This paper deals with transcultural ethnic media, that is, ethnic media with at least two additional fundamental benefits: They provide space for and aim at different ethnic communities and connect them to the major society. Additionally, they include inter- and transcultural content and provide professional journalism. Content analyses with particular focus on the conveyed values as well as the perception of such a magazine ‒ biber, published in Vienna, Austria ‒ by traditional print media reveal that in reporting on issues (...) not covered by mainstream media, transcultural magazines promote counter-public spheres on the one hand. On the other hand, they offer the majority society insights into ethnic communities. Mainstream media report much more frequently about such a transcultural magazine than about ‘classic’ ethnic media, evaluate it positively and see it as an important contribution to the media landscape. Overall, transcultural media play an important role in gaining bridging social capital. (shrink)

BackgroundCurrently, intensive care medicine strives to define a generally accepted way of dealing with end-of-life decisions, therapy limitation and therapy discontinuation.In 2006 a new advance directive legislation was enacted in Austria. Patients may now document their personal views regarding extension of treatment. The aim of this survey was to explore Austrian intensive care physicians' experiences with and their acceptance of the new advance directive legislation two years after enactment (2008).MethodsUnder the aegis of the OEGARI (Austrian Society of Anaesthesiology, Resuscitation and (...) Intensive Care) an anonymised questionnaire was sent to the medical directors of all intensive care units in Austria. The questions focused on the physicians' experiences regarding advance directives and their level of knowledge about the underlying legislation.ResultsThere were 241 questionnaires sent and 139 were turned, which was a response rate of 58%. About one third of the responders reported having had no experience with advance directives and only 9 directors of intensive care units had dealt with more than 10 advance directives in the previous two years. Life-supporting measures, resuscitation, and mechanical ventilation were the predominantly refused therapies, wishes were mainly expressed concerning pain therapy.ConclusionA response rate of almost 60% proves the great interest of intensive care professionals in making patient-oriented end-of-life decisions. However, as long as patients do not make use of their right of co-determination, the enactment of the new law can be considered only a first important step forward. (shrink)

Regarding the question of “theory”, the paper takes the perspective of creation, i. e. of producing texts that exhibit theoretical qualities and that in this sense both do justice to a – certainly complex – “function” of philosophical theory and also “work” as theory (namely in a sustainable way, and perhaps also beyond the current scientific orthodoxies) and can thus be received in the long line of the philosophically relevant reading canon. On the one hand, it is proposed to take (...) the project character of philosophical theory seriously. On the other hand, the conditions for the success of philosophical (theoretical) prose have to be looked at carefully. In addition to scholarship and a critical concern with and deep knowledge of discourse, literary qualities are also relevant. There is interplay between time-bound – i. e. historically changing – requirements and a paradoxically persistent style of philosophizing that proceeds despite the plurality of canonical references. “Philosophy”, of course, is not something timeless; it remains something provincial on an intercultural scale and, in principle, something that can be lost. (shrink)

The article briefly introduces an academic debate between two different responses to the predicament of the human in the ecological crisis, namely the object-oriented ontology and the vitalist response to that approach. Based on that introduction, it argues for the need of a complementing analytical tool and sketches the contours of such a tool by suggesting an epistemological tactic for a decolonizing human distinctiveness. The article suggests an analytical maneuver to be used by scholars who aim at decolonizing nature from (...) human oppression, a tool that enables illumination and critical scrutiny of the epistemological role of the human as one stage toward destabilizing the notion of human distinctiveness. The article, thus, introduces an approach where human distinctiveness is not understood as a factual distinctiveness—not an essential difference between the human and the nonhuman world—but where human distinctiveness is critically viewed as a discursive role in theoretical work, a role that can be temporarily put to use by the scholar as a decolonizing epistemological tactic. In other words, human distinctiveness is here tactically used as a tool to critically scrutinize the idea of human distinctiveness rather than to safeguard it. (shrink)

