Compared to our understanding of positive prediction error signals occurring due to unexpected reward outcomes, less is known about the neural circuitry in humans that drives negative prediction errors during omission of expected rewards. While classical learning theories such as Rescorla–Wagner or temporal difference learning suggest that both types of prediction errors result from a simple subtraction, there has been recent evidence suggesting that different brain regions provide input to dopamine neurons which contributes to specific components of this prediction error (...) computation. Here, we focus on the brain regions responding to negative prediction error signals, which has been well-established in animal studies to involve a distinct pathway through the lateral habenula. We examine the activity of this pathway in humans, using a conditioned inhibition paradigm with high-resolution functional MRI. First, participants learned to associate a sensory stimulus with reward delivery. Then, reward delivery was omitted whenever this stimulus was presented simultaneously with a different sensory stimulus, the conditioned inhibitor. Both reward presentation and the reward-predictive cue activated midbrain dopamine regions, insula and orbitofrontal cortex. While we found significant activity at an uncorrected threshold for the CI in the habenula, consistent with our predictions, it did not survive correction for multiple comparisons and awaits further replication. Additionally, the pallidum and putamen regions of the basal ganglia showed modulations of activity for the inhibitor that did not survive the corrected threshold. (shrink)

Scientists have shown that many non‐human animals such as ants, dogs, or rats are very good at using smells to find their way through their environments. But are humans also capable of navigating through their environment based on olfactory cues? There is not much research on this topic, a gap that the present research seeks to bridge. We here provide one of the first empirical studies investigating the possibility of using olfactory cues as landmarks in human wayfinding. Forty subjects participated (...) in a piloting study to determine the olfactory material for the main experiment. Then, 24 subjects completed a wayfinding experiment with 12 odors as orientation cues. Our results are astonishing: Participants were rather good at what we call “odor‐based wayfinding.” This indicates that the ability of humans to use olfactory cues for navigation is often underestimated. We discuss two different cognitive explanations and rule out the idea that our results are just an instance of sequential learning. Rather, we argue that humans can enrich their cognitive map of the environment with olfactory landmarks and may use them for wayfinding. (shrink)

Social enterprises, as typical hybrid organisations, are embedded in a plural institutional environment in which some stakeholders regard achieving social goals as fundamental, while others see economic profit as the priority. A great challenge for social enterprises is dealing with the conflicts resulting from the diverse expectations of stakeholders. Based on the existing works on organisational legitimacy and the social business model, we propose a legitimacy-based social enterprise model composed of three main phases, namely, legitimacy proposition, legitimacy strategy planning, and (...) legitimacy strategy implementation. Our model is meant to serve as an effective legitimacy-building tool for social enterprises of various kinds. (shrink)

We show that form, n≧1 the existence of a∏ n m indescribable cardinal is equiconsistent with the failure of the combinatorial principle at a∏ n m indescribable cardinal κ together with the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis.

Theoretical concepts that explain transnational mass or social communication are rather unsophisticated. After twenty years of research on media ‘globalization’, academic thinking in this field is still vague and definitely requires more effort. One reason as to why theory is so unconvincing is that most researchers are experts for the ‘translocal’ but not for the ‘local’. Our language skills and methodologies are particularly limited when we try to understand if and how transnational media do or do not affect non-Western societies. (...) To get out of this methodology trap we need a better integration of media studies and the so-called area studies. Currently, media and communication studies, despite all efforts, are ‘international’ only in a very limited sense. There is a dire need for better integration of Asian, African, Latin American, North African and Middle Eastern media studies into theoretical debates. (shrink)

A philosophical study of the concept of _Heimat, home and homeland, is still lacking. This article examines Gadamer's linguistification of Heidegger's concept of _Heimat that includes moments of both regional identification and language. Gadamer eliminates the references to a home-land and, thus, rids the concept of unwanted associations with National-Socialist propaganda of blood and soil. Yet a merely linguistic notion of _Heimat offers not enough potential for identification in an age of world civilization. The essay suggests to resort to Schelling's (...) notion of an _Unvordenkliches as the ground of both poetic speech and the customs of a polity as _Heimat. (shrink)

