving relatives in EAS decision-making. Interviews were thematically analysed.ResultsThe majority of physicians want to know relatives’ opinions about an EAS request (80%); a smaller group also takes these opinions into account in EAS decision-making (35%). Physicians who had ever received an explicit EAS request were more likely to want to know opinions and clinical specialists and elderly care physicians were more likely to take these opinions into account. In interviews, physicians mentioned several reasons for involving relatives: e.g. to give relatives space and help them in their acceptance, to tailor support, to be able to perform EAS in harmony, and to mediate in case of conflicting views. Furthermore, physicians explained that relatives’ opinions can influence the decision-making process but cannot be a decisive factor. If relatives oppose the EAS request, physicians find the process more difficult and try to mediate between patients and relatives by investigating relatives’ objections and providing appropriate information. Reasons for not taking relatives’ opinions into account include not wanting to undermine patient autonomy and protecting relatives from a potential burdensome decision.ConclusionsAlthough physicians know that relatives have no formal role, involving relatives in EAS decision-making is common practice in the Netherlands. Physicians consider this important as relatives need to continue with their lives and may need bereavement support. Additionally, physicians want to perform EAS in harmony with everyone involved. However, relatives’ opinions are not decisive. (shrink)

The phenomena referred to by the term attention were not discovered by scientific psychology. They were discovered and described within philosophy and gently handed over to the emerging academic psychology of the nineteenth century. The main contributors and contributions to the delineation and construction of attention as an empirical phenomenon and a topic for theorizing were Aristotle, who noticed that not all that reaches the senses is clearly perceived; Augustine, who interpreted attention as an effort of the soul; Descartes, who (...) distinguished active attention from passive attention; and Leibniz, who discussed the relation between attention, perception, and consciousness. (For further information on attention's philosophical past the reader is referred to Neumann's (in press) brief history of this philosophical past that is badly in need of an English translation.). (shrink)

The explanatory gap refers to the lack of concepts for understanding “how it is that . . . a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue.” By assuming that there are colours in the outside world, Block needlessly widens this gap and Lycan and Kitcher simply fail to see the gap. When such assumptions are abandoned, an unnecessary and incomprehensible constraint disappears. It then becomes clear that the brain can use its own neural language for (...) representing aspects of the outside world. While this may not close the gap, it becomes clearer where we need new concepts. (shrink)

Everybody knows the phenomena summarized with the term attention: concentration, focalization, limitation, selection, and intensification . The explanation of these phenomena is, however, a different matter. Problems easily arise with regard towhathas to be explained and with regard to thestyleof explanation. A problem of the first kind is the “methodology of ‘bad focus’”: the explanation starts with and is fixated on an intuitively striking but nonessential behavioral feature or cognitive achievement. A problem of the second kind is a “virtus dormitiva” (...) explanation: the explanation starts with emphasizing one aspect of the observed phenomena, the emphasized aspect receives an interesting and suggestive name, and that name with its connotations is used as a concept in the explanation. At the start of contemporary, behavior-based, information processing psychology, avirtus dormitivaexplanation infiltrated the functional accounts of the phenomena of attention; the empirical observation that people show performance limitations was translated into the theoretical concept of a communication channel with a limited capacity. That limited capacity notion became the core concept in what can be called the standard theory of attention. This standard theory of attention faced severe difficulties in explaining the guidance of attention by the information processor's goals and intentions. Subsequent modifications, concerned with removing these difficulties, revealed that selection, guided by goals and intentions, is the essential behavioral feature and that the observed performance limitations are a result of this selection. So, the limited capacity theorizing was not only plagued by avirtus dormitivaexplanation, it also suffered from the methodology of bad focus. (shrink)

Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pay-offs of moral disapproval will primarily derive from the ramifications of condemning actions that occur within the immediate social arena. Correspondingly, moral transgressions should be viewed as less objectionable (...) if they occur in other places or times, or if local authorities deem them acceptable. These predictions contrast markedly with those derived from prevailing non-evolutionary perspectives on moral judgement. Both classes of theories predict purportedly species-typical patterns, yet to our knowledge, no study to date has investigated moral judgement across a diverse set of societies, including a range of small-scale communities that differ substantially from large highly urbanized nations. We tested these predictions in five small-scale societies and two large-scale societies, finding substantial evidence of moral parochialism and contextual contingency in adults' moral judgements. Results reveal an overarching pattern in which moral condemnation reflects a concern with immediate local considerations, a pattern consistent with a variety of evolutionary accounts of moral judgement. (shrink)