In response to cases that involve tiny probabilities of huge payoffs, some argue that we ought to discount small probabilities down to zero. However, this paper shows that doing so violates Independence and Continuity, and as a result of these violations, those who discount small probabilities can be exploited by money pumps. Various possible ways of avoiding exploitation will be discussed. This paper concludes that the money pump for Independence undermines the plausibility of discounting small probabilities. Much of the discussion (...) on Independence generalizes to other views that also violate Independence. (shrink)

The Special Issue is started with the observation that the tension of mind and society, i.e. cognitive and sociological/cultural dimensions in knowledge production and innovation, is a well-known topic of academic discourse in Science and Technology Studies. The introduction mentions some historical hallmarks of the involved perspectives and discussions to outline the background of the Special Issue. The purpose of its contributions, which are briefly presented at the end of the introduction, is to review this long-existing tension of cognitive and (...) cultural dimensions in knowledge production and innovation in the light of the cognitive and societal changes that have just begun and will have a huge impact in the future. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 188-206.

The topic of this thesis is how we should treat tiny probabilities of vast value. This thesis consists of six independent papers. Chapter 1 discusses the idea that utilities are bounded. It shows that bounded decision theories prescribe prospects that are better for no one and worse for some if combined with an additive axiology. Chapter 2, in turn, points out that standard axiomatizations of Expected Utility Theory violate dominance in cases that involve possible states of zero probability. Chapters 3–6 (...) discuss the idea that we should ignore tiny probabilities in practical decision-making. Chapter 3 argues that discounting small probabilities solves the ‘Intrapersonal Addition Paradox’ and thus helps avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. Chapter 4 explores what the most plausible version of this view might look like and what problems the different versions have. Chapter 5 focuses on one type of problem, namely, money pumps. The Independence Money Pump, in particular, presents a difficult challenge for those who wish to discount small probabilities. Finally, Chapter 6 discusses the implications of discounting small probabilities for the value of the far future. (shrink)

Nebel argues for the Repugnant Conclusion via the “Intrapersonal Repugnant Conclusion,” on which certainty of a mediocre life is better for individuals than a sufficiently small chance of an excellent life. In this article, I deny that acceptance of the Intrapersonal Repugnant Conclusion leads us to the Repugnant Conclusion. I point out that on many views which avoid the Repugnant Conclusion we should discount very small probabilities down to zero. If we do, then Nebel’s crucial premise of Ex Ante Pareto (...) fails, because discounting at the individual level can fail to match up with discounting at the population level. (shrink)

While action selection strategies in well‐defined domains have received considerable attention, little is yet known about how people choose what to do next in ill‐defined tasks. In this contribution, we shed light on this issue by considering everyday tasks, which in many cases have a multitude of possible solutions (e.g., it does not matter in which order the items are brought to the table when setting a table) and are thus categorized as ill‐defined problems. Even if there are no hard (...) constraints on the ordering of subtasks in everyday activities, our research shows that people exhibit specific preferences. We propose that these preferences arise from bounded rationality, that is, people only have limited knowledge and processing power available, which results in a preference to minimize the overall physical and cognitive effort. In the context of everyday activities, this can be achieved by (a) taking properties of the spatial environment into account to use them to one's advantage, and (b) employing a stepwise‐optimal action selection strategy. We present the Opportunistic Planning Model as an explanatory cognitive model, which instantiates these assumptions, and show that the model is able to generalize to new everyday tasks, outperforming machine learning models such as neural networks during generalization. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide an overview of some of the results obtained in the mathematical theory of intermediate quantifiers that is part of fuzzy natural logic. We briefly introduce the mathematical formal system used, the general definition of intermediate quantifiers and define three specific ones, namely, “Almost all”, “Most” and “Many”. Using tools developed in FNL, we present a list of valid intermediate syllogisms and analyze a generalized 5-square of opposition.

