Les études sur l’Obéissance à l’Autorité (OtA) de Milgram ont depuis longtemps été comprises comme démontrant que les gens ont une tendance à suivre aveuglément les ordres de l’autorité. Plus récemment, nous avons proposé un modèle d’obéissance basé sur le suivisme engagé (engaged followership), qui suggère que la décision d’une personne d’accepter les requêtes d’une figure d’autorité est basée sur son identification avec cette personne et/ou la cause qu’elle représente. Dans cet article, nous présentons nos raisons de soutenir cette perspective (...) et faisons le point sur les éléments empiriques dont nous disposons actuellement pour la soutenir. Nous indiquons également quelles questions restent posées, et posons ainsi les bases d’un programme pour des recherches futures. (shrink)

In Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit entwickelt Meinong seine Theorie der unvollständigen Gegenstände. Der Begriff der Unvollständigkeit wird eingeführt mittels expliziter Bezugnahme auf den Satz vom ausgeschlossenen Dritten: Ein Gegenstand ist unvollständig genau dann, wenn für ihn der Satz vom ausgeschlossenen Dritten nicht gilt. M. a. W.: x ist unvollständig, wenn nicht für jede Eigenschaft P gilt, daß x P hat oder daß x P nicht hat. Alle existierenden und bestehenden Gegenstände sind vollständig; Gegenstände wie das Dreieck in abstracto oder der (...) Gegenstand etwas Blaues sollen dagegen unvollständig sein. Meinong unterscheidet zwei Arten der Negation:(Ne) Es ist nicht der Fall, daß x p hat. (Externe Negation)(Ni) X hat nicht-P (Interne Negation)Meinong selbst stellt fest, daß in bezug auf die externe Negation der Satz vom ausgeschlossenen Dritten uneingeschränkt gültig ist. Um zu verstehen, was es heißt, daß ein Gegenstand unvollständig ist, erscheint es daher unumgänglich, Klarheit darüber zu gewinnen, was eigentlich mit der internen Negation zum Ausdruck gebracht wird. Es wird eine Interpretation der internen Negation vorgeschlagen, und es soll gezeigt werden, daß es gemäß dieser Interpretation überhaupt keine Gegenstände gibt, die unvollständig im Sinne Meinongs sind. (shrink)

The lymphatic vasculature plays a critical role in the regulation of body fluid volume and immune function. Extensive research into the molecular mechanisms that control blood vessel growth has led to identification of molecules that also regulate development and growth of the lymphatic vessels. This is generating a great deal of interest in the molecular control of the lymphatics in the context of embryogenesis, lymphatic disorders and tumor metastasis. Studies in animal models carried out over the past three years have (...) shown that the soluble protein growth factors, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)‐C and VEGF‐D, and their cognate receptor tyrosine kinase, VEGF receptor‐3 (VEGFR‐3), are critical regulators of lymphangiogenesis. Furthermore, disfunction of VEGFR‐3 has recently been shown to cause lymphedema. The capacity to induce lymphangiogenesis by manipulation of the VEGF‐C/VEGF‐D/VEGFR‐3 signaling pathway offers new opportunities to understand the function of the lymphatic system and to develop novel treatments for lymphatic disorders. BioEssays 24:1030–1040, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In early 2013, the Indian government introduced new rules governing the conduct of clinical trials involving human participants. Among other provisions, the law requires that sponsors of research compensate participants who are injured during the course of their research participation. This article examines the effects of India's compensation law and the efforts that policymakers in India have made to tailor the law since its passage. I use the legal concept of acoustic separation as a framework to explain and justify the (...) approach that India has taken in refining its regulation of research related injuries. I conclude that India's example may provide useful lessons for research sponsors and lawmakers in other regulatory states seeking to promote a well-regulated biomedical research industry. (shrink)

