Ein christlich-religiöses Verständnis des Lebens ist eng verbunden mit dem Bewusstsein der Grenzen eigener Möglichkeiten bzw. einer spezifischen Verarbeitung des Scheiterns am Vollkommenheitsideal. Dieses Wissen ist nicht nur eine Überzeugung, sondern es wird in der Gestalt vielfältiger Praktiken inkorporiert und verinnerlicht. Der Aufsatz entfaltet diesen Zusammenhang am Beispiel der protestantischen Bestattungskultur in Geschichte und Gegenwart.

Salons evoke high-flown associations; we picture elegant people gathering in glamorous settings for cultivated conversations about the arts, literature, and politics. The so-called salons hosted around 1800 in Berlin by bourgeois Jewish women are tied to promises of emancipation and religious toleration. Scholars have either hailed the empowering functions of these convivial gatherings or debunked their enlightened promises as myths. Drawing on the latest research on conviviality in the social sciences, on Friedrich Schleiermacher's theory of sociability, and on writings by (...) and about Rahel Varnhagen, Henriette Herz and Fanny Lewald, this essay approaches the topic of the salon from a different angle. I argue that these women's social endeavours were not tied to specific ends that we can either admiringly endorse or expose as failures from today's perspective. The notions of the female self, of writing, and the conceptions of literature and philosophy emerging from these convivial constellations are inherently dialogical and shifting. Conversations may sometimes break open hierarchies, but they may also foster conflict and no improvement. The value of these encounters, I suggest, lies in the effort made rather than a classifiable outcome. (shrink)

This paper introduces a logic to reason about a well-known model of opinion dynamics in socialnetworks initially developed by Morris DeGroot as well as Keith Lehrer and Carl Wagner. The proposed logic is an extension of Lukasiewicz' famous fuzzy logic with additional equational expressivity, modal operators, machinery from hybrid logic, and dynamic modalities. The model of opinion dynamics in social networks is simple enough to be easily grasped, but still complex enough to have interesting mathematical properties and applications. Thus, (...) developing a logic to reason about this particular model serves as a paradigmatic example of how logic can be useful in social network analysis. (shrink)

This essay wants to provide a preliminary introduction to, and initial contextualization of the sermons of the seventeenth-century Capuchin preacher Geminianus von Mainz. To my knowledge, his literary production has never been a subject of exhaustive scholarship, even though it has been portrayed by some as a typical example of Bavarian baroque preaching from the later seventeenth century.1 More recently, his metaphorical approach to marriage has been commented upon in passing by Ulrike Strasser and Merry Wiesner-Hanks,2 whereas several culinary (...) remarks in his sermons drew the attention of the late German gastrosopher Christoph Wagner, as can be read in the chapter on 'Barocke... (shrink)

Why are negative emotions so central in art reception far beyond tragedy? Revisiting classical aesthetics in the light of recent psychological research, we present a novel model to explain this much discussed (apparent) paradox. We argue that negative emotions are an important resource for the arts in general, rather than a special license for exceptional art forms only. The underlying rationale is that negative emotions have been shown to be particularly powerful in securing attention, intense emotional involvement, and high memorability, (...) and hence is precisely what artworks strive for. Two groups of processing mechanisms are identified that conjointly adopt the particular powers of negative emotions for art's purposes. The first group consists of psychological distancing mechanisms that are activated along with the cognitive schemata of art, representation, and fiction. These schemata imply personal safety and control over continuing or discontinuing exposure to artworks, thereby preventing negative emotions from becoming outright incompatible with expectations of enjoyment. This distancing sets the stage for a second group of processing components that allow art recipients to positively embrace the experiencing of negative emotions, thereby rendering art reception more intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving, more profound, and occasionally even more beautiful. These components include compositional interplays of positiveandnegative emotions, the effects of aesthetic virtues of using the media of (re)presentation (musical sound, words/language, color, shapes) on emotion perception, and meaning-making efforts. Moreover, our Distancing-Embracing model proposes that concomitant mixed emotions often help integrate negative emotions into altogether pleasurable trajectories. (shrink)

Naturalism - the thesis that all facts are natural facts, that is the facts that can be recognised and explained by a natural science - plays a central role in contemporary analytical philosophy. Yet many philosophers reject the claims of naturalism. The essays in this anthology explore the difficulties of naturalism by revealing the ambiguities surrounding it, as well as the tensions that exist among its critics.

