Deep brain stimulation (DBS) to different sites allows interfering with dysfunctional network function implicated in major depression. Because a prominent clinical feature of depression is anhedonia--the inability to experience pleasure from previously pleasurable activities--and because there is clear evidence of dysfunctions of the reward system in depression, DBS to the nucleus accumbens might offer a new possibility to target depressive symptomatology in otherwise treatment-resistant depression. Three patients suffering from extremely resistant forms of depression, who did not respond to pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, (...) and electroconvulsive therapy, were implanted with bilateral DBS electrodes in the nucleus accumbens. Stimulation parameters were modified in a double-blind manner, and clinical ratings were assessed at each modification. Additionally, brain metabolism was assessed 1 week before and 1 week after stimulation onset. Clinical ratings improved in all three patients when the stimulator was on, and worsened in all three patients when the stimulator was turned off. Effects were observable immediately, and no side effects occurred in any of the patients. Using FDG-PET, significant changes in brain metabolism as a function of the stimulation in fronto-striatal networks were observed. No unwanted effects of DBS other than those directly related to the surgical procedure (eg pain at sites of implantation) were observed. Dysfunctions of the reward system--in which the nucleus accumbens is a key structure--are implicated in the neurobiology of major depression and might be responsible for impaired reward processing, as evidenced by the symptom of anhedonia. These preliminary findings suggest that DBS to the nucleus accumbens might be a hypothesis-guided approach for refractory major depression. (shrink)

The form of an action has a strong influence on the interaction between humans. According to their mood, people may perform the same gesture in different ways, such as gently or rudely. These aspects of social communication are named vitality forms by Daniel Stern, represent a mean to establish a direct and immediate connection with others. Indeed, the expression of different vitality forms enables us to communicate our affective states and at the same time the perception of these vitality forms (...) enables people around us to understand how we feel in that moment. In the last years of research, different fMRI studies have been carried out to investigate the neural correlates of vitality forms recognition and execution. Moreover, recent psychophysics studies conducted from our research group have demonstrated the presence of an affective contagion effect, during which vitality forms expressed by an agent affect the action perception and the motor response of the receiver. This means that vitality forms expressed by others can influence our mood positively or negatively, modulating as consequence our behavior. Note that vitality forms pervade our lives in a continuous manner and thus they are not expressed and perceived only during social interactions. For example, when we observe an artistic representation at the theatre, the dynamic postures of dancers, together with an alternation of acceleration and deceleration in their movements, communicate to us different affective states. Also when we are in a museum in front of a painting, lines, colors and shapes used by the artist can elicit in us different sensations and modify our attitude. In this view, with the aim to extend the concept of vitality forms from neuroscience and psychology to other disciplines of study, we dedicate part of this review to discuss how art, in all its forms, can be considered a pure expression of vitality forms. (shrink)

We live in the age of postmodernism. What does that mean? With a call for essays, we asked for proposals for a better understanding. At the same time, we were looking for posts that show how the arts have processed and are still processing the change from the modern to the postmodern selfconception of man, which has been described by philosophy since the 1950s to today. This special issue thus demonstrates how architects, designers and artists have reacted to the new (...) socio-politically relevant concepts of postmodernism. -/- With contributions of Simone Kraft on architecture, Arianna Fantuzzi on self-portraits, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen on visual arts in the 1980s, Anna Kristensson on design, Iris Laner on postmodern theory and the work of Jeff Wall, Christiane Wagner on postmodern avatars and finally, I contributed with a text on the deconstruction of the familiar in postmodern theory and the work of Karin Kneffel. (shrink)

This special issue on affordances bases on the thesis, that all natural and artificial things inhere affordances that appeal to our cognitive system, and thus invite us to look at them, perceive them, think about them, interpret them, and use them. The concept roots in the studies of the American psychologist James J. Gibson from the 1960s. According to him, "things" offer a certain range of possible activities depending on their form, time patterns, and material qualities, thus becoming part of (...) human-thing-interactions. However, affordances can also be culturally trained. This aspect has been intensively discussed subsequently within different disciplines (e.g., Social Sciences, Design Studies). But only recently has the concept received attention in the field of Visual Culture Studies particularly through archaeological scholarship. (shrink)