The way a society speaks about its different groups and sub-groups determines its general behavior toward them. Discriminated minorities oftentimes suffer from humiliating descriptions, and part of their project to change societal attitudes will evolve around the attempt to redescribe themselves in terms more acceptable to them. ;Advancing from these considerations, I examine the rhetoric of the emerging discourse of homosexuality between 1880 and 1920. During this time period the homosexual was invented as a new personality type, a being almost (...) totally determined in all of his expressions by his sexual desire. Different professions like law, medicine, sociology, psychiatry, literature, and philosophy attempted to define this novel species. And they all converged in one aspect, namely in their rhetorical attitude. The writings of people like Nietzsche, Krafft-Ebing, Proust, Symonds, Gide, and Mann share the common feature of diagnosing a vital and important difference between the homosexual person and her heterosexual fellow citizen. This rhetoric of emphasizing the dividing features between desires I call maximalism. The invention of the homosexual as a person occurred under the reign of maximalizing ways of writing. It was, however, widely disputed where exactly the relevant difference between homosexuals and heterosexuals was to be located, whether in anatomico-biological variations, in an overabundance or lack of masculine determinants, in psychological dispositions, or an exceeding portion of courage, intelligence, and creativity. Equally problematic was the valuation of this difference. But one thing was easily agreed upon: the description of the homosexual had to follow a maximalizing pattern. ;I trace this pattern from its first precursory appearance in the Marquis de Sade to its breakdown in the psychoanalytic texts by Sigmund Freud. The shattering of this mode of thinking, though, has not been final, since in some of the rhetoric of "Queer Studies" it has reemerged. Family resemblances often appear most striking when one looks back past the parents. Our contemporaries bear their grandparents' smile. (shrink)

Ausgehend von Gadarners Begriff der Mimesis als Ordnung, dem er an Plato und Aristoteles vorbei auf die Pythagoräer zurückgreift, bietet der Aufsatz einige Argumente für die Reintegration von ästhetischem und moralischem Diskurs, indem er die Autonomieästhetik mittels eines sozialen und psychologischen Ordnungskonzepts infrage stellt. Vorgeschlagen wird eine Grenzziehung zur sozial inakzeptablen Kunst, in der ein Normenbruch nicht repräsentiert, sondern ausagiert wird, sowie zur psychohygienisch inakzeptablen Kunst, in der das Lustgefühl im Zusammenspiel der mentalen Fakultäten durch den Unwillen der Einbildungskraft, zu (...) einem normenverletzenden und repulsiven Material zurückzukehren, ausgehebelt wird. (shrink)

In explaining his concept of set Cantor intimates a connection with the metaphysical scheme put forward in Plato’s Philebus to determine the place of pleasure. We argue that these determinations capture key ideas of Cantorian set theory and, moreover, extend to intuitions which continue to play a central role in the modern mathematics of infinity.

ABSTRACT I argue that people have a right to self‐determination when they are plainly predominant in a certain territory and do not violate the civil liberties of minorities. But there is no self‐determination without the preservation of self‐identity and the cultural preservation that goes with its secure existence. So to preserve autonomy and self‐determination people must preserve their cultural identity and this cannot be securely sustained in modern conditions without a nation‐state concerned to nourish that identity. Such considerations support a (...) right to secession when certain conditions are met. The conditions are that the people in question have a cultural identity, live in a distinct territory which they have inhabited for a long time, form an extensive majority, and respect the civil liberties of the minorities living in that territory (as well as elsewhere). Where they are such a group they have a right to secede from a larger state to which they are historically attached. These conditions, I argue, are met in Quebec. (shrink)

It is shown how certain generic extensions of a fine structural model in the sense of Mitchell and Steel [MiSt] can be reorganized as relativizations of the model to the generic object. This is then applied to the construction of Steel's core model for one Woodin cardinal [St] and its generalizations.

For a canonical model of set theory whose projective theory of the real numbers is stable under set forcing extensions, a set of reals of minimal complexity is constructed which fails to be universally Baire. The construction uses a general method for generating non-universally Baire sets via the Levy collapse of a cardinal, as well as core model techniques. Along the way it is shown how sufficiently iterable fine structure models recognize themselves as global core models.