The paper maps out an alternative to a behavioural (economic) approach to business ethics. Special attention is paid to the fundamental philosophical principle that any moral ‘ought’ implies a practical ‘can’, which the paper interprets with regard to the economic viability of moral agency of the firm under the conditions of the market economy, in particular competition. The paper details an economic understanding of business ethics with regard to classical and neo-classical views, on the one hand, and institutional, libertarian thought, (...) on the other hand. Implications are derived regarding unintentional and passive intentional moral agency of the firm. The paper moves on to suggest that moral agency can be economically viable in competitive ‘market’ interactions, which is conventionally disputed by classical/neo-classical and institutional, libertarian economics. The paper here conceptualises active moral agency of the firm as the utilisation of ethical capital in firm--stakeholder interactions. This yields a reinterpretation of instrumental stakeholder theory. (shrink)

Previous accounts of how people develop expertise have focused on how deliberate practice transforms the cognitive and perceptual representations and processes that give rise to expertise. However, the likelihood of developing expertise with a particular tool may also depend on the degree to which that tool fits pre‐existing perceptual and cognitive abilities. The present studies explored whether the abacus—a descendent of the first human computing devices—may have evolved to exploit general biases in human visual attention, or whether developing expertise with (...) the abacus requires learning special strategies for allocating visual attention to the abacus. To address this question, we administered a series of visual search tasks to abacus experts and subjects who had little to no abacus experience, in which search targets and distractors were overlaid atop abacus “beads.” Across three studies, we found that both experts and naïve subjects were faster to detect targets in semantically relevant components of the abacus, suggesting that abacus training is not required to exhibit attentional biases toward these components of the abacus. This finding suggests that the attentional biases that scaffold numerical processing of the abacus may emerge from general properties of visual attention that are exploited by the design of the abacus itself. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the clarification of the concept of “typicality” discussed in contemporary philosophy of physics by conceiving the nomological status of a typical behaviour such as that expressed in the Second Law of Thermodynamics as a “minutis rectis law”. A brief sketch of the discovery of “typicality” shows that there were ideas of typical behaviour not only in physics but also in sociology. On this basis and in analogy to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is shown that (...) the nomological status of sociological laws such as Gresham’s Law can also be conceived as “minutis rectis laws”. (shrink)

The Federal Trade Commission has an important role to play in the governmental oversight of mobile health apps, ensuring consumer protections from unfair and deceptive trade practices and curtailing anti-competitive methods. The FTC’s consumer protection structure and authority is outlined before reviewing the recent FTC enforcement activities taken on behalf of consumers and against developers of mhealth apps. The article concludes with identification of some challenges for the FTC and modest recommendations for strengthening the consumer protections it provides.

The Löwenheim-Hilbert-Bernays theorem states that, for an arithmetical first-order language L, if S is a satisfiable schema, then substitution of open sentences of L for the predicate letters of S...

Non-$n$-ampleness as defined by Pillay [20] and Evans [5] is preserved under analysability. Generalizing this to a more general notion of $\Sigma$-ampleness, this gives an immediate proof for all simple theories of a weakened version of the Canonical Base Property (CBP) proven by Chatzidakis [4] for types of finite SU-rank. This is then applied to the special case of groups.

This text considers several case studies of subaltern silence as micro political resistance. Around these examples I thread a theoretical model to explain how performing silences could resist oppression without assuming an underlying well-articulated subjectivity. The article deals with the force of silence, its conditions of possibility, and its position with respect to representation.

Scholarly correspondence can be as insightful as scholarly work itself, as it often documents the motivating forces of its writers’ intellectual ideas while illuminating their lives more clearly. The more complex the authors’ scholarly works and the more troubled the eras in which they lived, the more substantial, and potentially fascinating, their correspondence. This is especially true of the letters between Alfred Schutz and Eric Voegelin. The scholars lived in incredibly dramatic times and produced profound, complex works that continue to (...) confound academics. The communication between these two giants of the social sciences, as they sent their thoughts to one another, was crucial to the work of both men. _A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime: The Correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Eric Voegelin _demonstrates that Schutz and Voegelin shared a remarkable friendship: they first met as students in Vienna in the 1920s and found themselves great partners in discussion; years later they were pushed out of Europe by Nazi pressure and went to work at separate American universities. For twenty years they wrote each other, developing their respective scientific works in that dialogue. The letters bear witness to their friendship during the years they spent in exile in the United States, and they document the men’s tentative attempts at formulating the theories of “lifeworld” and “gnosis” associated with Schutz and Voegelin today. The entire collection of 238 letters was printed in German in 2004, but this edited volume is the first to present their correspondence in English and offers a selection of the most important letters—those that contributed to the thinkers’ theoretical discussions and served as background to their most significant thoughts. Editors Gerhard Wagner and Gilbert Weiss do not analyze Schutz’s and Voegelin’s works in light of the correspondence—rather, they present the collection to create a framework for new interpretations. _A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime_ takes a unique look at two major social scientists. This volume is a valuable resource in the study of Voegelin’s political philosophy and Alfred Schutz’s contribution to American sociology and marks an important addition to the literature on these remarkable men. Showing how scholarly discourse and the dialogue of everyday life can shed light on one another, the book finally presents this correspondence for an American audience and is not to be missed by scholars of philosophy and sociology. (shrink)