The task of the congress of the German Society for Semiotics in Passau / Germany in September 2017 was to explore and describe "boundaries". A total of 12 sections of the society wrote a call for paper for this purpose. With the present anthology it has to be made evident, how concretely also the boundaries of the own, the other and the foreign can be negotiated via pictures. -/- Papers: -/- - Martina Sauer: Ikonische Grenzverläufe. Szenarien des Eigenen, Anderen (...) und Fremden im Bild. Eine Einführung, 4 - Barbara Margarethe Eggert: Das andere Geschlecht im Altarraum – exklusive Textilien als inklusive Medien. Studien zum Gösser Ornat, 7 - Birke Sturm: Politik der Schönheit: Zur Konstruktion einer ›wissenschaftlichen‹ Bildästhetik schöner weiblicher Körper um 1900 am Beispiel des Gynäkologen Carl Heinrich Stratz, 22 - Melis Avkiran: Das rassifizierte Fremde im Bild. Zur Genese differenzbildender Konzepte in der Kunst des 15. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel des Malers Hans Memling, 40 - Leonie Licht: weiß zwischen schwarz zwischen weiß – Geschichten von Identität im Bild, 75 - Julia Austermann: Queere Interventionen im kommunistischen Polen – Krzysztof Jung und sein ›plastisches Theater‹, 91 - Sabine Engel: Tizians Porträt der Laura Dianti. Aneignung und Transformation zwischen Orient und Okzident, 111 - Anna Christina Schütz: Osman Hamdi Beys Türkische Straßenszene. Der Teppich als Verhandlungsort kultureller Identitäten im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert, 146 - Benjamin Häger, Claudia Jürgens: Ikonische Stadtstrategien. Das Fassadenplakat und die Musterfassade als Instrumente machtpolitischer Repräsentation, 175 - Irene Schütze: Fehlende Verweise, rudimentäre ›Markierungen‹: aufgeweichte Grenzverläufe zwischen Kunst und Alltag, 204 - Stefan Römer: Interesse an und in einem Bildarchiv für Migrant/innen und Flüchtlinge, 221 - Viola Nordsieck: Von der Fähigkeit, einen Stuhl zu ignorieren. A. N. Whiteheads Konzept der Wahrnehmung als symbolisierender Tätigkeit und die Art, wie wir Bilder als Bilder sehen, 239 - David Jöckel: Mythos und Bild. Roland Barthes’ Semiologie bildlicher Stereotypisierung, 255 -/- - Kurzbiographien der Autorinnen und Autoren, 274 - Impressum, 278. (shrink)

How is it possible that emotions in the community can be influenced by media? According to the paper’s concept, this is only understandable if we accept with Marshall McLuhan that media and the human body are not separable. There is no divide. The medium is the message expressed through the body/human being. This has preconditions, because the connection must be based on an analog principle that serves as the transmitter. This lies in non-discursive affectively relevant forms and an equally affectively (...) evaluative mode of perception, as empirical research now confirms. On this basis, as Daniel N. Stern shows, people operate “with vigorous goal-directedness to assure social interactions.” This points to the second premise, that every body/human being – infallibly – perceives a promise in communion with others, namely that of happiness, security, and community. This concept has far-reaching implications for how communities understand themselves, as the research of poststructuralists and frame theorists demonstrates, and as the trial and death of Socrates in ancient Athens attests. (shrink)

Vorbemerkungen: Die Exponenten der spekulativen Ästhetik in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts vertreten die Ansicht, dass eine Begegnung mit den verschiedenen Gegenstandsbereichen der Welt und unsere Einordnung in diese Weltbezüge nur gelingen kann, wenn nicht alles rein zufällig und verschieden ist, sondern vielmehr in einer alles übergreifenden Einheit zusammengehört und einer höheren Idee folgt. […] [Denn] das Schöne steht für den höheren Sinn von allem, was ist und geschieht. In Übereinstimmung mit diesem Grundsatz, jedoch auf völlig anderen Grundlagen, kommen zu (...) jener Zeit Vorstellungen auf, in denen es um den konkreten Nachweis des Schönen, Wahren und Guten in allem geht und damit darum, den betreffenden Wert der Dinge aus ihnen selbst abzuleiten. Es sind die Vertreter der Formwissenschaft, die im Sinne einer exakten Wissenschaft danach streben, diesen Nachweis des Wertes eines jeden (und von allem) aus dem Gegebenen selbst zu erschließen. […]. (shrink)

