Impairments in executive functioning are prevalent in chronic pain conditions, with cognitive inflexibility being the most frequently reported. The current randomized, cross-over trial, piloted a computerized cognitive training program based on Relational Frame Theory, targeting improvement in cognitive flexibility. At baseline, 73 chronic pain patients completed testing on pre-selected outcomes of executive functioning, alongside IQ measures. When tested three times over the course of 5 months, there was a drop-out rate of 40% at the third time point, leaving 44 patients (...) who had data at all time points. The results showed that there was a substantial learning effect from the MINDFLEX training and a substantial time-dependent improvement on the primary outcomes of increased flexibility, but that this could not be tied to active training. In conclusion, this small study indicated a learning effect as well as improvement on primary outcomes. Based on the current results, a larger trial with improved feasibility of training is warranted. (shrink)

Recently, neuroscientists have argued that elementary ways of organizing, perceiving, and justifying social relations lurk behind the diversity of social life. In developing grid-group typology, anthropologist Mary Douglas proposed such universal forms. If these are universal, then we could expect other widely cited classifications to overlap with grid-group typology. We tested this expectation by examining to which extent the elements of Douglas’s typology overlap with those of 39 highly influential classifications proposed since 1970. We established overlap by calculating the interrater (...) agreement among 11 coders. Fair to good interrater agreement, despite a complex coding exercise and minimal training, suggests that such overlap exists. Nevertheless, limits to our research design call for further studies. These findings should contribute to a rekindling of the question whether universal forms of organizing and perceiving social relations exist and to a further consideration of whether Douglas has managed to uncover these. (shrink)

Chronic post-surgical pain represents a highly prevalent and significant clinical problem. Both major and minor surgeries entail risks of developing CPSP, and cancer-related surgery is no exception. As an example, more than 40% of women undergoing breast cancer surgery struggle with CPSP years after surgery. While we do not fully understand the pathophysiology of CPSP, we know it is multifaceted with biological, social, and psychological factors contributing. The aim of this review is to advocate for the role of response outcome (...) expectancies in the development of CPSP following breast cancer surgery. We propose the Cognitive Activation Theory of Stress as an applicable theoretical framework detailing the potential role of cortisol regulation, inflammation, and inflammatory-induced sickness behavior in CPSP. Drawing on learning theory and activation theory, CATS offers psychobiological explanations for the relationship between stress and health, where acquired expectancies are crucial in determining the stress response and health outcomes. Based on existing knowledge about risk factors for CPSP, and in line with the CATS position, we propose the SURGEry outcome expectancy model of CPSP. According to SURGE, expectancies impact stress physiology, inflammation, and fear-based learning influencing the development and persistence of CPSP. SURGE further proposes that generalized response outcome expectancies drive adaptive or maladaptive stress responses in the time around surgery, where coping dampens the stress response, while helplessness and hopelessness sustains it. A sustained stress response may contribute to central sensitization, alterations in functional brain networks and excessive fear-based learning. This sets the stage for a prolonged state of inflammatory-induced sickness behavior – potentially driving and maintaining CPSP. Finally, as psychological factors are modifiable, robust and potent predictors of CPSP, we suggest hypnosis as an effective intervention strategy targeting response outcome expectancies. We here argue that presurgical clinical hypnosis has the potential of preventing CPSP in women with breast cancer. (shrink)

Johann Christoph Gottsched gehört unbestritten zu den zentralen Figuren der deutschen Frühaufklärung. Wie wohl kein anderer vor und nach ihm hat er die Entwicklung der deutschsprachigen Sprach-, Rede-, Dicht- und Bühnenkunst geprägt, geleitet von der festen Absicht, diesen Künsten wo möglich eine wissenschaftliche Begründung, eine überschaubare kritische Historie sowie eine klare und elegante Darstellung zu verleihen. Über diese Bemühungen hinaus, hat sich insbesondere die neuere Forschung weiteren Facetten seines riesigen Werkes zugewendet. So erscheint Gottsched als Vorbild zahlreicher Zeitschriftenprojekte, als wichtiger (...) Popularisator der Leibnizschen und Wolffschen Philosophie, als zentraler Reformer der zeitgenössischen Homiletik, als Drehscheibe bei der Vermittlung europäischer Dichtung und Gelehrsamkeit. Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes tragen der gesamten Breite der Gottsched-Forschung Rechnung, prüfen alte Erkenntnisse und stellen neue Einschätzungen zur Diskussion. Darüber wird die Aufmerksamkeit auch auf weniger bekannte Aspekte des Gottschedschen Oeuvres gelenkt, so etwa auf Beiträge zu den Naturwissenschaften und der Staatslehre, auf die akademische Lehrtätigkeit und auf das zunehmende Interesse an anthropologischen und ästhetischen Fragen. MIT BEITRÄGEN VON: Erich Achermann, Thomas Althaus, Detlef Döring, Frank Grunert, Gerda Hassler, Peter Hesselmann, Hanspeter Marti, Christian Meierhofer, Dagmar Mirbach, Merio Scattola, Oliver Scholz, Tomas Sommadossi, Holger Steinmann, Gideon Stiening, Andres Strassberger, Dietmar Till, Klaus Weimar und Jan-Henrik Witthaus. (shrink)

