The assessment of text quality is a transdisciplinary issue concerning the research areas of educational assessment, language technology, and classroom instruction. Text length has been found to strongly influence human judgment of text quality. The question of whether text length is a construct-relevant aspect of writing competence or a source of judgment bias has been discussed controversially. This paper used both a correlational and an experimental approach to investigate this question. Secondary analyses were performed on a large-scale dataset with highly (...) trained raters, showing an effect of text length beyond language proficiency. Furthermore, an experimental study found that pre-service teachers tended to undervalue text length when compared to professional ratings. The findings are discussed with respect to the role of training and context in writing assessment. (shrink)

Collection of original essays on human rights Content: Höffe, Otfried: Transzendentaler Tausch. Eine Legimitationsfigur für Menschenrechte? Tugendhat, Ernst: Die Kontroverse um die Menschenrechte. Lohmann, Georg: Menschenrechte zwischen Moral und Recht. Koller, Peter: Der Geltungsbereich der Menschenrechte. Wildt, Andreas: Menschenrechte und moralische Rechte. Gosepath, Stefan: Zu Begründungen sozialer Menschenrechte. O'Neill, Onora: Transnationale Gerechtigkeit. Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang: Ist Demokratie eine notwendige Forderung der Menschenrechte?. Alexy, Robert: Die Institutionalisierung der Menschenrechre im demokratischen Verfassungsstaat. Wellmer, Albrecht: Menschenrechte und Demokratie. Dworkin, Ronald: Freiheit, Selbstregierung (...) und der Wille des Volkes. Okin, Susan Moller: Konflikte zwischen Grundrechten. Shue, Henry: Menschenrechte und kulturelle Differenz. Pogge, Thomas: Menschenrechte als moralische Ansprüche an globale Institutionen. (shrink)

Stefan Collini challenges the common claim that universities need to show that they help to make money in order to justify getting more money.

With an inside view from an expert in the field and a clear and engaging writing style, Asian Philosophies, Seventh Edition invites students and professors to think along with the great minds of the Asian traditions. Eminent scholar and teacher John M. Koller has devoted his life to understanding and explaining Asian thought and practice. He wrote this text to give students access to the rich philosophical and religious ideas of both South and East Asia. New to this seventh (...) edition: Added material on Confucianism, including focused coverage of (1) the Analects and society and (2) ren and nature; Additional information on Theravada Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism as well as new in-depth coverage of ecological attitudes in Buddhism; Expanded coverage of ecological attitudes in all of the Asian traditions; Brief excerpts from primary sources to help better explain the key concepts; Added timelines for essential texts in each tradition; Improved Glossary and Pronunciation Guide; Additional text boxes, to help students quickly understand key ideas, texts, and concepts; Updated Further Reading sections. (shrink)

Die Publikation hat das Ziel, Analogierelationen als heuristische Zauberstäbe bzw. als semiotische Universalien anzusehen, über die sich Unbekanntes mit Hilfe von Bekanntem heuristisch erschließen lässt. Das bedeutet, dass Analogien zugleich analysierende, synthetisierende und spielerische Grundfunktionen zukommen, die uns sehr vielfältige Resonanzräume eröffnen können. Es beinhaltet weiter, dass Analogieannahmen auch dazu dienlich sind, die Welt der Objekte in einen fruchtbaren Interaktionszusammenhang zu der Welt der Subjekte zu bringen. Dadurch lässt sich dann auch die These Cassirers sehr gut exemplifizieren, das der Mensch (...) ein genuines Zeichenwesen (animal symbolicum) ist, das sich seine Lebenswelt mit Hilfe kultureller Zeichen erschließen kann und muss. Deshalb richtet sich das Erkenntnisinteresse hier dann auch nicht nur auf die allgemeinen kulturgeschichtlichen, philosophischen und semiotischen Aspekte des Analogiephänomens, sondern insbesondere auch auf die Analogieimplikationen unserer lexikalischen, grammatischen, metaphorischen, funktionalen und textuellen Sinnbildungsmuster, um die Welt der Objekte mit der Welt der Subjekte in einen fruchtbaren Interaktionszusammenhang miteinander zu bringen. (shrink)