Lovers do not relate to their beloveds as seats of valuable qualities that would be replaceable for anyone with relevantly similar or more valuable qualities. Instead, lovers take their beloveds to be irreplaceable. This has been noted frequently in the current debate on love and different theories of love have offered different explanations for the phenomenon. In this paper, I develop a more complex picture of what is involved in lovers taking their beloveds to be irreplaceable. I argue that in (...) order to account for the beloved’s irreplaceability, a theory of love must meet two conditions: it must explain the subjective aspect as well as the moral aspect of the beloved’s irreplaceability. I show that current theories of love fail to meet these conditions, either one or both of them, and I offer an alternative account that does - an account according to which love is understood as a special kind of desire for the beloved as a person. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to give a more nuanced picture of the beloved’s irreplaceability, acknowledging in particular that there is a moral aspect to the phenomenon that has not been attended to thus far; second, to introduce and motivate a new desire-based account of love. (shrink)

The phenomenal concept strategy is considered a powerful response to anti-physicalist arguments. This physicalist strategy aims to provide a satisfactory account of dualist intuitions without being committed to ontological dualist conclusions. In this paper I first argue that physicalist accounts of phenomenal concepts fail to explain their cognitive role. Second, I develop an encapsulation account of phenomenal concepts that best explains their particularities. Finally, I argue that the encapsulation account, which features self-representing experiences, implies non-physical referents. Therefore, the account of (...) phenomenal concepts that has strong explanatory power does not explain away dualist intuitions—rather, it reinforces dualism. (shrink)

Traditional grammar and current theoretical approaches towards modelling grammatical knowledge ignore language in interaction: that is, words such as huh, eh, yup or yessssss. This groundbreaking book addresses this gap by providing the first in-depth overview of approaches towards interactional language across different frameworks and linguistic sub-disciplines. Based on the insights that emerge, a formal framework is developed to discover and compare language in interaction across different languages: the interactional spine hypothesis. Two case-studies are presented: confirmationals and response markers, both (...) of which show evidence for systematic grammatical knowledge. Assuming that language in interaction is regulated by grammatical knowledge sheds new light on old questions concerning the relation between language and thought and the relation between language and communication. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the relation between language, cognition and social interaction. (shrink)

This paper develops an analysis of a scalar implicature that is induced by the use of reportative evidentials such as the Cuzco Quechua enclitic = si and the German modal sollen. Reportatives, in addition to specifying the speaker’s source of information for a statement as a report by someone else, also usually convey that the speaker does not have direct evidence for the proposition expressed. While this type of implicature can be calculated using the same kind of Gricean reasoning that (...) underlies other scalar implicatures, it requires two departures from standard assumptions. First, evidential scalar implicatures differ from the more familiar scalar implicatures in that they do not turn on the notion of informativeness but on the notion of evidential strength. Second, the implicature arises on the illocutionary level of meaning. It is argued that a version of Grice’s maxim of quantity in terms of illocutionary strength can account for this evidential scalar implicature as well as for the more typical scalar implicatures. The account developed also proposes some revisions to the taxonomy of speech acts and suggests that the sincerity conditions of assertive speech acts contain an evidential sincerity condition in addition to the belief condition standardly assumed. (shrink)

Alzheimer's disease is the most common neurodegenerative disorder in today's developed world that is also increasingly picked out as a focal theme in fictional literature. In dealing with the subjectivity of human experience, such literature enhances the reader's empathy and is able to teach about moral, emotional and philosophical issues, offering the chance to see situations from a position otherwise possibly never taken by the reader. The understanding and insight so gained may well be unscientific, but the literary approach offers (...) an insight into the whole person's perspective and the particularity and uniqueness of a situation that includes ethical conflicts. A key motif of fictional literature centred around dementia remains the burden the adult-child carer is confronted with, considering the parent's remorseless decline and personality change, the sudden demand for devoted and continuous care, and the constantly changing relationship with the declining parent. In the context of an ever increasing demand for a constructive public discussion regarding end-of-life treatment of demented patients, Christine Devars (Le Piano Désaccordé) and Andrés Barba (Ahora Tocad Música de Baile) illustrate how powerful and burdensome the impact of Alzheimer's disease is on both patient and carer and what extremes may be reached under such truly exceptional circumstances. (shrink)