Vol. 2 is dedicated to the use of Kierkegaard by later Danish writers. Almost from the beginning Kierkegaard's works were standard reading for these authors. Danish novelists and critics from the Modern Breakthrough movement in the 1870s were among the first to make extensive use of his writings. These included the theoretical leader of the movement, the critic Georg Brandes, who wrote an entire book on Kierkegaard, and the novelists Jens Peter Jacobsen and Henrik Pontoppidan.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Contributors -- List of Abbreviations -- Karen Blixen: Kierkegaard, Isak Dinesen, and the Twisted Images of Divinity and Humanity -- Georg Brandes: Kierkegaard's Most Influential Mis-Representative -- Ernesto Dalgas: Kierkegaard on The Path of Suffering -- Martin A. Hansen: Kierkegaard in Hansen's Thinking and Poetical Work -- Jens Peter Jacobsen: Denmark's Greatest Atheist -- Harald Kidde: "A Widely Traveled Stay-at-Home"--Henrik Pontoppidan: Inspiration (...) and Hesitation. (shrink)

“Hegel and scepticism” remains an intriguing topic directly concerning the logical and methodological core of Hegel’s system. A series of contributions is unfolding around a keynote paper by Klaus Vieweg, which tries to understand and restate the limits and the content of the relationship between Hegels philosophy and scepticism. Various Hegel readers with different concerns are dealing with Hegel’s strategy in a large range of theoretical areas.

Herodotus’s Scythians and Ptolemy’s Central Asia: Semasiological and Onomasiological Studies. By Helmut Humbach and Klaus Faiss. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2012. Pp. xii + 91.

Angesichts der gegenwärtigen ökonomischen, ökologischen und sozialen Krisen zeichnet sich ab, dass die Wachstumsdynamik moderner Gesellschaften nicht mehr stabilisierend wirkt, sondern selbst zum Krisentreiber geworden ist. In diesem Band diskutieren die Philosophin Nancy Fraser und die Soziologen Klaus Dörre, Stephan Lessenich und Hartmut Rosa, was dies für die Gegenwart und die Zukunft der Demokratie bedeutet und welche Konzeptionen und Wege hin zu einer demokratischen Transformation vorstellbar sind. Aus ihrer demokratietheoretischen Perspektive intervenieren Viviana Asara, Banu Bargu, Ingolfur Blühdorn, Robin Celikates, (...) Lisa Herzog, Brian Milstein, Michelle Williams und Christos Zografos. (shrink)

Recent metaphysics has seen a surge of interest in grounding—a relation of non-causal determination underlying a distinctive kind of explanation common in philosophy. In this article, I investigate the connection between grounding and another phenomenon of great interest to metaphysics: ontological dependence. There are interesting parallels between the two phenomena: for example, both are commonly invoked through the use of “dependence” terminology, and there is a great deal of overlap in the motivations typically appealed to when introducing them. I approach (...) the question of the relationship between grounding and ontological dependence through an investigation of their modal connections. I argue, firstly, that on the common assumption that grounding is factive, it can be shown that no known variety of rigid ontological dependence is either necessary or sufficient for grounding. I also offer some suggestions in support of the claim that this generalizes to every possible form of rigid ontological dependence. I then broaden the discussion by considering a non-factive conception of grounding, as well as by looking at forms of generic ontological dependence. I argue that there is at least one form of rigid ontological dependence that is sufficient for non-factive grounding, and that a form of generic dependence may be necessary both for factive and non-factive grounding. However, justifying even these fairly weak modal connections between grounding and ontological dependence turns out to require some quite specific and substantive assumptions about the two phenomena that have only rarely been discussed. (shrink)

In the third and fourth parts of the book, Günther shows--in debate with Hare, Dworkin, and others--how argumentation on the appropriate application of norms and principles in morality and law is possible.

Mental time travel is the ability to mentally project oneself backward in time to relive past experiences and forward in time to pre-live possible future experiences. Previous work has focused on MTT in its voluntary form. Here, we introduce the notion of involuntary MTT. We examined involuntary versus voluntary and past versus future MTT in a diary study. We found that involuntary future event representations—defined as representations of possible personal future events that come to mind with no preceding search attempts—were (...) as common as involuntary autobiographical memories and similar to them regarding cuing and subjective qualities. Future MTT involved more positive and idyllic representations than past MTT. MTT into the distant future/past involved more representations of cultural life script events than MTT into the immediate past/future. The findings are discussed in relation to cultural learning and MTT considered as a higher mental process. (shrink)

