In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein Begriffsrahmen entwickelt, in dem sich Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen drei Arten von Kulturprodukten klar aufzeigen lassen: Dichtung, Mythos und Wissenschaft. Die allen drei Phänomenen gemeinsame Struktur erfassen wir in §II und §III mit dem Begriff eines Repräsentationssystems, welcher in Anlehnung an die formale Modelltheorie semiotische Vorstellungen mit einem Denken in Systemen zusammenbringt. Die relevanten Unterschiede werden durch Differenzierung (§IV) jenes Begriffs festgemacht, d.h. die drei Phänomene werden durch jeweils spezielle Arten von Repräsentationssystemen erfaßt (§V). (...) Unser spezielles Augenmerk gilt dabei dem Mythos (§I), der sich in letzter Zeit eines wachsenden Interesses -- oft außerhalb des etablierten Wissenschaftsbetriebs -- erfreut. Es zeigt sich, daß der Mythos eine Mittelstellung zwischen Dichtung und Wissenschaft einnimmt: als "Bindeglied" vermittelt er sowohl zwischen der rein begrifflichen Struktur der Phänomene "Dichtung" und "Wissenschaft" als auch zwischen deren Unterschieden in Methode und Wahrheitsanspruch (die in engem Zusammenhang mit der begrifflichen Struktur stehen). Der hier entwickelte begriffliche Rahmen soll in weiteren Untersuchungen als Grundlage zur Herausarbeitung von Unterschieden in der Methode und im Wahrheitsanspruch dienen, die sich aus unserem Ansatz in natürlicher Weise ergeben. Diese müssen jedoch aus Platzgründen einer weiteren Arbeit vorbehalten bleiben. (shrink)

Les Prolegomenes a la Philosophie de Platon sont un manuel d'ecole neoplatonicien. Il s'inspire d'un modele dont Proclus a du etre l'auteur, mais l'origine de ce texte est presque surement alexandrine et doit dater de la premiere moitie du Vle siecle. Cette oeuvre est essentielle pour comprendre comment etait diffuse l'enseignement platonicien, et pour mieux saisir le mouvement des idees de l'Antiquite finissante. Dans une importante introduction, L. O. Westerink a retrace l'histoire de l'ecole d'Alexandrie et celle du genre litteraire (...) de ces introductions a Platon et a Aristote. (shrink)

Boyer & Lienard's (B&L's) model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) rituals does not completely conform to our clinical experience with patients, and the clinical implications of their model is not described by the authors. We discuss potential differences of opinion regarding both the nature of OCD and the mechanisms involved in the maintenance of symptoms, and how emotional processing theories can account for treatment effects. (Published Online February 8 2007).

Plato on eros What is love for Plato, and why, after his analysis of eros in Symposium, did Plato take up the subject again, some ten years later, in Phaedrus? This article describes a transtition in Plato’s thinking about eros. In the Symposium, eros is a desire for immortality and a creative power, and it is is elicited by a beautiful person. In the homoerotic case, the lover’s soul is pregnant, and his eros produces the good in the form of (...) poems, laws, philosophical ideas, and virtue. But the philosopher has to gradually outgrow his love for a beautiful body, and turn towards the realm of abstract ideas. In the Phaedrus, by contrast, the beauty of a boy can straightforwardly connect the philosopher to the divine, i.e., perfect and timeless reality. Here, the philosopher does not leave his love for the person behind. On the contrary, the friendship is forever, and it is the conversation between the friends that generates knowledge. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the psychology of moral judgment and its implications for normative ethics and metaethics. Recent empirical findings in moral psychology, such as the impact of emotions, intuitions, and situational factors on moral judgments, have sparked a debate about whether ordinary moral judgments are systematically error-prone. Some philosophers, such as Peter Singer and Joshua Greene, argue that these findings challenge the reliability of moral intuitions and support more "reasoned", consequentialist approaches over deontological ones. The first part of the dissertation (...) reviews these provocative findings and the philosophical reactions to them, which often invoke the notion of 'moral relevance' - the idea that some factors shaping moral judgments are morally irrelevant. The second part develops a psychological account of moral relevance, drawing on theories of the moral domain, the role of emotions, and models of moral cognition. This account reveals the complex interplay of intuitive and reasoned processes in generating impressions of moral relevance. The final part reevaluates the philosophical discussions in light of this psychological understanding. It contends that the evolutionary background of moral intuitions does not necessarily render them inadequate, and that both deontological and consequentialist judgments likely depend on evolved intuitions to a significant degree. Furthermore, the tendency to dismiss certain influences on moral judgment as irrelevant can itself be explained psychologically. Considering the psychological account presented, mind-independent accounts of morality become less plausible. The dissertation concludes that while empirical moral psychology reveals important constraints on normative theorizing, it does not decisively favor consequentialism over deontology. To assess the significance of empirical-scientific findings for ethics, a nuanced understanding of the origins of moral judgments is nevertheless indispensable. (shrink)