Argument of this text is that: to develop aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with aesthetics as philosophy of art but with aesthetics of everyday life; to start with aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with beautiful of ‘pure aesthetics’ but with the dramatic; to analyze the dramatic in sport, we should not open the analysis with analogy between theater and sport, but with sport as a sort of performance; to get at the meaning of sport as a (...) drama, we have to discuss different meanings ‘drama’ has in theory and everyday communication; to map the dramatic in sport as performance, we have to discuss some features of sport which determine its dramatics first, and its potential as spectacle later. To proceed with the argument, we have to take into account contemporary state of aesthetics, recent development of aesthetics of everyday life, and theory of performance, together with Bernard Suits’ definition of game, Gadamer’s idea of play, and Lévy-Strauss’ account on conjunctive and disjunctive ritual. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the debate on Composition as Identity—the thesis that any composite object is identical to its parts—is deadlocked because both the defenders and the detractors of the claim have so far failed to take its philosophical core at face value and have, as a result, defended and criticized respectively something that is not Composition as Identity. After establishing how Composition as Identity should properly be understood and proposing for it a new interpretation centered around the (...) novel notion of metaphysical information, I set forth a strategy to defend it that crucially rests on the indefinite extensibility of the domain of quantification. I eventually suggest that “Composition as Analysis” is a name that better reflects the content and theoretical proposal of the thesis that Composition as Identity is supposed to be. (shrink)

Viele unserer Bewusstseinszustände sind dadurch charakterisiert, dass es irgendwie für uns ist (Nagel 1974), in diesen Zuständen zu sein. In der Philosophie des Geistes werden derartige Zustände als ‚phänomenale Zustände‘ bezeichnet. ‚Phänomenale Begriffe‘ sind nun spezielle Begriffe, mittels derer wir uns auf phänomenale Zustände beziehen. Paradigmatische Beispiele für phänomenale Zustände, von denen wir einen phänomenalen Begriff besitzen können, sind das bewusste Erlebnis, die Farbe Blau zu sehen, den Klang einer Violine zu hören oder Schmerz zu fühlen. Zentral ist, dass sich (...) phänomenale Begriffe auf besondere Art und Weise auf diese Zustände beziehen – sie konzeptualisieren sie anhand ihrer subjektiven, phänomenalen Eigenschaften (d.h. anhand ihrer ‚Qualia‘). (shrink)

This paper is an empirical investigation of how Agile and Plan-based companies address teamwork. We have performed an investigation interviewing managers of 64 companies, 23 agile (hereafter defined with the term “agile companies”) and 41 non-agile (“plan-based”). The results of the study evidence a quite different approach to teamwork and team organization. Such differences are mainly in the selection of the developers and in the emphasis of the collaboration in the development teams.

Miranda Fricker’s insightful work on epistemic injustice discusses two forms of epistemic injustice—testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when the victim lacks the interpretative resources to make sense of her experience, and this lacuna can be traced down to a structural injustice. In this paper, I provide one model of how to fill the conceptual gap in hermeneutical injustice. First, I argue that the victims possess conceptual resources to make sense of their experiences, namely phenomenal concepts. Second, I (...) show how one might work the way up in a two-step process from a subjective, phenomenal concept to a novel, public concept. Finally, I discuss the conditions that have to be met for this process to be successful. The resulting model shows a way how the victims might alleviate hermeneutical injustice by developing novel concepts, given that the dominant group does not care about their predicament. (shrink)

According to the neo-Kantian and cultural anthropologist Ernst Cassirer, man always interacts with nature. This assumption forms the basis for his philosophical approach to the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms of 1929. It is based on the thesis that we do not conceive nature as objects (‘Ding-Wahrnehmung’), but immediately feel and suffer nature through the so-called ‘perception of expression’ (‘Ausdrucks-Wahrnehmung’). Thus, our understanding of the world is based on interaction with nature, because feeling and suffering depend on something we feel and (...) suffer about. In conclusion, Cassirer developed already a theory of Enaktivismus, embodiment, and respectively to modern film theories of immersion. The thesis of the following paper is based on these findings of Cassirer and states that that there is no dichotomy between nature and man. (shrink)

Instructions for authors need to be informative and regularly updated. We hypothesized that journals with a higher impact factor have more comprehensive IFA. The aim of the study was to examine whether IFA of journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports 2013, “Medical Laboratory Technology” category, are written in accordance with the latest recommendations and whether the quality of instructions correlates with the journals’ IF. 6 out of 31 journals indexed in “Medical Laboratory Technology” category were excluded. The remaining 25 (...) journals were scored based on a set of 41 yes/no questions and divided into four groups by three authors independently. We tested the correlation between IF and total score and the difference between scores in separate question groups. The median total score was 26 [portion of positive answers 0.63 ]. There was no statistically significant correlation between a journal’s IF and the total score. IFA included recommendations concerning research ethics and manuscript preparation more extensively than recommendations concerning editorial policy and research integrity. Some policies were poorly described, for example: procedure for author’s appeal, editorial submissions, appointed body for research integrity issues. The IF of the “Medical Laboratory Technology” journals does not reflect a journals’ compliance to uniform standards. There is a need for improving editorial policies and the policies on research integrity. (shrink)

