Hildebrand oftentimes said that his disciples—even when they believed they were deeply indebted to him for knowledge, wisdom, and truth—had a duty to criticize and overcome any error they would find in his philosophy, because the sole purpose of his writings was to state the truth. He himself gave some extraordinary examples of self-critique. In the following, I wish to treat such an example: a significant error about the nature of the free volitional response, which Stephen Schwarz was the (...) first to note and which Hildebrand himself later explicitly revoked. Furthermore, I wish to show that Hildebrand’s rejecting this error makes his ethics as a whole much more consistent, and opens the way to bringing his philosophy of love closer to our experience. (shrink)

Der Ausdruck Phänomenologie ist heute höchst vieldeutig geworden. Husserl hat seit 1905 eine immer stärkere Wendung zum Idealismus kantischer Prägung hin vollzogen, durch die er den Boden der Phänomenologie, wie er sie begründet hatte, verlassen hat. Eine ähnliche Abweichung von der ursprünglichen Idee der Phänomenologie findet sich bei vielen anderen "Phänomenologen." Die "realistische Phänomenologie", deren Vorläufer von Platon an und Klassiker von Husserl bis Schwarz in dieser ersten umfangreichen deutschsprachigen Anthologie zu Wort kommen, ist kein System, sondern eine Anwendung (...) der philosophischen Urmethoden, wie sie alle großen Philosophen tatsächlich anwandten, wenn sie ihre entscheidenden Entdeckungen machten. Mögen auch von Philosophen generell andere Methoden bewußt zugrunde gelegt werden, in dem Moment, in dem diese Einsichten gewonnen werden, liegt tatsächlich zu allen Zeiten jener letzte, fruchtbare Kontakt mit "den Sachen selbst" vor, der den Sinn der phänomenologischen Methode ausmacht, wie sie von den Meistern der realistischen Phänomenologie nur bewußter und systematischer angewandt wird als von vielen früheren Denkern. Nichts wäre darum irriger als in der phänomenologischen Betrachtungsweise eine Reduktion der Welt auf bloße "Phänomene" zu erblicken oder gar eine bloße Deskription der "Erscheinung" der Dinge. Zwischen phänomenologischer Betrachtungsweise und metaphysischer Wesensanalyse besteht kein Unterschied oder gar Gegensatz. (shrink)

Hildebrand oftentimes said that his disciples—even when they believed they were deeply indebted to him for knowledge, wisdom, and truth—had a duty to criticize and overcome any error they would find in his philosophy, because the sole purpose of his writings was to state the truth. He himself gave some extraordinary examples of self-critique. In the following, I wish to treat such an example: a significant error about the nature of the free volitional response, which Stephen Schwarz was the (...) first to note and which Hildebrand himself later explicitly revoked. Furthermore, I wish to show that Hildebrand’s rejecting this error makes his ethics as a whole much more consistent, and opens the way to bringing his philosophy of love closer to our experience. (shrink)

In this research, we examine the relationship between employee psychological entitlement and employee willingness to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior. We hypothesize that a high level of PE—the belief that one should receive desirable treatment irrespective of whether it is deserved—will increase the prevalence of this particular type of unethical behavior. We argue that, driven by self-interest and the desire to look good in the eyes of others, highly entitled employees may be more willing to engage in UPB when their (...) personal goals are aligned with those of their organizations. Support for this proposition was found in Study 1, which demonstrates that organizational identification accentuates the link between PE and the willingness to engage in UPB. Study 2 builds on these findings by examining a number of mediating variables that shed light on why PE leads to a greater willingness among employees to engage in UPB. Furthermore, we explored the differential effects of PE on UPB compared to counterproductive work behavior. We found support for our moderated mediation model, which shows that status striving and moral disengagement fully mediate the link between PE and UPB. PE was also linked to CWB and was fully mediated by perceptions of organizational justice and moral disengagement. (shrink)