The ethical recruitment of participants with neurological disorders in clinical research requires obtaining initial and ongoing informed consent. The purpose of this study is to characterize barriers faced by research personnel in obtaining informed consent from research participants with neurological disorders and to identify strategies applied by researchers to overcome those barriers. This study was designed as a web-based survey of US researchers with an optional follow-up interview. A subset of participants who completed the survey were selected using a stratified (...) purposeful sampling strategy and invited to participate in an in-depth qualitative interview by phone or video conference. Data were analyzed using a mixed methods approach, including content analysis of survey responses and thematic analysis of interview responses. Over 1 year, 113 survey responses were received from US research personnel directly involved in obtaining informed consent from participants in neurological research. Frequently identified barriers to informed consent included: cognitive and communication impairments (e.g. aphasia), unrealistic expectations of research participants, mistrust of medical research, time constraints, literacy barriers, lack of available social support, and practical or resource-related constraints. Strategies to enhance informed consent included: involving close others to support participant understanding of study-related information, collaborating with more experienced research personnel to facilitate training in obtaining informed consent, encouraging participants to review consent forms in advance of consent discussions, and using printed materials and visual references. Beyond conveying study-related information, researchers included in this study endorsed ethical responsibilities to support deliberation necessary to informed consent in the context of misconceptions about research, unrealistic expectations, limited understanding, mistrust, and/or pressure from close others. Findings highlight the importance of training researchers involved in obtaining informed consent in neurological research to address disease-specific challenges and to support the decision-making processes of potential research participants and their close others. (shrink)

Growth of the Hispanic consumer population in America is changing the marketplace landscape. Due to their considerable buying power, a better understanding of Hispanic consumer behavior has become a necessity. The marketing literature has examined issues regarding religiosity and attitude toward business in regards to consumer ethical beliefs as well as research differentiating consumers on the basis of ethnicity due to their inherently different religious principles. Therefore, the present study contributes to the existing consumer ethics literature by examining the roles (...) of religiosity and attitude toward business in determining consumer ethical beliefs. Furthermore, this study compares the relationships among religiosity, attitude toward business, and ethical beliefs at the sub-cultural level (i.e., between Hispanic and Anglo-American consumers). Survey data compare a sample of 187 predominately Catholic Hispanic consumers with a sample of 127 predominately protestant Anglo consumers. Results suggest a positive relationship between intrinsic religiousness and beliefs that questionable consumer activities are unethical. However, extrinsic religiousness does not impact consumer views as to the ethicality of consumer practices. Hispanics exhibit higher levels of extrinsic religiousness than Anglos, but no difference in terms of their intrinsic religiousness. Results also suggest that Hispanics have a more negative attitude toward business than Anglos do. Implications of these results are discussed. (shrink)

The process of dehumanization, or thinking of others as less than human, is a phenomenon with significant societal implications. According to Haslam's model, two concepts of humanness derive from comparing humans with either animals or machines: individuals may be dehumanized by likening them to either animals or machines, or humanized by emphasizing differences from animals or machines. Recent work in cognitive neuroscience emphasizes understanding cognitive processes in terms of interactions between distributed cortical networks. It has been found that reasoning about (...) internal mental states is associated with activation of the default mode network and deactivation of the task positive network ; whereas reasoning about mechanical processes produces the opposite pattern. We conducted two neuroimaging studies. The first examined the neural bases of dehumanization and its relation to these two brain networks, using images and voice-over social narratives which either implicitly contrasted or implicitly likened humans to either animals or machines. The second study addressed a discrepancy between findings from the first study and prior work on the neural correlates of dehumanization: using a design similar to prior work we examined neural responses to pictures of humans, animals and machines, presented without any social context. In both studies, human and humanizing conditions were associated with relatively high activity in the DMN and relatively low activity in the TPN. However, the non-human and dehumanizing conditions deviated in different ways: they demonstrated more marked changes either in the DMN or in the TPN. Notably, differences between the animal dehumanizing and humanizing conditions were most evident in regions associated with mechanistic reasoning, not in the mentalizing network. Conjunction analysis of contrasts from both paradigms revealed that only one region was consistently more active when participants saw human, a medial parietal region regarded as the central hub of the DMN. These findings provide a neural basis for Haslam's distinction between two types of dehumanization, and suggest that the DMN and TPN play opposing roles in creating a sense of moral concern. (shrink)