This paper argues that social representations cannot be used as independent variables in causal explanations of social behaviour. It is shown that the structure of investigations often follows a causally explanatory design despite explicit statements to the contrary by the researchers. This fact is analyzed with three investigations. It is argued that verbal data used to assess the contents of a representation as independent variable are logically equivalent to data obtained from the “dependent” overt behaviour. Therefore these two kinds of (...) data must be seen as two illustrations of the same representational contents. The researchers’preference for using verbal data to assess the independent variable and the tendency to introduce a causal relationship between representation and behaviour is shown to result from misplacing folk-beliefs. Folk-beliefs about intentional causality, it is shown, pertain to the same level as other beliefs about the world on the part of the subjects. Hence they are part of the folk-representation itself and must be treated as such; their use in scientific accounts of the belief-action relationship is not implied by data on rational belief systems. It is suggested to conceptualize social representations as integral units of beliefs and action which may be used to explain causally subsequent contingent social events. The function of folk-beliefs in intentional causality for the self-concept of rational people and for social accountability is discussed. (shrink)

In the 20th century, genetic explanatory approaches became dominant in both developmental and evolutionary biological research. By contrast, physical approaches, which appeal to properties such as mechanical forces, were largely relegated to the margins, despite important advances in modeling. Recently, there have been renewed attempts to find balanced viewpoints that integrate both biological physics and molecular genetics into explanations of developmental and evolutionary phenomena. Here we introduce the 2017 SICB symposium “Physical and Genetic Mechanisms for Evolutionary Novelty” that was dedicated (...) to exploring empirical cases where both biological physics and developmental genetic considerations are crucial. To further contextualize these case studies, we offer two theoretical frameworks for integrating genetic and physical explanations: combining complementary perspectives and comprehensive unification. We conclude by arguing that intentional reflection on conceptual questions about investigation, explanation, and integration is critical to achieving significant empirical and theoretical advances in our understanding of how novel forms originate across the tree of life. (shrink)

We define an R-group to be a stable group with the property that a generic element (for any definable transitive group action) can only be algebraic over a generic. We then derive some corollaries for R-groups and fields, and prove a decomposition theorem and a field theorem. As a nonsuperstable example, we prove that small stable groups are R-groups.

This paper presents the ‘rationality‐of‐ends/market‐structure grid’. With this grid, the article contrasts, in economic terms, different approaches to business ethics and addresses the question how far and what type of business ethics is feasible. Four basic scenarios for business ethics are outlined that imply different conceptualizations of business ethics. The grid interrelates a rationality‐of‐ends dimension with a market‐structure dimension. The rationality‐of‐ends dimension ranges from opportunism and self‐interested egoism to self‐interested altruism and ultimately to authentic altruism. The market‐structure dimension ranges from (...) perfect competition/no information problems/perfectly dispersed market power to imperfect competition/high information problems/concentrated power. Rather than presenting economic, legal, ethical and discretionary issues in a hierarchical fashion, the grid interrelates these issues. Conclusions are spelled out regarding the empirical observance of business ethics and the programmatic, ‘theoretical’ positions that are behind empirical observations. Practical implications for managers and public policy makers are outlined. (shrink)

Part I: Dimensions of time's enigma -- Is time real? -- Eleaticism, temporality, and time -- The makings of a temporal universe -- Pastness and futurity -- Synchronicity and synchronicity -- Temporal pace and measurement -- Presentness or the present -- Aristotle's real account of time -- Parmenidean time and the impossible now -- Cosmic motion and the speed of time -- Time as the motion of the cosmos -- Time as the cosmos itself -- Time as motion and all (...) change -- Temporal cognition and the return of the now -- Real temporality in an Aristotelian world -- Does Aristotle refute eleaticism? -- Bisection argument I -- Bisection argument II -- Bisection argument III -- Plotinus' vitalistic platonism and the real origins of time -- Temporality, eternality, and Plotinus' new metaphysic -- Plotinus' critique of Aristotelian motion -- Indefinite temporality and the measure of motion -- Plotinus' neoplatonic account of time. (shrink)