Die jungsten Finanzkrisen haben die Diskussion uber die Moral der Markte wiederbelebt: Welche Verantwortung haben Unternehmen, Banken, Politik und letztlich jeder Einzelne in unserer Gesellschaft? Droht die Okonomisierung aller Lebensbereiche, der Ausverkauf des Menschen? Ist der Markt moralfrei? Brauchen wir neue Perspektiven und Werte? Diese drangenden Fragen werden im vorliegenden Buch von namhaften Autorinnen und Autoren wie Franz Muntefering und Rita Sussmuth beantwortet: Der Mensch muss wieder ins Zentrum rucken, Verantwortung und Moral sollten grundlegender Massstab auch des wirtschaftlichen Handelns sein. (...) Mit diesen Forderungen appellieren die BeitragerInnen an einen echten Dialog zwischen Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft und Ethik. Mit Beitragen von Bernhard Emunds, Jurgen Hardt, Linus Hauser, Esther Junger, Josef Kaiser, Siegfried Karl, Andreas Lenz, Uta Meier-Grawe, Franz Muntefering, Thomas Petersen, Marcus K. Reif, Rainer Schwarz, Rita Sussmuth und Joachim Wiemeyer". (shrink)

Experimental work has revealed causal links between physical cleansing and various psychological variables. Empirically, how robust are they? Theoretically, how do they operate? Major prevailing accounts focus on morality or disgust, capturing a subset of cleansing effects, but cannot easily handle cleansing effects in non-moral, non-disgusting contexts. Building on grounded views on cognitive processes and known properties of mental procedures, we proposegrounded proceduresof separation as a proximate mechanism underlying cleansing effects. This account differs from prevailing accounts in terms of explanatory (...) kind, interpretive parsimony, and predictive scope. Its unique and falsifiable predictions have received empirical support: Cleansing attenuates or eliminates otherwise observed influences of prior events (1) across domains and (2) across valences. (3) Cleansing manipulations produce stronger effects the more strongly they engage sensorimotor capacities. (4) Reversing the causal arrow, motivation for cleansing is triggered more readily by negative than positive entities. (5) Conceptually similar effects extend to other physical actions of separation. On the flipside, grounded procedures ofconnectionare also observed. Together, separation and connection organize prior findings relevant to multiple perspectives (e.g., conceptual metaphor, sympathetic magic) and open up new questions. Their predictions are more generalizable than the specific mappings in conceptual metaphors, but more fine-grained than the broad assumptions of grounded cognition. This intermediate level of analysis sheds light on the interplay between mental and physical processes. (shrink)

A new axiomatic treatment of equilibrium thermodynamics—thermostatics—is presented. The equilibrium states of a thermal system are assumed to be represented by a differentiable manifold of dimensionn + 1 (n finite). The empirical temperature is defined by the notion of thermal equilibrium. Empirical entropy is shown to exist for all systems with the property that the total work delivered along closed adiabats is zero. Absolute entropy and temperature follow from the additivity of heat and energy for two separate systems in thermal (...) equilibrium considered as a whole. The absolute temperature is defined up to a multiplicative constant. The exterior differentiable calculus of Cartan is introduced and in a subsequent paper its use for the derivation of standard results in thermostatics will be explained. (shrink)

This paper focuses on compost use in overpasses and underpasses for wild animals over roads and other similar linear structures. In this context, good quality of compost may result in faster and more resistant vegetation cover during the year. Inter alia, this can be interpreted also as reduction of damage and saving lives. There are millions of tones of plant residue produced every day worldwide. These represent prospective business for manufacturers of compost additives called “accelerators”. The opinions of the sale (...) representatives’ with regards to other alternatives of biowaste utilization and their own products were reviewed. The robust analyzes of several “accelerated” composts revealed that the quality was generally low. Only two accelerated composts were somewhat similar in quality to the blank sample that was produced according to the traditional procedure. Overlaps between the interests of decision makers on future soil fertility were weighed against the preferences on short-term profit. Possible causes that allowed the boom of these underperforming products and the possible consequences are also discussed. Conclusions regarding the ethical concerns on how to run businesses with products whose profitability depends on weaknesses in the legal system and customer unawareness are to follow. (shrink)

This book examines new concept of evolutionary ontology based on the idea of radically different “ontic orders” – natural and cultural being. It explains how culture evolved out of nature and how it became “anti-natural”. The remedy is seen in the global biophilous reconstruction of culture. The value of the “live planet” Earth and the “subject” capable of creative activity and evolution are given fundamental philosophical interpretation.