The interplay of content and context is observable in a moment to moment manner as propositional content unfolds. The current contribution illustrates this through data from real-time language comprehension indicating that propositional content is not computed in isolation but relies in important ways on context during every step of the computation of meaning. The relevant notion of context that we have to adopt includes all aspects of possible worlds and draws on a variety of knowledge representations, which in a first (...) processing phase serve to generate expectations for upcoming words. In a second phase, the discourse representation is assessed and if necessary updated by means of inferential reasoning and enrichment to reflect the speaker’s intended meaning. (shrink)

There is substantial support for the general idea that a formalization of comprehenders' expectations about the likely next word in a sentence helps explaining data related to online sentence processing. While much research has focused on syntactic, semantic, and discourse expectations, the present event‐related potentials (ERPs) study investigates neurolinguistic correlates of pragmatic expectations, which arise when comprehenders expect a sentence to conform to Gricean Maxims of Conversation. For predicting brain responses associated with pragmatic processing, we introduce a formal model of (...) such Gricean pragmatic expectations, using an idealized incremental interpreter. We examine whether pragmatic expectancies derived from this model modulate the amplitude of the N400, a component that has been associated with predictive processing. As part of its parameterization, the model distinguishes genuine pragmatic interpreters, who expect maximally informative true utterances, from literal interpreters, who only expect truthfulness. We explore the model's non‐trivial predictions for an experimental setup which uses picture‐sentence verification with ERPs recorded at several critical positions in sentences containing the scalar implicature trigger some. We find that Gricean expectations indeed affect the N400, largely in line with the predictions of our model, but also discuss discrepancies between model predictions and observations critically. (shrink)

To address an ethics of refusal in higher education is to wager in the name of future possibles not already governed by the extractive politics of colonial progress and oppressive regimes of knowing and doing. In this essay, Petra Mikulan shows American pragmatism to have always been, in a certain sense, post-Anthropocene in its condition of emergence, bound up with settler colonialism and its extractive geopolitics. However, pragmatism in its speculative trust can also help engage education in thinking of (...) a future that does not belong to a presupposed humanity and its “nature” by dramatizing a certain insistence of educational institutions on maintaining comfort and trust in the “common good.” What is at stake in education facing planetary ecological devastation and intensified racial and social injustices, Mikulan contends, is an ethics of refusal of institutionalized learning, knowing, and doing tout court, particularly if these educational regimes continue to insist on governing what are deemed the only possible (and thus impossible) enactments of education. (shrink)

Die von Anselm von Canterbury in seinem Werk „Cur Deus homo" gestellte Frage nach dem Warum der Menschwerdung und des Kreuzestodes beschäftigte im Mittelalter auch Verfasser deutschsprachiger Dichtungen. Darüber ist bislang wenig bekannt. Die untersuchten Alanus-Rezeptionen, Kreuzesholzlegenden und jene Texte, die den Streit der vier Töchter Gottes behandeln, sind zwar völlig verschiedene Werke, sie legen aber ein ganz bestimmtes Muster zugrunde, mit dessen Hilfe sie einige Gedanken aus Anselms Satisfaktionslehre verarbeiten. Dadurch erreichen auch sie das Ziel, die Schwere der Sünde (...) und die Notwendigkeit der Erlösung aufzuzuzeigen. Sie kristallisieren heraus, daß die Errettung der Menschheit ausschließlich durch die Genugtuung vollzogen und diese nur durch einen Gottmenschen geleistet werden konnte. Die so vollbrachte Erlösungstat erscheint als Akt der göttlichen Barmherzigkeit, die in den literarischen Darstellungen vom Fall im Paradies bis zur Erlösung stets präsent ist.The question, which Anselm of Canterbury formulated in his publication „Cur Deus homo" why incarnation and the Cross-Death ist necessary, engaged in the Middle Ages also authors of german poetry. About that, little is known up to now. No doubt, the investigated reception of Alanus, the legend of the cross piece and those texts, which deal with the dispute of the four daughters of God are indeed different texts, yet they base upon a very certain pattern through which they work up conceptions of Anselms theory of satisfaction. By this adaptation they also achieve to point out the severity of sin and the necessity of salvation. They make evident that the salvation of mankind is exclusively fulfilled by satisfaction, whereby this could be soly accomplished by God incarnate. Beginning with the fall in paradise the fulfilled salvation is always evident in the poetic texts as an act of compassion by God. (shrink)

A review of Karel Stibral’s Darwin & estetika.