Psychiatry as a discipline oscillates between the language of emotions and that of biology; ranging from the immersion into the subjective experience of another person to the objective approach of biomedical science. The tension between these different approaches may seem irreconcilable and confusing to some. This was not the case for Karl Jaspers who pioneered a systematic reflection on the concepts underlying psychiatric theory and practice. In this essay, we engage with Jaspers' thinking and create a dialogue with contemporary psychiatric (...) research and philosophy of mind. Jaspers' conception of erklären and verstehen and his position on research in the neuroscience of mental disorders is brought together with the thought of Thomas Nagel and John Searle. We argue for the compatibility of Jaspers' ideas with Nagel's and Searle's views on the mind/body problem. Furthermore, we look at current trends in biological research in psychiatry through the lens of Jaspers' General Psychopathology, from there we derive suggestions and insights for psychiatric theory and practice. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that doxastic compatibilists are making a strong case for genuine doxastic freedom when modelled on compatibilist free will. Unfortunately, their arguments from analogy can be used for the introduction of rather odd forms of freedom that concern our emotions, e.g. “freedom of fear” and “freedom of anger”. The author argues that this problem of overgeneralisation also concerns free will compatibilists who originally provided the weak conditions that are used by doxastic compatibilists. She (...) points out the possibilities and costs of avoiding these consequences and concludes that the standard compatibilist picture is not tenable. (shrink)

Three years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this article reviews the question of the lasting socio-political significance of the appearance of the virus, much and controversially debated at the beginning. We can see now – maybe rather unsurprisingly – that the expectations of rapid pandemic-related social change, whether positive or negative, were widely exaggerated. Rather, the pandemic has now entered into an interpretation of the global socio-political constellation as marked by a sequence of crises, including the financial crisis (...) of 2008 and after, climate change, COVID-19 and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Thus, the task can be rephrased as asking whether these crises push into a similar direction, namely a re-appreciation of authoritative collective action against the laissez-faire view of extending global commerce and communication and, if so, what the consequences of such a re-appreciation may be. (shrink)

In framing the concept of rational consensus, decision theorists have tended to defer to an older, established literature on social welfare theory for guidance on how to proceed. But the uncritical adoption of standards meant to regulate the reconciliation of differing interests has unduly burdened the development of rational methods for the synthesis of differing judgments. In particular, the universality conditions typically postulated in social welfare theory, which derive from fundamentally ethical considerations, preclude a sensitive treatment of special cases when (...) carried over to the realm of judgment aggregation, especially in the case of probabilistic judgment. (shrink)

The thesis that `1968' resulted in the rise of the individual, on the one hand, and the end of politics, on the other, is critically discussed by interpreting the events of 1968 as a project of emancipation and by distinguishing between the individual and the collective aspects of emancipation.

Pope John Paul II bestowed upon St. Thomas Aquinas the accolade of Doctor Humanitatis, or Doctor of Humanity, because he was ready to affirm the good or value of culture wherever it is to be found. Thomas is a teacher for our time because of his assertions on the dignity of the human person and the use of his reason.. This collection of papers explores the various philosophical and theological aspects of the thought of both Thomas Aquinas and John Paul (...) II pertaining to this theme of teacher of humanity. The topics discussed here include the political praxis of Karol Wojtyla; Gadamer on common sense; prudence and subsidiarity; embodied cognition; the knowledge of God; the commandment of love; Pope Francis on the Beatitudes; the new evangelization; Thomism and modern cosmology; and the challenges of transhumanism and gender ideology. The papers were presented at a conference held in Houston, Texas, USA, in 2013, cosponsored by the Center for Thomistic Studies, the John Paul II Forum, and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. This work will help to realize in its small way the hopes of Saint John Paul II concerning St. Thomas Aquinas: It is to be hoped that now and in the future there will be those who continue to cultivate this great philosophical and theological tradition [of Aquinas] for the good of both the Church and humanity. Additionally, it will undoubtedly be of interest to all participants in the cultivation of the thought of Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II, and the dialogue between Thomism and the modern world. (shrink)

Der gentechnische Eingriff in das vererbbare menschliche Genom, der sogenannte Keimbahneingriff, ist heute noch nicht sicher praktizierbar. Fur die Zukunft verbinden sich mit der Methode gleichermassen Hoffnungen auf die Beseitigung von schweren Erbkrankheiten und Angste vor dem Einstieg in die gentechnische Menschenzucht. In Deutschland ist der Eingriff in die menschliche Keimbahn strafrechtlich verboten. Der Autor widmet sich zunachst der Frage, ob das Verbot unter rechtlichen und ethischen Aspekten auch dann noch aufrechterhalten bleiben sollte, wenn der technische Fortschritt dereinst die gezielte (...) Durchfuhrung von Keimbahneingriffen ermoglicht. Schwerpunkte dieser Untersuchung sind die im Grundgesetz geschutzte Menschenwurde und das -slippery-slope-- oder Dammbruch-Argument. Im weiteren stellt der Autor verschiedene Modelle zur Regelung von Keimbahneingriffen am Menschen auf nationaler und internationaler Ebene vor und erortert deren Vorzuge und Nachteile.". (shrink)