In this critical comment on Ernst Tugendhat's paper I dispute his view in two respects: the first refers to the concept, the second to the justification of human rights. As far as the concept of human rights is concerned, I argue that Tugendhat fails to notice that there are different kinds of human rights which are to be distinguished carefully. This conceptual failure prevents him from seeing that different human rights are justified by different reasons. While universal human rights can (...) be justified by the principle of universalization, community rights are based on the demands of social justice. (shrink)

My paper consists of two parts. The first part deals with the fundamental normative standards of domestic social justice on the one hand and global justice on the other, standards that are requisite in order to identify injustices on both levels. On this basis, the second part focuses on the interrelations between domestic social justice and global justice with particular attention to the interdependencies between domestic and global injustices.

Examines widespread myths about transhumanism and explores the most pressing ethical issues in the debate over technologically assisted human enhancement.

Unser Wissen von Sprache können wir in Form von Begriffen, Erzählungen oder Bildern objektivieren, wobei die begriffliche Repräsentation üblicherweise als höchste Stufe der Wissensbildung gilt. Gleichwohl sollten wir die narrativen und sinnbildlichen Objektivierungen von Sprache keineswegs nur als defizitäre Vorstufen der begrifflichen ansehen, sondern eher als ergänzende Formen. Die begriffliche Erschließung von Sprache hilft uns, Sprache als Erfahrungsgegenstand kategorial einzuordnen und uns argumentativ über sie zu verständigen. Die narrative hilft uns, das pragmatische Funktionspotenzial der Sprache in konkreten Lebenszusammenhängen kennenzulernen. Die (...) sinnbildliche hilft uns, die komplexen Strukturen und Funktionen von Sprache über Analogien zu empirisch fassbaren Erfahrungsgegenständen in den Blick zu bekommen. Deshalb lassen sich Sinnbilder über Sprache als hermeutisch-heuristische Hypothesen verstehen, die mehr als ornamentale Funktionen haben. Sie gehen aus einem experimentellen Denken hervor und wollen unserer Nachdenken über Sprache dialektisch in Fluss halten. Sie veranschaulichen uns die Genese und die Substrukturen unseres Wissens von Sprache und wollen dieses nicht abschließend auf statische Begriffe bringen. (shrink)

Social power has many facets. This paper aims to illuminate some of these. First of all, it considers the general conceptual framework in which the concept of power is embedded. The author then elaborates on an analysis of the elementary concept of social power resulting in a proposal how to define power. Furthermore, the article deals with complex networks of power relations, namely constellations and structures of power. Another section focuses on some special aspects of the dynamics of power structures. (...) Finally, the author discusses the problem of legitimation of power. (shrink)

In advanced societies, the sphere of work is subject to far-reaching changes which erode the system of gainful employment achieved in the second half of the last century, called ‘typical work’, i.e. full-time employment for an indefinite period with collectively negotiated wages and working conditions. This development has lead to a proliferation of various kinds of ‘atypical work’, most of which amount to poorly rewarded and insecure jobs with bad labour standards, and it has also weakened the traditional systems of (...) social security. As a result, most advanced societies have experienced a significant increase in social inequality and poverty in recent decades, even though their overall social wealth has constantly grown, a state of affairs which may be deemed to be not merely undesirable, but also unjust. This judgment, however, presupposes a particular conception of social justice that submits the economic order and the working world to certain normative demands. The paper aims to illuminate these demands by proceeding in three steps. First of all, it starts with recapitulating the conditions of the rise of typical work and the features of its decay. Secondly, it seeks to sketch a conception of social justice and its requirements on the working world, on the basis of which the present situation may be considered as unjust. Finally, it will deal with the question of how to reform the present working world in a way that, as far as possible, meets the requirements of justice. (shrink)