While a vast body of research has been dedicated to understanding social problems and psychological disorders, we know remarkably little about the positive aspects of life, the things that make life worth living. This volume brings together the latest findings on the causes and consequences of human happiness and well-being. The book covers a wide variety of disciplines, encompassing evolutionary biology, positive psychology, economics and social science, neuroscience and peace studies. Contributors to the volume include some of the most distinguished (...) scholars in the field: social scientist Robert Putnam, evolutionary psychiatrist Randolph Nesse, psychologist Howard Gardner, economist Robert Frank, the founder of the Positive Psychology movement Martin Seligman, and the economic psychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. (shrink)

The current meta-analysis reviews 24 studies on self-reported emotional reactions to facial expressions in socially anxious versus nonanxious individuals. We hypothesized that socially anxious individuals would perceive all face types as less approachable, more negative, and more arousing. After correcting for biases, results showed that socially anxious individuals, compared to controls, reported lower approachability to all types of expressions and higher arousal in response to neutral expressions. Variances among effects usually could not be explained by the proposed moderators. This suggests (...) that current conceptualizations of social anxiety should take into account the willingness to approach social stimuli rather than global measures of emotion or arousal. (shrink)

The passage of a spin-1/2neutral particle through a region of uniform magnetic field and the corresponding precession mechanism is analyzed from the viewpoint of scattering theory, with particular consideration of the role of the field boundaries.

To be self-compassionate is to show compassion not (only) for others but for yourself. Research in psychology suggests that self-compassion leads to improved well-being and functioning. With the psychological research in the background, we give a philosophical account of self-compassion and its ethical significance. We build a definition of self-compassion, suggesting that self-compassion is different from but closely analogous to compassion for others. Our definition departs from the most prominent definition in the psychological literature but is well-equipped to guide ongoing (...) empirical research. We then argue that self-compassion is a virtue. Self-compassion makes ordinary people happier and more likely to act well, and the self-compassionate person understands and values herself correctly; she sees herself accurately as a needy, vulnerable, limited human whose interests matter. If we are right, then the ethical relationship with self is more complicated than philosophical treatments have so far acknowledged. The virtuous person does not only meet moral duties to herself or exercise permissions to favor her own interests. She also has an emotional relationship with herself, which incorporates enlightened self-understanding and self-care. (shrink)

Technology and Ethics. A European Quest for Responsible Engineering, edited by B. Heriard Dubreuil and his team (University Lille) is in many regards an innovative publication. It is the first fully European contribution to the field of engineering ethics and the result of an intensive cooperation between ethicists and engineers from all the member countries of the European Union. The basic structure of the book is both the distinction and interaction between three levels of analysis: personal responsibility of engineers, the (...) institutional level (business organisations) and the impact of technology on society and culture. On the personal level, the book deals with problems such as the role of professional codes and the fact that engineers must cope with flexibility, shorter lines of decision and erosion of the boundaries between private and professional life. On the meso level, the book deals with different aspects of decision making in the context of business organizations, such as quality management, technology assessment procedures, business ethics committees etc... On the macro level, the authors focus on the power of technology. Together with the influences from other social, economic and political actors, the decisions of engineers change the world in a way which is of moral significance. (shrink)

We investigate two formalizations of Optimality Theory, a successful paradigm in linguistics.We first give an order-theoretic counterpart for the data and processinvolved in candidate evaluation.Basically, we represent each constraint as a function that assigns every candidate a degree of violation.As for the second formalization, we define (after Samek-Lodovici and Prince) constraints as operations that select the best candidates out of a set of candidates.We prove that these two formalizations are equivalent (accordingly, there is no loss of generality with using violation (...) marks and dispensing with them is only apparent).Importantly, we show that the second formalization is equivalent with a class of operations over sets of formulas in a given logical language.As a result, we prove that Optimality Theory can be characterized by certain cumulative logics.So, applying Optimality Theory is shown to be reasoning by the rules of cumulative logics. (shrink)