Dementia is a growing issue at the end of life that presents unique challenges for advance care planning. Advance directives are a useful and important component of end-of-life planning, but standard advance directives have less utility in cases of loss of capacity due to dementia. An advance directive designed to specifically address end-of-life issues in the setting of dementia can provide patients with increased autonomy and caregivers with improved information about the desires of the individual in question. The Dartmouth Dementia (...) Directive is a dementia-specific advance directive, available online, that seeks to address common concerns of individuals who are planning for dementia-related end-of-life care. This directive was piloted in a community-based workshop, which provided important details and perspective on the best use of dementia-specific advance directives in the greater population. (shrink)

Limited research has been done among pregnant people participating in investigational drug trials. To enhance the ethical understanding of pregnant people’s perspectives on research participation, we sought to describe motives and risk perceptions of participants in a phase 1 trial of ledipasvir/sofosbuvir treatment for chronic Hepatitis C virus during pregnancy. Pregnant people with chronic HCV infection enrolled in an open-label, phase 1 study of LDV/SOF participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews to explore their reasons for participation and experiences within the study. (...) Pregnant people took 12 weeks of LDV/SOF and were interviewed at enrollment and at the end of study. We recorded the interviews, transcribed them verbatim, coded them using NVivo software, and performed inductive thematic analysis. Nine women completed the study yielding 18 interview transcripts. We identified two themes regarding motives and one regarding risk perception. Motives— Women conceptualized study participation as part of the caregiving role they associate with motherhood; participating was viewed as an act of caregiving for their infants, their families, themselves, and other pregnant women with chronic HCV. Women also noted that they faced multiple barriers to treatment prior to pregnancy that created a desire to receive therapy through trial participation. Risk perception— Women acknowledged personal and fetal risk associated with participation. Acceptance of risk was influenced by women’s concepts of motherhood, preexisting knowledge of HCV and medical research, family members, intimate partners, or by the study design. Women enrolled in a phase 1 trial for chronic HCV therapy during pregnancy acknowledged risks of participation and were motivated by hopes for fetal and personal benefit and by lack of prenatal access to treatment. Ethical inclusion of pregnant people in research should acknowledge structural factors that contribute to vulnerability and data deficiencies for treatment in pregnancy. (shrink)

Research on escalation of commitment has predominantly been studied in the context of a single decision without consideration for the psychological consequences of escalating. This study sought to examine a) the extent to which people escalate their commitment to a failing course of action in a sequential decision-making task, b) confidence and anger as psychological consequences of escalation of commitment, and c) the reciprocal relationship between escalation of commitment and confidence and anger. Participants were 110 undergraduate students who completed a (...) series of investment decisions regarding a failing endeavor. Results revealed that although a high proportion of individuals escalate through all decisions, the extent to which they escalated decreased with each decision as they were less willing to invest money in the project. Furthermore, as participants escalated, confidence in one’s decision decreased and anger increased. Lastly, the analyses revealed that the relationship between escalation and confidence is reciprocal. Escalation was negatively associated with confidence, and confidence predicted escalation in the subsequent decision. These results highlight the importance of considering both the determinants and psychological consequences of escalation of commitment. (shrink)