Nozick’s entitlement theory of justice is, besides Rawls’s theory, one of the most widely discussed and intellectually most attractive conceptions within the field of contemporary political philosophy. Nozick’s theory uses Locke's conception of the state of nature and of natural rights, and tries, starting from this point of view, to deliver a comprehensive systematisation of libertarian political ideals. This essay deals mainly with Nozick’s conception of property rights. The argument is put forward that the concept of exclusive and unrestrictable ownership (...) of which Nozick makes use, doesn’t find any acceptable justification on the basis of his theory. (shrink)

"Provides translations of Bolzano's most important work on grounding, including previously untranslated material"--.

In this chapter we deal with the challenge to the existence of free will and moral responsibility that is raised by the threat of determinism from a Wittgensteinian perspective. Our argument starts by briefly recapitulating Wittgenstein’s analysis of the practice of doubt in On Certainty. We subsequently turn to the problem of free will. We argue that the existence of free will is a basic certainty and that the thesis of determinism fails to cast doubt on it. We thereby make (...) use of – but also try to go beyond – Wittgenstein’s own remarks in his “Lectures on Freedom of the Will”. In the final section we focus more explicitly on moral responsibility. Inspired by P.F. Strawson’s work on free will and moral responsibility, which we take to be deeply Wittgensteinian, we argue that our practices of holding each other responsible manifest basic human certainties which cannot be meaningfully challenged by invoking the thesis of determinism. (shrink)

Users of sociotechnical systems often have no way to independently verify whether the system output which they use to make decisions is correct; they are epistemically dependent on the system. We argue that this leads to problems when the system is wrong, namely to bad decisions and violations of the norm of practical reasoning. To prevent this from occurring we suggest the implementation of defeaters: information that a system is unreliable in a specific case (undercutting defeat) or independent information that (...) the output is wrong (rebutting defeat). Practically, we suggest to design defeaters based on the different ways in which a system might produce erroneous outputs, and analyse this suggestion with a case study of the risk classification algorithm used by the Dutch tax agency. (shrink)

How ought you to evaluate your options if you’re uncertain about which axiology is true? One prominent response is Expected Moral Value Maximisation, the view that under axiological uncertainty, an option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected moral value across axiologies. EMVM raises two fundamental questions. First, there’s a question about what it should even mean. In particular, it presupposes that we can compare moral value across axiologies. So to even understand EMVM, we (...) need to explain what it is for such comparisons to hold. Second, assuming that we understand it, there’s a question about whether EMVM is true. Since there are many plausible rivals, we need an argument to defend it. In this paper, I’ll introduce a representation theorem for axiological uncertainty to answer these two questions. Roughly, the theorem shows that if all our axiologies satisfy the von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms, and if the facts about which options are better than which in light of your uncertainty also satisfy these axioms as well as a Pareto condition, then these facts have a relevantly unique expected utility representation. If I’m right, this theorem at once affords us a compelling way to understand EMVM—and specifically intertheoretic comparisons—and a systematic argument for its truth. (shrink)

Intuitively, we lack the standing to blame others in light of moral norms that we ourselves don't take seriously: if Adam is unrepentantly aggressive, say, he lacks the standing to blame Celia for her aggressiveness. But why does blame have this feature? Existing proposals try to explain this by reference to specific principles of normative ethics – e.g. to rule‐consequentialist considerations, to the wrongness of hypocritical blame, or principles of rights‐forfeiture based on this wrongness. In this paper, I suggest a (...) fundamentally different approach. Employing Timothy Williamson's idea of ‘constitutive rules’ of speech acts, I argue that this feature of blame is simply constitutive of any essentially moral form of disapproval. So if Adam had the standing to disapprove of Celia's aggressiveness in some form, necessarily, this disapproval couldn't be blame. If I'm right, this proposal thus not only answers our main question, but also sheds an interesting novel light on the very nature of blame. If we didn't have a form of disapproval with that feature, we wouldn't have our practice of holding each other to moral norms. (shrink)

This paper presents the Constraint Language for Lambda Structures(CLLS), a first-order language for semantic underspecification thatconservatively extends dominance constraints. It is interpreted overlambda structures, tree-like structures that encode -terms. Based onCLLS, we present an underspecified, uniform analysis of scope,ellipsis, anaphora, and their interactions. CLLS solves a variablecapturing problem that is omnipresent in scope underspecification andcan be processed efficiently.