MEDIEVAL LOGICS LAMBERT MARIE DE RIJK (ed.), Die mittelalterlichen Traktate De mod0 opponendiet respondendi, Einleitung und Ausgabe der einschlagigen Texte. (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge Band 17.) Miinster: Aschendorff, 1980. 379 pp. No price stated. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MARTA FATTORI, Lessico del Novum Organum di Francesco Bacone. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1980. Two volumes, il + 543, 520 pp. Lire 65.000. VIVIAN SALMON, The study of language in 17th century England. (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory (...) and History of Linguistic Science, Series 111: Studies in theHistory of Linguistics, Volume 17.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1979.x + 218 pp. Dfl. 65. Theoria cum Praxi. Zum Verhaltnis von Theorie und Praxis im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. (Akten des 111. Internationalen Leibnizkongress, Hannover, 12. bis 17.November 1977, Band 111: Logik, Erkenntnistheorie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Metaphysik, Theologie.) Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980. vii + 269 pp. DM 48. CLASSICAL AND NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS MICHAEL CLARK, The place of syllogistic in logical theory. Nottingham: University of Nottingham Press, 1980. ix + 151 pp. £3.00. A.F. PARKER-RHODES, The theory of indistinguishables. Dordrecht, Boston and London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981. xvii + 216 pp. Dfl.90.00/$39.50. NICHOLAS RESCHER and ROBERT BRANDOM, The logic of inconsistency. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1980. x + 174 pp. f 11.50. MISCELLANEOUS J. ZELENY, The logic of Marx. Translated from the German by T. Carver. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. xcii + 247 pp. £12.50. FELIX KAUFMANN, The infinite in mathematics. Edited by Brian McGuinness. Introduction by E. Nagel. Translation from the German by Paul Foulkes. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978. xvii + 235 pp. Dfl 85/$39.50 (cloth); Dfl 45/$19.95 (paper). PAMELA MCCORDUCK, Machines who think. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1979. xiv + 275 pp. $14.95. J. MITTELSTRASS (ed.), Enzyklopadie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie Bd. 1 : A-G. Mannheim, Wien, Ziirich: Bibliographisches Institut, 1980. 835 pp. DM 128. (shrink)

We identify two aspects of the problem of maintaining perceptual stability despite an observer's eye movements. The first, visual direction constancy, is the (egocentric) stability of apparent positions of objects in the visual world relative to the perceiver. The second, visual position constancy, is the (exocentric) stability of positions of objects relative to each other. We analyze the constancy of visual direction despite saccadic eye movements.Three information sources have been proposed to enable the visual system to achieve stability: the structure (...) of the visual field, proprioceptive inflow, and a copy of neural efference or outflow to the extraocular muscles. None of these sources by itself provides adequate information to achieve visual direction constancy; present evidence indicates that all three are used.Our final question concerns how information processing operations result in a stable world. The three traditionally suggested means have been elimination, translation, or evaluation. All are rejected. From a review of the physiological and psychological evidence we conclude that no subtraction, compensation, or evaluation need take place. The problem for which these solutions were developed turns out to be a false one. We propose a “calibration” solution: correct spatiotopic positions are calculated anew for each fixation. Inflow, outflow, and retinal sources are used in this calculation: saccadic suppression of displacement bridges the errors between these sources and the actual extent of movement. (shrink)

The spatial dynamics of the optical emission from an array of 50 times 50 individual microcavity plasma devices is investigated. The array is operated in argon and argon-neon mixtures close to atmospheric pressure with an ac voltage. The optical emission is analysed with phase and space resolution. It has been found that the emission is not continuous over the entire ac period, but occurs once per half period. Each of the observed emission phases shows a self-pulsing of the discharge, with (...) several bursts of emission of fixed width and repetition rate. The number of emission bursts depends on applied voltage and frequency. Spatially resolved measurements prove that the emission bursts are formed by overlapping emission pulses from single discharge cavities. Intensity differences between positive and negative half-wave can be interpreted through spatially resolved measurements of single discharge cavities. (shrink)