Thema der Arbeit ist der ontologische Status von Werken sowie die Beziehung zwischen Werken einerseits und Aufführungen, Manuskripten, Partituren, Schallplatten, Gemälden, Gebäuden, Drucken etc. andererseits. Es wird angeknüpft an den phänomenologischen Ansatz von Roman Ingarden (aber auch an den von Alexius Meinung). Diese Ansätze werden unter Verwendung moderner logischer Hilfsmittel weiterentwickelt und, wo notwendig, revidiert. Im ersten Kapitel wird ausführlich begründet, warum Werke (und zwar Werke aller Gattungen) abstrakte, typenartige Gegenstände sein müssen, die in konkreten Einzeldingen (z. B. Aufführungen) realisiert (...) sein können, jedoch von diesen Realisierungen in ihrer Existenz nicht abhängig sind. Diese These ist im weiteren Verlauf der Arbeit eine nicht mehr hinterfragte Grundvoraussetzung. Im zweiten Kapitel werden die formalen Grundlagen einer Typenontologie des Werks entwickelt. Zwei Hauptfragen stehen dabei im Vordergrund: (a) Wie kann ein Werk (also ein abstrakter Gegenstand) sinnliche Eigenschaften (z. B. Klangeigenschaften, Farbeigenschaften) haben? (b) Was macht einen Gegenstand zu einer Realisierung eines Werks? Welche Bedingungen müssen erfüllt sein, damit etwas eine Realisierung eines gegebenen Werks ist? Neben dem Begriff des Werks beruht die in dieser Arbeit entwickelte Theorie auf drei weiteren Grundbegriffen: Realisierungen, Konkretisierungen und Aktualisierungen. Realisierungen sind jene Gegenstände, in denen Werke realisiert sind. Konkretisierungen sind abstrakte Gegenstände, die durch "Vervollständigung" aus Werken hervorgehen. Sie sind immer noch unvollständig bestimmt, aber vollständiger bestimmt als die Werke, deren Konkretisierungen sie sind. Beispiele für Konkretisierungen sind Inszenierungen im Theater oder musikalische Interpretationen. Aktualisierungen sind die intentionalen Korrelate von Rezeptionsvorgängen. Sie entstehen im Verlauf der Rezeption eines Werks und werden von den Rezipienten erzeugt. Ein und dasselbe Werk kann auf verschiedene Weisen aktualisiert werden (z. B.: ein Musikstück kann auf verschiedene Weisen "gehört" werden). In eigenen Kapiteln werden Probleme der Mereologie, der Identität, des Darstellens und der Beziehung zwischen dem darstellenden Werk und dem Dargestellten erörtert. (shrink)

In this target article by Morain and Largent (2023), the authors focus on an investigator’s duty to patient-subjects specifically regarding incidental or collateral findings within the context of e...

Despite the growing body of literature on training in the responsible conduct of research, few studies have examined the effectiveness of delivery formats used in ethics courses. The present effort sought to address this gap in the literature through a meta-analytic review of 66 empirical studies, representing 106 ethics courses and 10,069 participants. The frequency and effectiveness of 67 instructional and process-based content areas were also assessed for each delivery format. Process-based contents were best delivered face-to-face, whereas contents delivered online (...) were most effective when restricted to compliance-based instructional contents. Overall, hybrid courses were found to be most effective, suggesting that ethics courses are best delivered using a blend of formats and content areas. Implications and recommendations for future development of ethics education courses in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is an ontological clarification of the concept of artefact. The following questions are addressed: 1. Do artefacts constitute an ontological category of objects in its own right, and if so, how could this category be characterized? 2. How do artefacts come into existence? 3. What kind of artefacts are there, and in which relations do they stand to each other? It is argued that artefacts are characterized essentially through their genesis and that they owe their (...) existence to mental acts of a particular kind, which I call “acts of creation”. It is maintained that there are not only concrete, material artefacts, but also abstract artefacts, that is, artefacts that cannot be perceived through the senses and are not located in space. Furthermore, it shall be claimed that in a sense those abstract artefacts are even primary to the concrete, material artefacts. (shrink)