In order to explain that sentences containing empty definite descriptions are nevertheless true or false, Russell famously analyzes sentences of the form ‘The F is G’ as ‘There is exactly one F and it is G’. Against this it has been objected that Russell’s analysis provides the wrong truth-conditions when it comes to non-doxastic attitude ascriptions. For example, according to Heim, Kripke, and Elbourne (HKE), there are circumstances in which (1) is true and (2) is false. Hans wants the ghost (...) in his attic to be quiet tonight.Hans wants there to be exactly one ghost in his attic and for it to be quiet tonight. After all, the argument goes, unlike (2), (1) can be true without Hans wanting there to be exactly one ghost in his attic. Kaplan and Neale famously reply that the HKE objection presupposes that non-doxastic attitudes are closed under entailment, which they are not. For Rostworowski, on the other hand, the problematic principle used by the HKE objection is a substitutivity principle for non-doxastic attitude ascriptions. This is further supported by the fact that, as Elbourne points out, Russell’s analysis already leads to a problem similar to the HKE objection together with substitutivity alone. By questioning substitutivity for non-doxastic attitude ascriptions, Rostworowski tries to block both the HKE objection and Elbourne’s variant of the HKE objection. In this paper, I will argue that Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions leads to a variant of the HKE objection even in the context of doxastic attitude ascriptions. Since, as we will see, doxastic attitude ascriptions do not seem to suffer from the substitutivity problems discussed by Rostworowski in the context of non-doxastic attitude ascriptions, this will further exacerbate the problem for Russell’s analysis. I will then discuss the possibility to reject substitutivity for doxastic attitude ascriptions using a contextualist analysis of attitude ascriptions. However, we will see that, independent of whether we accept substitutivity for doxastic attitude ascriptions, a complete solution of the doxastic problem has to reject Russell’s analysis of the truth-conditions of sentences of the form ‘The F is G’. Concluding, I will show that, unlike Russell’s analysis, the Frege–Strawson analysis of definite descriptions, according to which a sentence of the form ‘The F is G’ presupposes that there is exactly one F, rather than asserting it, provides an explanation of the HKE objection, Elbourne’s variant of the HKE objection, and the doxastic problem presented in this paper. This will speak not only in favor of a Fregean analysis of definite descriptions, but also of a Fregean conception of propositions. (shrink)

Teachers’ social-emotional competence is considered important to master the social and emotional challenges inherent in their profession and to build positive teacher-student relationships. In turn, this is key to both teachers’ occupational well-being and positive student development. Nonetheless, an instrument assessing the profession-specific knowledge and skills that teachers need to master the social and emotional demands in the classroom is still lacking. Therefore, we developed the Test of Regulation in and Understanding of Social Situations in Teaching (TRUST), which is a (...) theory-based situational judgment test measuring teachers’ knowledge about strategies for emotion regulation and relationship management in emotionally and socially challenging situations with students. Results from three studies (N = 166 in-service teachers, N = 73 in-service teachers, N = 107 pre-service teachers) showed satisfactory internal consistency for both the emotion regulation and relationship management subtests. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analyses supported the differentiation between the two facets of social-emotional competence. Regarding convergent validity, results from Study 3 revealed a positive association between the profession-specific TRUST and pre-service teachers’ general emotional intelligence. Furthermore, small to moderate correlations with the Big Five personality traits provided evidence for the discriminant validity of TRUST. In Studies 1 and 2, we found evidence for a correlation with external criteria, that is, teachers with higher test scores reported providing more emotional support for students and having better teacher-student relationships. For teachers’ occupational well-being, we found a link with symptoms of depersonalization and job satisfaction, but none for emotional exhaustion. We will discuss the use of TRUST in research, for the evaluation of interventions, in teacher education, and professional development and will illustrate ideas for enhancing the tool. (shrink)

In this annotated critical edition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda Stefan Alexandru draws upon many hitherto unexplored sources of the direct and indirect tradition, inter alia upon an independent Greek manuscript he has discovered in the Vatican Library.