Our commentators explore the operation of grounded procedures across all levels of analysis in the behavioral sciences, from mental to social, developmental, and evolutionary/functional. Building on them, we offer two integrative principles for systematic effects of grounded procedures to occur. We discuss theoretical topics at each level of analysis, address methodological recommendations, and highlight further extensions of grounded procedures.

A method is given to determine whether or not the distribution functions describing the two spin measurements in the spin-s Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment are compatible with the existence of distributions describing three spin measurements (not all of which can actually be performed). When applied to the spin-1/2 case the method gives the results of Wigner, or of Clauser, Holt, Horne, and Shimony, depending on whether or not the two-spin distributions are assumed to have the forms given by the quantum theory. Generalizations (...) of the conditions of Wigner or of Clauser et al. to the spin-1 case are explicitly calculated. The spin-3/2 case is examined in some simple geometries to show that an apparently monotonic trend toward local realism as s increases from1/2 to1 is, in fact, violated when s increases from1 to3/2. The analysis is based on a novel representation of the modulus squared of a rotation matrix element. The structure of that matrix element responsible for the restoration of local realism in the classical (large s) limit is identified, but a rigorous treatment of the classical limit is not attempted. The higher-spin results are significantly stronger than those given by Mermin's spin-s Bell inequality. (shrink)

Millikan's externalist account of concept acquisition cannot completely avoid the distinction between central (defining) and peripheral (characteristic) features, because some knowledge is required to achieve reference and to decide what kind of information to record about the identified substances. However, the emphasis on external reference may provide the requisite principled way to make this distinction.

The ability of non-invasively observing changes in the Ca2+ concentrations is important in the understanding of a great variety of neuronal processes. Several compounds were designed (Fig.1) to take advantage of the different binding abilities of carboxylates and phosphonates to gadolinium. Furthermore the different affinities of the two functional groups to Ca2+ permit to obtain free coordination sites at gadolinium. The generation of these coordination sites, which are mandatory for water relaxivity, depends on the structure of the complexes and the (...) Ca2+ concentration. Gadolinium complexes 1 and 2 were synthesized and relaxivity studies were performed. (shrink)

In everyday language, concepts appear alongside related concepts. Societal biases often emerge in these collocations; e.g., female names collocate with art- related concepts, and African American names collocate with negative concepts. It is unknown whether such collocations merely reflect societal biases or contribute to them. Concepts that are themselves neutral in valence but nevertheless collocate with valenced concepts provide a unique opportunity to address this question. For example, when asked, most people evaluate the concept “cause” as neutral, but “cause” is (...) frequently followed by negative concepts. We use such semantically prosodic concepts to test the influence of collocation on the emergence of implicit bias: do neutral concepts that frequently collocate with valenced concepts have corresponding implicit bias? In evaluative priming tasks, participants evaluated positive/negative nouns or pictures after seeing verb primes that were strongly valenced, neutral in valence but collocated with valenced concepts in corpora, or neutral in valence and not collocated with valenced concepts in corpora. Throughout, neutral primes with positive collocates facilitated the evaluation of positive targets much like strongly valenced primes, whereas neutral primes without valenced collocates did not. That neutral concepts with valenced collocates parallel the influence of valenced concepts suggests that their collocations in natural language may be sufficient for fostering implicit bias. Societal implications of the causal embedding hypothesis are discussed. (shrink)

Pieper distinguishes between Platonic stones in which Plato crystallizes mythical fragments from the mere stories which contain them, and Platonic myths, in which he purifies the proper mythical elements, freeing them of the non-mythical elements which tend to obscure them.