Terence Horgan's "contextual semantics" is supposed to be a means to avoid unwanted ontological commitments, in particular commitments to non-physical objects, such as institutions, theories and symphonies. The core of contextual semantics is the claim that truth is correct assertibility, and that there are various standards of correct assertibility, the standards of "referential semantics" being only one among others. I am investigating the notions of correct assertibility,assertibility norms and indirect reference. I argue that closer inspection reveals that contextual semantics ultimately (...) amounts – contra Horgan's intentions – to a paraphrase strategy. I defend an ontological commitment to theories and symphonies. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is the relationship between value facts (e.g., that this is good) and value experiences (e.g., appreciation). Its aim is, first, to give a concise account of the value theories of some important early phenomenologists (Franz Brentano, Christian von Ehrenfels, Alexius Meinong), second, to show that they raise questions and put forward arguments that are still worthy of note, and, third, to critically assess these arguments. Among others, the following questions are discussed: Can past and other (...) nonexistent objects have value? Are value experiences feelings or rather desires? Are value properties exemplified by “immanent objects” only? (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag geht es um die Frage, ob wir aus fiktionalen literarischen Werken etwas lernen können. Können fiktionale literarische Werke uns Wissen vermitteln? Wenn ja, wie ist das möglich, und welche Art von Wissen vermitteln uns fiktionale Werke? Es wird argumentiert, dass fiktionale literarische Werke in der Tat Wissen vermitteln können, und zwar, unter anderem, propositionales Wissen über die “wirkliche Welt”.

This paper is a commentary on David Woodruff Smith's "Intentionality and Picturing: Early Husserl vis-à-vis Early Wittgenstein" (S J Phil 40 (Supp), 2002). I address three questions: 1. What is a fact according to Wittgenstein? What is the relation between states of affairs on the one hand and facts on the other? Is a fact an existing state of affairs (as Smith suggests), or is it the existence of a state of affairs, as most of Wittgenstein's remarks on this matter (...) in the _Tractatus suggest? The difference becomes especially important when negative facts are under consideration. 2. How far goes the parallelism between Husserl's and Wittgenstein's models of the thought-language-world relation really? In particular: Is there anything in Wittgenstein that corresponds to Husserl's ideal senses? Do Wittgenstein's thoughts play that role? 3. Do ideal senses have an explanatory function? (shrink)

Ethics courses are most commonly evaluated using reaction measures. However, little is known about the specific types of reaction data being collected and how these reaction data relate to improvements in trainee performance. Using a sample of 381 ethics training sessions, major reaction data categories were identified. Content and course satisfaction were the most frequently collected types of reaction criteria. Furthermore, content relevance and course satisfaction showed strong, positive relationships with performance criteria, whereas content satisfaction demonstrated a moderate, negative relationship. (...) These results and future directions for ethics training evaluation are discussed. (shrink)

Researchers rely on psychometric principles when trying to gain understanding of unobservable psychological phenomena disconfounded from the methods used. Psychometric models provide us with tools to support this endeavour, but they are agnostic to the meaning researchers intend to attribute to the data. We define method effects as resulting from actions which weaken the psychometric structure of measurement, and argue that solution to this confounding will ultimately rest on testing whether data collected fit a psychometric model based on a substantive (...) theory, rather than a search for a model that best fits the data. We highlight the importance of taking the notions of fundamental measurement seriously by reviewing distinctions between the Rasch measurement model and more generalised 2PL and 3PL IRT models. We then present two lines of research that highlight considerations of making method effects explicit in experimental designs. First, we contrast the use of experimental manipulations to study measurement reactivity during the assessment of metacognitive processes with factor-analytic research of the same. The former suggests differential performance-facilitating and -inhibiting reactivity as a function of other individual differences, whereas factor-analytic research suggests a ubiquitous monotonically predictive confidence factor. Second, we evaluate differential effects of context and source on within-individual variability indices of personality derived from multiple observations, highlighting again the importance of a structured and theoretically grounded observational framework. We conclude by arguing that substantive variables can act as method effects and should be considered at the time of design rather than after the fact, and without compromising measurement ideals. (shrink)