Organisationsidentität ist ein bedeutender Faktor für die Erklärung der Stabilität und des Wandels von Organisationen. Stefan Kirchner leistet einen grundlegenden Beitrag zur aktuellen Organisationsforschung, indem er mit dem Konzept der Organisationsidentität Ansätze des soziologischen Neo-Institutionalismus und der Pfadabhängigkeitstheorie zusammenführt.

Wenn digitale Technologien wie künstliche Intelligenz, Blockchain und Robotik auf die Medizin treffen, entstehen zwangsläufig ethische Fragestellungen. Diese lassen sich nicht ohne Weiteres mit medizinisch-technologischen, rechtlichen oder ökonomischen Argumenten allein beantworten. Neue Themenfelder wie die sich wandelnde Rolle der Patienten, die neue Verantwortung von Ärzten und Pflegenden, neue digitale Möglichkeiten in der Medizin, Smart Hospitals im Klinikalltag, die gesellschaftliche Legitimität eines möglichen dritten Datengesundheitsmarktes, eine zukunftsfeste Ausbildungslandschaft für den Gesundheits-/Medizinbereich sowie die Grenzen der digitalen Forschung bedürfen einer kritischen und gleichzeitig (...) thematisch breiten Auseinandersetzung mit ethischen Aspekten in der digitalen Gesundheitswirtschaft und Medizin. (shrink)

Das Werk entkräftet das Vorurteil, Kants Philosophie sei für eine Reflexion der kulturellen Welt unzureichend. Klingner entwickelt die Option einer Kulturphilosophie als Theorie technischer Vernunft mit Bezug auf den kantischen Kulturbegriff und auf seinen Philosophiebegriff. Damit erweist sich zugleich, dass eine kantische Kulturphilosophie rekonstruierbar und in ihrem Gehalt auch heute noch diskussionswürdig ist.

This chapter discusses some of the central theoretical perspectives on culture and cultural practices implied in Pragmatism and interactive constructivism. The first part of the chapter highlights three major perspectives on cultural theory to be found in Dewey's thought: culture and experience, culture and habit, and culture and communication. The chapter then compares basic conceptual tools and interpretive approaches and shows that Dewey's work continues to provide fundamental resources in this field. Through this connection, it presents a brief introduction to (...) theories of discourse and power and discusses some implications for current controversies regarding multiculturalism. It argues that Dewey's Pragmatism and the Cologne program of interactive constructivism share a robust interest in culture and cultural diversity. (shrink)

Throughout his philosophical work, Schelling came to increasingly emphasize his conviction that the ultimate principles of philosophy are essentially practical: the ego formally conceived as act in early philosophy, creation as the unfolding of structurally rich action in late philosophy. It remained unclear, however, exactly what constituted the practicality of these principles, namely which concept of action Schelling used and how it is being integrated into the totality of his system. The task this study sets itself is to investigate into (...) these issues in respect to his middle and late philosophy. With the doctrine of potencies serving as point of departure, spirit is first reconstructed as practical consciousness. Creation as an ontotheological original act with the historical world as the space of human action is then systematically developed. Freedom, foresight, purposefulness, intentionality and futurity prove to be the central practical attributes of both human and divine action. Their connection is manifested in the religious consciousness of man and instantiated metaphysically in the relationship of time and eternity. Schelling's positive philosophy shows that these practical aspects are the irreducable prerequisites to render the historical world process intelligible. (shrink)