Although germline editing has been the subject of debate ever since the 1980s, it tended to be based rather on speculative assumptions until April 2015, when CRISPR/Cas9 technology was used to modify human embryos for the first time. This article combines knowledge about the technical and scientific state of the art, economic considerations, the legal framework and aspects of clinical reality. A scenario will be elaborated as a means of identifying key ethical implications of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in humans and (...) possible ways of dealing with them. Unlike most other discussions of CRISPR/Cas9 germline editing, which are generally based on deontological arguments, the focus in this case will be on a consequentialistic argument against certain applications of germline and somatic editing that takes not only the potential benefits and risks but also socioeconomic issues into consideration. The practical need for an indication catalogue, guidelines for clinical trials, and for funding of basic research will be pointed out. It will be argued that this need for regulatory action and discussion does not stem primarily from the fact that CRISPR/Cas9 germline editing is revolutionary in terms of its ethical implications and potential for human therapy, although this is the prevailing view in the current discussion. Understanding the value and interest dependency of arguments put forward by different stakeholders and learning from past debates related to similar technologies might prove a fruitful method of reaching judgments and decisions that come closer to a consensus upon which society as a whole can agree - which after all should be the true goal of an ethical debate and of bioethics. (shrink)

Do abstract paintings still make sense and if so what do they mean? By reducing the paintings to simple square blots as by Cézanne, to lines as by van Gogh and color traces as by Monet their meaning is fundamentally questioned. But by interpreting these compositions as effective forces or rather affective stimuli a new and different meaning becomes apparent. Landscapes are no longer introduced but made real in the aesthetic experience. Therefore aesthetics or rather aisthetics (perception) can be defined (...) as a notion of experience and knowledge. Thus the notion of an image gets a new understanding: it can be described as an "energetic system". (shrink)

This is the first coherent monography about the life and work of the important Bauhaus master Josef Albers. It aims to discover Albers as a teacher and an artist anew. Thus, 40 years after his death an artist shall be honored, who has had till now not enough attention within the Bauhaus masters. It fall too short to introduce him solely as the teacher and idea provider of the basic course at the Bauhaus. After his emigration to the US he (...) achieved his breakout as an international artist and revolutionized the art world with his oeuvre and his doing. (shrink)

Bei der Lektüre von Theorie der Unbildung. Die Irrtümer der Wissensgesellschaft des österreichischen Philosophen Konrad Paul Liessmann, drängt sich die Frage auf, welche Form der Bildung gegenwärtig noch möglich und sinnvoll ist. Eine Antwort darauf geben Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler aus verschiedenen Disziplinen in diesem Band.

Raimund Bleischwitz and Martina Etzbach respond to the question how the global warming foracested by climate research will change the relations between the North and the South. After a description of ecological and socio-economic implication of the potential catastrophy of a global climate change the authors discuss possible instrument of an international climate policy. The considerations focus on institutional problems, especially on possible actors and borlies responsible for a global environmental policy.

The rediscovery of the thought of Giambattista Vico (1668-1774) - especially his New science - is a post-Revolutionary phenomenon. Stressing the elements that keep society together by promoting a sense of belonging, Vico's philosophy helped shape a new Italian identity and intellectual class. Poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) responded perceptively to the spreading and manipulation of Vico's ideas, but to what extent can he be considered Vico's heir? Through examining the reasons behind the success of the New science in (...) early nineteenth-century Italy, Martina Piperno uncovers the cultural trends, debates, and obsessions fostered by Vico's work. She reconstructs the penetration of Vico-related discourses in circles and environments frequented by Leopardi, and establishes and analyses a latent Vico-Leopardi relationship. Her highly original reading sees Leopardi reacting to the tensions of his time, receiving Vico's message indirectly without a need to draw directly from the source. By exploring the oblique influence of Vico's thought on Leopardi, Martina Piperno highlights the unique character of Italian modernity and its tendency to renegotiate tradition and innovation, past and future" -- Page V. (shrink)