Standard quantum theory is inadequate to explain the mechanisms by which potential becomes actual. It is inadequate and therefore unable to describe generation of events. Niels Bohr emphasized long ago that the classical part of the world is necessary. John Bell stressed the same point: that “measurement≓ cannot even be defined within the standard quantum theory, and he sought a solution within hidden variable theories and his concept of “beables.≓Today it is customary to try to explain emergence of the classical (...) world through a decoherence mechanism due to “environment.≓ But, we believe, as it was with the concept of measurement, “environment≓ itself cannot be defined within the standard quantum theory.We have proposed a semiphenomenological solution to this problem by introducing explicitly, from the very beginning, classical degrees of freedom, and by coupling these degrees of freedom, through a Lindblad type coupling, to the quantum world. The resulting theory, we call “event-enhanced quantum theory.≓ EEQT allows us to describe an event-generating mechanism for individual quantum systems under continuous observation. The objections of John Bell are met and precise definitions of an “experiment≓ and of a “measurement≓ have been given within EEQT. However EEQT is, essentially, a nonrelativistic theory.In the present paper we extend the ideas of L. P. Horwitz and C. Piron and we propose a relativistic version of EEQT, with an event-generating algorithm for spin one-half particle detectors. The algorithm is based on proper time formulation of the relalivistic quantum theory. Although we use indefinite metric, all the probabilities controlling the random process of the detector clicks are nonnegative. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecent models of social anxiety disorder emphasise the role of emotion dysregulation; however, the nature of the proposed impairment needs clarification. In a replication and extension framework, four studies examined whether individuals with social anxiety are impaired in using cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Self-reports and lab-based tasks of suppression and reappraisal were utilised among individuals with high and low levels of social anxiety. A meta-analysis of these studies indicated that, compared to controls, HSAs reported less frequent and effective use (...) of reappraisal and more frequent and effective use of suppression. Counter to most models and our hypotheses, HSAs were more successful than controls in lab-based reappraisal of shame-arousing pictures as measured by subjective ratings, but not by event-related potentials. HSAs were less successful than controls in lab-based suppression of shame-arousing pictures as measured by subjective ratings, but not... (shrink)

Dogmatic Metaphysics and Tschirnhaus's M ethodology MARTIN SCHONFELD ACCORDING TO STANDARD COMMENTARIES, Tschirnhaus's main work, Medicina mentis, ~ supposedly furnished the methodological basis for the Leibnizian-Wolffian metaphysics. ~ Christian Wolff and his disciples, at any rate, preferred to think so. Wolff taught classes on Tschirnhaus and claimed that he had developed his own tenets on the basis of Tschirnhaus's ideas; Johann Christoph Gottsched praised the Medicina mentis as the basic methodology of the Wolffian enlightenment.3 Mirroring these views, W. Wundt and (...) H. J. de Vleeschauwer saw in Tschirnhaus the inventor of the "geometric method" adopted by the School Philosophers.4 According to M. ' Medicina Mentis, sive Tentamen genuinae Logicae, in qua disseritur de Methodo detegendi incoKaitas veritates, Amsterdam, 1687. Second and revised edition, Medicina Mentis, sive Artis inveniendi Praecepta generalia, Leipzig, 1695. ~For example, cf. Wilhelm Windelband, Geschichte der Philosophie, 3~o-33 and 356; Friedrich Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, III: ~95-97, 3 x~ 34o-43; A. Robert Caponigri, A History of Western Philosophy (Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame.. (shrink)

(1968). L'ENCYCLIQUE HUMANAE VITAE ET L'ENSEIGNEMENT DE VATICAN II SUR LE MARIAGE ET LA FAMILLE (GAUDIUM ET SPES) Bijdragen: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 351-368.

Le propos de cette étude est d’explorer l’interface entre religion traditionnelle africaine et christianisme à l’aide d’une catégorie particulière de sources: les témoignages oraux d’un groupe de femmes chrétiennes de Sobantu, un township sud-africain. Peut-on adhérer à la religion chrétienne sans trahir son identité africaine? Souvent, mais pas toujours, en référence à la position de leur Église respective, chacune de ces femmes se forme une opinion sur cette question difficile.

Trees architectural study shows gradients in the meristematic activity. This activity is described by the number of internodes per growth unit, which is considered as the output of a dynamic random process. Several species were observed, which led us to propose and then estimate some mathematical models. Computing the functioning of a tree in a given environment therefore involves finding the probability function of the meristems and following the evolution of the parameters of this law along the botanical gradients (order, (...) trend, acrotony) within its architecture. (shrink)