Thomas von Aquin behandelt in der Catena aurea jeweils ein Einzelevangelium und kommentiert es durch Autoritätenzitate. Da diese Exzerpte zahlreiche Informationen aus dem Viererkanon zum Inhalt haben, nimmt Thomas stets alle vier Evangelien in den Blick. Sie werden als Ergänzungen und Erklärungen einer Bibelstelle genutzt; insbesondere werden evangelienharmonistische Reflexionen über fehlende und unterschiedliche Aussagen der Evangelisten vorgenommen. Thomas stellt sich in die Reihe der Persönlichkeiten, die bereits dem Vorwurf, die Evangelien enthielten Widersprüche, mit dem Nachweis der Widerspruchslosigkeit zu begegnen suchten. (...) Veranschaulicht wird das harmonistische Bemühen auf der Grundlage der ostmitteldeutschen Übersetzung der Catena aurea super Marcum.Thomas Aquinas deals in Catena aurea steadily one gospel after another. He comments them by quotations of authorities, since those excerpts give numerous information's about the four gospels. Thomas takes permanently all four gospels into consideration and uses them a complement and explanation if each biblical text. He especially reflects missing and distinctive statements. His procedure agrees with those scalars, who tried before to refute the opinion that the gospel texts show contradictions. This harmonistic effort is illustrated in the East Middle German Translation of Catena aurea super Marcum. (shrink)

Over the past decade, the management of clinical trials of pharmaceuticals has become a veritable industry, as evidenced by the emergence and proliferation of contract research organizations (CROs) that co‐ordinate and monitor trials. This article focuses on work performed by one CRO involved in the introduction of new software, modelled on industrial production processes, into clinical trial practices. It investigates how this new management technique relates to the work performed in the clinic to ensure that trial participants comply with the (...) protocol. Using an analytical distinction between ‘classical’ management work and invisible work, the article contextualizes the meaning of compliance in the clinic and suggests that the work involved in producing compliance should be taken into consideration by those concerned with validity of trials, as clinical trials are put under private industrial management. The article builds on participant observation at a Swedish university hospital and interviews the nurses, dieticians, doctors and a software engineer, all part of a team involved in pharmaceutical drug trials on a potential obesity drug. (shrink)

English summary: How can something which is absolutely unrepresentable be represented for the senses? In her studies of historical semantics of the concept of representation between 1750 and 1800, Petra Bahr shows that in the fields of aesthetics and religious theory this was a central question in the 18th century. From the perspective of the philosophy of religion, the significance of Baumgarten's Aesthetica and Kant's Critique of Judgment, two works which as a rule are perceived as competing philosophies of (...) art, has been reconstructed here in such a manner that Kant's lasting reference to Baumgarten's insights remains visible even in his overcoming of them. The discussion concerning the role of the productive power of imagination and the redefinition of the understanding of symbols functions as a link between the two philosophers. German description: Wie wird das schlechthin Undarstellbare sinnlich darstellbar? Petra Bahr zeigt in ihren Studien zur historischen Semantik des Darstellungsbegriffs zwischen 1750 und 1800, dass diese Frage das 18. Jahrhundert nicht nur in asthetischer, sondern auch in religionstheoretischer Perspektive beschaftigt. Die religionsphilosophische Dignitat von Baumgartens Aesthetica und Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft, zweier in der Regel nur als konkurrierende Philosophien der Kunst wahrgenommenen Werke, wird dabei so rekonstruiert, dass der bleibende Bezug Kants auf die Einsichten Baumgartens auch noch in deren Uberwindung sichtbar bleibt: die Rolle der produktiven Einbildungskraft, die Neubestimmung des Symbolverstandnisses und die Umbesetzung des Begriffs der sinnlichen Reprasentation. Mit einem sinngeschichtlichen Zugang wird die reiche und wechselvolle Vorgeschichte rekonstruiert, die die Kritik der Urteilskraft zu allererst als die Antwort Kants auf ausstehende Probleme der sinnlichen Darstellung des Undarstellbaren verstehbar macht. (shrink)