The emerging concept of systems medicine is at the vanguard of the post-genomic movement towards ‘precision medicine’. It is the medical application of systems biology, the biological study of wholes. Of particular interest, P4 systems medicine is currently promised as a revolutionary new biomedical approach that is holistic rather than reductionist. This article analyzes its concept of holism, both with regard to methods and conceptualization of health and disease. Rather than representing a medical holism associated with basic humanistic ideas, we (...) find a technoscientific holism resulting from altered technological and theoretical circumstances in biology. We argue that this holism, which is aimed at disease prevention and health optimization, points towards an expanded form of medicalization, which we call ‘holistic medicalization’: Each person’s whole life process is defined in biomedical, technoscientific terms as quantifiable and controllable and underlain a regime of medical control that is holistic in that it is all-encompassing. It is directed at all levels of functioning, from the molecular to the social, continual throughout life and aimed at managing the whole continuum from cure of disease to optimization of health. We argue that this medicalization is a very concrete materialization of a broader trend in medicine and society, which we call ‘the medicalization of health and life itself’. We explicate this holistic medicalization, discuss potential harms and conclude by calling for preventive measures aimed at avoiding eventual harmful effects of overmedicalization in systems medicine. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to propose a unified approach to the split scope readings of negative indefinites, comparative quantifiers, and numerals. There are two main observations that justify this approach. First, split scope shows the same kinds of restrictions across these different quantifiers. Second, split scope always involves low existential force. In our approach, following Sauerland, natural language determiner quantifiers are quantifiers over choice functions, of type <<,t>,t>. In split readings, the quantifier over choice functions scopes above other (...) operators (such as intensional verbs like must or can). Determiner quantifiers leave a choice-function trace when they move and this trace combines with the noun restriction, which is interpreted low. That split scope always involves low existential force is derived, without stipulation, from Kratzer’s idea that low existential force can be achieved via binding (into the noun restriction). (shrink)

In this book, Henrik Lagerlund offers students, researchers, and advanced general readers the first complete history of what is perhaps the most famous of all philosophical problems: skepticism. As the first of its kind, the book traces the influence of philosophical skepticism from its roots in the Hellenistic schools of Phyrronism and the Middle Academy up to its impact inside and outside of philosophy today. Along the way, it covers skepticism during the Latin, Arabic, and Greek Middle Ages and (...) during the Renaissance before moving on to cover Descartes's methodological skepticism and Pierre Bayle's super-skepticism in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, it deals with Humean skepticism and the anti-skepticism of Reid and Kant, taking care to also include reflections on the connections between idealism and skepticism. The book covers similar themes in a chapter on G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and then ends its historical overview with a chapter on skepticism in contemporary philosophy. In the final chapter, Lagerlund captures some of skepticism's impact outside of philosophy, highlighting its relation to issues like the replication crisis in science and knowledge resistance. (shrink)

Defining “emotion” is a notorious problem. Without consensual conceptualization and operationalization of exactly what phenomenon is to be studied, progress in theory and research is difficult to achieve and fruitless debates are likely to proliferate. A particularly unfortunate example is William James’s asking the question “What is an emotion?” when he really meant “feeling”, a misnomer that started a debate which is still ongoing, more than a century later. This contribution attempts to sensitize researchers in the social and behavioral sciences (...) to the importance of definitional issues and their consequences for distinguishing related but fundamentally different affective processes, states, and traits. Links between scientific and folk concepts of emotion are explored and ways to measure emotion and its components are discussed. (shrink)

This volume distinguishes between two main traditions in the philosophy of science - the aristotelian, with its stress on explanation in terms of purpose and intentionality, and the galilean, which takes causal explanation as primary. It then traces the complex history of these competing traditions as they are manifested in such movements as positivism, idealism, Marxism and contemporary linguistic analysis. Hempels's theory of scientific explanation, the claims of cybernetics the rise of an analytic philosophy of action and the revival of (...) hermenuetics are all discussed. The volume also deals with causal explanation, intentionality and teleological explanation, and explanation in history and the social sciences. The author concludes that explanation of human actions cannot be reduced to simple causality, and discusses the implications of this conclusion for the disciplines of history and sociology. (shrink)

This paper examines precursors and consequents of perceived relevance of a proposition A for a proposition C. In Experiment 1, we test Spohn's assumption that ∆P = P − P is a good predictor of ratings of perceived relevance and reason relations, and we examine whether it is a better predictor than the difference measure − P). In Experiment 2, we examine the effects of relevance on probabilistic coherence in Cruz, Baratgin, Oaksford, and Over's uncertain “and-to-if” inferences. The results suggest (...) that ∆P predicts perceived relevance and reason relations better than the difference measure and that participants are either less probabilistically coherent in “and-to-if” inferences than initially assumed or that they do not follow P = P. Results are discussed in light of recent results suggesting that the Equation may not hold under conditions of irrelevance or negative relevance. (shrink)

Depuis leur origine, la théorie et la pratique psychanalytique suscitent des questions et des oppositions. Dans ce débat très animé, un philosophe, dont les travaux sur l'histoire de la psychanalyse sont reconnus, et un psychanalyste ouvert sur l'épistémologie abordent, sans concessions et de façon approfondie, les principaux points de la polémique. Au lecteur de former sa propre opinion.