Thinking of problems of aesthetics has a long and strong tradition in Austrian Philosophy. It starts with Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848); it is famously represented by the critic and musicologist Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904); and it is continued within the school of Alexius Meinong (1853-1920), in particular by Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932) and Stephan Witasek (1870-1915). Nowadays the aesthetic writings of Bolzano, Ehrenfels, and Witasek are hardly known, particularly not in the Anglo-Saxon world. Austrian aesthetics is surely less known than Austrian contributions (...) to other philosophical disciplines, like ontology, epistemology or philosophy of science. One of the aims of this paper is to show that this is both regrettable and unjustified for the following reasons: Austrian aestheticians have dealt with a number of problems (mainly concerning the foundations of aesthetics) that are salient until today; in terms of subtlety and depth as well as exactness and originality, in general, they easily stand comparison with today's analytic aesthetics; and many of there views and arguments are still worthy of consideration. In this paper, the focus is on a number of hardly known Austrian contributions to aesthetics. These contributions concern the following, partly interrelated, central problems of philosophical aesthetics: i. The problem of the definition of beauty (What is beauty? What does it mean to say of an object that it is beautiful?) ii. The problem of the ontological status of works of art (What kinds of objects are works of art?) iii. The problem of the objectivity of aesthetic values (Do we claim objective validity for aesthetic value judgements, and if so, is this claim justified?) The answers of Bolzano, Meinong, Witasek and Ehrenfels to these questions will be considered. (shrink)

In their target article, Conley et al. (2023) appropriately highlight the ongoing conceptual and practical opacity of public engagement (PE) in the translation of human gene editing (HGE) (Conley e...

The general topic of this paper is the ontological commitment to so-called "fictitious objects", that is, things and characters of fictional stories, like Sherlock Holmes and Pegasus. Discourse about fiction seems to entail an ontological commitment to fictitious entities, a commitment that is often deemed inconsistent with empirical facts. For instance, "Pegasus is a flying horse" seems to entail "There are flying horses" as well as "Pegasus exists" (according to some widely accepted logical principles). I discuss two solutions that have (...) been proposed in the literature. The first one amounts to rejecting sentences like "Pegasus is a flying horse" as false, at least if they are taken at face value. This solution is called the "story operator strategy". It consists in paraphrasing sentences like "Pegasus is a flying horse" by means of the expression "according to a story" such that they are interpreted as an elliptic formulation of, e.g., "According to a story, Pegasus is a flying horse". I spell out the difficulties of the story operator strategy and opt for a realist ontology of fiction. A novel interpretation of the story operator "according to a story" is given, which is not only consistent with but even sheds new light on such a realist ontology. In particular, it is shown how the story operator can be used as a tool to introduce the so-called "modes of predication distinction" (which is an essential ingredient of many realist ontologies of fiction) in a commonsensical way. (shrink)

States of affairs raise, among others, the following questions: What kind of entity are they (if there are any)? Are they contingent, causally efficacious, spatio-temporal and perceivable entities, or are they abstract objects? What are their constituents and their identity conditions? What are the functions that states of affairs are able to fulfil in a viable theory, and which problems and prima facie counterintuitive consequences arise out of an ontological commitment to them? Are there merely possible (non-actual, non-obtaining) states of (...) affairs? Are there molecular (i.e., negative, conjunctive, disjunctive etc.) states of affairs? Are there modal and tensed states of affairs? (shrink)

In our article, we share the lessons we have learned after creating and running a successful legal laboratory over the past seven years at Yale Law School. Our legal laboratory, which focuses on the intersection of law and severe brain injury, represents a unique pedagogical model for legal academia, and is closely influenced by the biomedical laboratory.

As the technology for ectogenesis continues to advance, the ethical implications of such developments should be thoroughly and proactively explored. The possibility of full ectogenesis remains hypothetical at present, and myriad concerns regarding the safety and efficacy of the technology must be evaluated and addressed, while pressing moral considerations should be fully deliberated. However, it is conceivable that the technology may become sufficiently well established in the future and that eventually full ectogenesis might be deemed ethically acceptable as a reproductive (...) alternative to gestation within a human womb under certain circumstances. If the safety and efficacy of full ectogenesis are established, if ethical dilemmas are sufficiently well addressed, and if the technology is offered as a reproductive option to cisgender heterosexual individuals or couples desiring to become parents, there is a moral obligation grounded in social justice to ensure that full ectogenesis be made available to individuals or couples identifying as members of sexual‐ or gender‐minority groups who likewise seek to pursue parenthood. We examine the history of access to current family‐building options, including assisted reproductive technology, surrogacy and adoption, for these populations and conclude that in the absence of robust empirical evidence suggesting an increased risk of harm to children of individuals and couples who identify as members of sexual‐ or gender‐minority groups, equitable access to ectogenesis as a pathway to parenthood for sexual and gender minorities must be assured as a matter of reproductive justice. (shrink)