ZusammenfassungDass unsere Gesellschaften den Tod verdrängen, ist eine weit verbreitete Überzeugung. Sie lässt sich jedoch soziologisch weder belegen noch widerlegen: A) Die Moderne ist sich des Todes wohl bewusst. Zum einen kennt sie aufgrund ihrer funktionalen Differenzierung viele Todesbilder. Zum anderen ist sie stark individualisiert, so dass der Tod eine neue Bedeutung gewinnt. Er wird zum irreversiblen Verlust einer unersetzbaren und in sich wertvollen Person. B) Die Moderne wird aber auch als todesverdrängend erlebt, insofern viele ihrer Todesbilder diesen individuellen Tod (...) ignorieren. Diese Ambivalenzen lassen sich in einer Betrachtung moderner Medizin genauer aufklären: A) Diese thematisiert den Tod durchaus, aber vorrangig erfahrungswissenschaftlich, so dass die Person und der ihr eigene Tod gerade ausgeklammert werden. Da die subjektive Dimension auch für Schmerzphänomene konstitutiv ist, grenzt eine solche Medizin diese ebenfalls aus. Sie gelten als tendenziell sinnlos und werden ignoriert oder aber beseitigt. B) Zugleich ist moderne Medizin stets schon mehr als reine Naturwissenschaft, da sie auch einer Logik individuellen Fallverstehens folgt. Beide Logiken sind spannungsvoll, können einander ergänzen, aber auch konfligieren. Während eine dominante Orientierung an den Naturwissenschaften weder den Schmerzen noch dem individuellen Tod gerecht wird, ermöglicht das individuelle Fallverstehen eine reflexive Kritik. Derzeit ist es vor allem die Palliativmedizin, die sich für eine neue Balance dieser Handlungslogiken einsetzt, wobei offen ist, ob sie einen verdrängenden Umgang mit dem Tod überwinden kann. (shrink)

Since Rorty, the crisis of method and interests in philosophy has been at the forefront of metaphilosophy. In this book, Kai Nielsen, one of the most prominent critics of philosophy-as-usual, examines critically the most important claims made on behalf of philosophy. After rejecting as chimerical the ambitious claims of traditional, especially foundational, epistemology and metaphysics, he presents the case for a more modest view of what philosophy can accomplish.Nielsen insists that philosophy must be devoted to actual problems of real people (...) in everyday life. Influenced substantively by Dewey and more methodologically by Rawls, he carves out a defensible terrain for philosophy to inhabit—a terrain cleared of the more extravagant but implausible claims made by traditional philosophy.Nielsen has been a major voice in debates about the scope of philosophy, and this latest work of his will be an important contribution to the “end of philosophy debate.”. (shrink)

In this paper we will see deductive systems for classical propositional and predicate logic in the calculus of structures. Like sequent systems, they have a cut rule which is admissible. Unlike sequent systems, they drop the restriction that rules only apply to the main connective of a formula: their rules apply anywhere deeply inside a formula. This allows to observe very clearly the symmetry between identity axiom and the cut rule. This symmetry allows to reduce the cut rule to atomic (...) form in a way which is dual to reducing the identity axiom to atomic form. We also reduce weakening and even contraction to atomic form. This leads to inference rules that are local: they do not require the inspection of expressions of arbitrary size. (shrink)

Psychological egoists deny that men ever voluntarily act to promote the interests of others as an end in itself or ever act in such a way that they have the same regard for others as they have for themselves. [...] This theory has a long history and was supposedly decisively refuted by Butler. Yet it continues to haunt the scene. I want, in the tradition of Butler but not in his manner, to try to set out a short snappy but (...) definitive refutation of psychological egoism which will also show why it has such a hold on people. (shrink)

Wu Jiang was born in November 1917, in Zhuji county, Zhejiang Province. He began work in the theoretical field in the 1950s, and has worked at People's University, Red Flag, the Central Party School, and the Central Academy of Socialism . He has published the following works: Issues on the Reform of the Capitalist Economy in China, On the Proletarian Dictatorship, Collected Works on Historical Dialectics, Ten Lectures on Epistemology, Twenty Lectures on Philosophical Issues, Several Issues Relating to Contemporary Socialism, (...) and Origins and Development of the Theory of the Initial Stage of Socialism, and others. (shrink)

I argue that the GANE model basically explains an arousal-based amplification of emotional stimuli, whereas effects on neutral stimuli indicate a contextualization process aiming to reduce stimulus ambiguity. To extend the model's validity, I suggest distinguishing between internal and external emotional sources, as well considering the stimulus valence and addressing age-related differences in attention and memory preferences.

Das Denken sei das eigentliche Handeln, hat Heidegger behauptet.