Gustav Theodor Fechner was one of the outstanding German scientists and thinkers. He is well known as eminent founder of a new science Psychophysics —the quantitative study of the relations between physical stimuli and sensations. But it seems that first idea and first solutions of this new science are not the result of hard experimental work but rather of metaphysical speculations. So we found for the first time the important Fundamentalformel in thephilosophical book Zend-Avesta , written by Fechner already in (...) 1851. Therefore this formula may not be the result of hislater experimental efforts, put down in writing in the important Elemente der Psychophysik (1860). In the present paper it was intended to retrace the so called indefinite train of thoughts (Fechner) that leaded him to his strictly mathematical formula. (shrink)

Our article explores the repair practices pilots use to correct various troubles during flights. The intersubjective understanding of action is a salient part of the time-critical activities of aviation. Repairs solve troubles before any accident risk emerges, thus contributing to flight safety. In repair practices, the social and technical environment is interwoven. If remedies concern faulty lines of action, they target the techno-material condition of the aircraft. Such repair practices are not repairs of talk, but remedies of action in a (...) socio-material interaction. We discuss remedies of action as a particular type of repair practice, and outline their role in socio-material interactions. The aim is to continue building a holistic analysis of social action, not just to add a multimodal layer over an analysis of talk. The rethinking of social action contributes to the exploration of social actions anchored to their socio-material environment. (shrink)

GY, an extensively studied human hemianope, is aware of salient visual events in his cortically blind field but does not call this ''vision.'' To learn whether he has low-level conscious visual sensations or whether instead he has gained conscious knowledge about, or access to, visual information that does not produce a conscious phenomenal sensation, we attempted to image process a stimulus s presented to the impaired field so that when the transformed stimulus T(s) was presented to the normal hemifield it (...) would cause a sensation similar to that caused by s in the impaired field. While degradation of contrast, spatio-temporal filtering, contrast reversal, and addition of smear and random blobs all failed to match the response to a flashed bar sf, moving textures of low contrast were accepted to match the response to a moving contrast-defined bar, sm. Orientation and motion direction discrimination of the perceptually matched stimuli [sm and T(sm)] was closely similar. We suggest that the existence of a satisfactory match indicates that GY has phenomenal vision. (shrink)

The present event‐related potential (ERP) study used picture–sentence verification to investigate the neurolinguistic correlates of the online processing of compositional‐semantic information. To this end, we examined context effects on sentences involving temporal adverbial quantification likeJana war jeden Morgen schwimmen an den Arbeitstagen (“Jana went for a swim every morning during the working week”). We tested whether the conceptual complexity associated with quantifying over time intervals leads to delayed predictions regarding the upcoming words in a sentence. The present study replicated previous (...) results relating to quantification over individuals, which are conceptually less complex than time intervals. Analogous to previous studies, false vs. true sentences elicited an N400 whenever contextual cues did not permit a potential revision of a locally assigned truth value. The present results are compatible with an approach under which contextual cues are immediately considered for predicting how a sentence continues. The fact that the contextual complexity did not lead to processing delays indicates that the processing system quickly abstracts away from the conceptual complexity associated with the linguistic input if such an abstraction is possible. (shrink)