Eine ausgearbeitete Kunstontologie findet sich bei Ehrenfels nicht, wohl aber Bausteine zu einer solchen. Diese herauszuarbeiten ist das Anliegen des vorliegenden Beitrags. Dabei geht es um die Frage nach dem ontologischen Status von Kunstwerken, um mögliche kategoriale Einteilungen derselben, um Bestandteile und Identitätsbedingungen. Ehrenfels vertritt die Auffassung, dass nicht materielle Entitäten, sondern „Vorstellungskomplexe“ Träger ästhetischer Eigenschaften sind. Ich argumentiere, dass Ehrenfels die Auffassung zugeschrieben werden kann, dass Kunstwerke nicht mit materiellen Gegenständen, sondern mit Vorstellungskomplexen zu identifizieren sind. Im Weiteren wird (...) die Frage diskutiert, ob die Vorstellungskomplexe als mentale Entitäten im engeren Sinn aufzufassen sind (d. h. als Entitäten, die in jedem Moment ihrer Existenz von Bewusstseinsvorgängen ontologisch abhängig sind) oder ob sie von Bewusstseinsvorgängen unabhängige Existenz haben können. Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage wird ein wenig beachteter Text zur Gestalttheorie herangezogen, der eine überraschende Antwort nahe legt. Was die Frage nach den Bestandteilen betrifft, lässt sich aus Ehrenfels’ Schriften die Auffassung extrahieren, dass Kunstwerke aus Gestalten bestehen, die entweder durch sinnliche Qualitäten oder durch Psychisches fundiert sein können. Ich zeige zudem, dass Ehrenfels eine differenzierte Auffassung bezüglich der Identitätsbedingungen von Kunstwerken vertritt: In erster Linie sind die konstituierenden Gestalten identitätsrelevant, doch es können auch Kontexte und Funktionen eine Rolle spielen. (shrink)

In "Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit" entwickelt Meinong seine Theorie der unvollständigen Gegenstände. Der Begriff der Unvollständigkeit wird eingeführt mittels expliziter Bezugnahme auf den Satz vom ausgeschlossenen Dritten: Ein Gegenstand ist unvollständig genau dann, wenn für ihn der Satz vom ausgeschlossenen Dritten nicht gilt. M. a. W.: x ist unvollständig, wenn nicht für jede Eigenschaft P gilt, daß x P hat oder daß x P nicht hat. Alle existierenden und bestehenden Gegenstände sind vollständig; Gegenstände wie das Dreieck in abstracto oder der (...) Gegenstand etwas Blaues sollen dagegen unvollständig sein. Meinong unterscheidet zwei Arten der Negation:(Ne) Es ist nicht der Fall, daß x p hat. (Externe Negation)(Ni) X hat nicht-P (Interne Negation)Meinong selbst stellt fest, daß in bezug auf die externe Negation der Satz vom ausgeschlossenen Dritten uneingeschränkt gültig ist. Um zu verstehen, was es heißt, daß ein Gegenstand unvollständig ist, erscheint es daher unumgänglich, Klarheit darüber zu gewinnen, was eigentlich mit der internen Negation zum Ausdruck gebracht wird. Es wird eine Interpretation der internen Negation vorgeschlagen, und es soll gezeigt werden, daß es gemäß dieser Interpretation überhaupt keine Gegenstände gibt, die unvollständig im Sinne Meinongs sind. (shrink)