Schlaglichtartig wird in die Biographie eines der wichtigsten Freud-Schüler eingeführt: Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957). Dass dieser aus einem – im Vergleich zu Freud – positiven Menschenbild radikalere Sozialkritik ableitete und offen politisch »links«, dann auch antifaschistisch agierte, trug maßgeblich zum Zerwürfnis mit Freud um 1930 und zur Ächtung Reichs in der IPA ab 1933 bei. Im selben Jahr veröffentlichte Reich seine Schrift »Massenpsychologie des Faschismus«. Dort baut er nicht nur auf Erkenntnissen Freuds auf, er führt diese auch weiter. Reich, der zur (...) Niederschlagung des ­Faschismus beitragen wollte, deckt die Entstehung und Wirkung jener typischen Charakterstrukturen auf, die die Basis der faschis­tischen Bewegungen in Europa bildeten. Ausführlich beschreibt er, wie diese Strukturen durch patriarchalische Sozialisierung, ins­besondere ­Sexualunterdrückung, hergestellt werden. Sein Augenmerk richtet er zudem auf das Wechselspiel zwischen Geführten und Führern: Im Unterschied zu Freud möchte Reich letzteren keine »eigene Psycho­logie« zubilligen, sondern versteht sie als austauschbare Gallionsfiguren, die die – nicht zuletzt neurotischen – Charakterstrukturen einer Masse besonders effizient repräsentieren. (shrink)

The tenets of critical and social realism are well supported in the literature. However, researchers following a realist paradigm have concerns about the lack of methodical guidance for qualitative...

abstract The argument that scarce health care resources should be distributed so that patients in ‘need’ are given priority for treatment is rarely contested. In this paper, we argue that if need is to play a significant role in distributive decisions it is crucial that what is meant by need can be precisely articulated. Following a discussion of the general features of health care need, we propose three principal interpretations of need, each of which focuses on separate intuitions. Although this (...) account may not be a completely exhaustive reflection of what people mean when they refer to need, the three interpretations provide a starting‐point for further debate of what the concept means in its specific application. We discuss combined interpretations, the meaning of grading needs, and compare needs‐based priority setting to social welfare maximisation. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking centre stage in economic growth and business operations alike. Public discourse about the practical and ethical implications of AI has mainly focussed on the societal level. There is an emerging knowledge base on AI risks to human rights around data security and privacy concerns. A separate strand of work has highlighted the stresses of working in the gig economy. This prevailing focus on human rights and gig impacts has been at the expense of a closer (...) look at how AI may be reshaping traditional workplace relations and, more specifically, workplace health and safety. To address this gap, we outline a conceptual model for developing an AI Work Health and Safety (WHS) Scorecard as a tool to assess and manage the potential risks and hazards to workers resulting from AI use in a workplace. A qualitative, practice-led research study of AI adopters was used to generate and test a novel list of potential AI risks to worker health and safety. Risks were identified after cross-referencing Australian AI Ethics Principles and Principles of Good Work Design with AI ideation, design and implementation stages captured by the AI Canvas, a framework otherwise used for assessing the commercial potential of AI to a business. The unique contribution of this research is the development of a novel matrix itemising currently known or anticipated risks to the WHS and ethical aspects at each AI adoption stage. (shrink)

A common coding account of bidirectional evaluation–behaviour interactions proposes that evaluative attributes of stimuli and responses are coded in a common representational format. This assumption was tested in two experiments that required evaluations of positive and negative stimuli during the generation of a positively or negatively charged motor response. The results of both experiments revealed a reduced evaluative sensitivity (d′) towards response-compatible stimulus valences. This action–valence blindness supports the notion of a common valence coding in action and evaluation.

People often struggle with Bayesian reasoning. However, research showed that people’s performance (and rationality) can be supported by the way of representing the statistical information. First, research showed that using natural frequencies instead of probabilities as format of statistical information increases people’s performance in Bayesian situations thoroughly. Second, research also yielded that people’s performance increases through using visualization. We build our paper on existing research in this field. The main aim is to analyse people’s strategies in Bayesian situations that are (...) still erroneous although statistical information is represented by natural frequencies and visualizations. In particular, we compare two pairs of visualization with similar numerical information (tree diagram vs. unit square and double-tree diagram vs. 2x2-table) concerning their impact on people’s erroneous strategies in Bayesian situations. For this aim, we conducted an experiment with 540 university students. The students were randomly assigned to four conditions that are defined by the four different visualizations of statistical information. The students were asked to indicate a fraction as response in four Bayesian situations. We documented the numerator and the denominator of the students’ responses representing a basic set and a subset in a Bayesian situation. Our results show that people’s erroneous strategies are highly dependent on the visualization. A central finding is that the visualization’s characteristic of making the nested-sets structure of a Bayesian situation transparent has a facilitating effect on people’s Bayesian reasoning. For example, compared to the unit square, a tree diagram does not explicitly visualize the set-subset relations that are relevant in a Bayesian situation. Accordingly, compared to a unit square, a tree diagram partly hinders people to find the correct denominator in a Bayesian situation, and, in particular, triggers to select a wrong numerator. By analyzing people’s erroneous strategies in Bayesian situations, we contribute to investigating approaches to facilitate Bayesian reasoning and to further develop the teaching of Bayesian reasoning. (shrink)

Relational egalitarianism is a theory of justice according to which people must relate as equals. However, not just any inegalitarian relation is unjust, i.e., the fact that parents do not relate as equals to their children is not unjust. Whereas an adult treating another adult paternalistically is objectionable from the point of view of relational egalitarianism, parent-child paternalism is not. What may explain this difference in judgment? I refer to this as the Puzzle. I discuss four justifications of the Puzzle (...) and argue that none of them is satisfactory. In the final part of the paper, I discuss where this leaves relational egalitarianism as a theory of justice. (shrink)

Many of our endeavors -- be it personal or communal, technological or artistic -- aim at eradicating all traces of dissatisfaction from our daily lives. They seek to cure us of our discontent in order to deliver us a fuller and flourishing existence. But what if ubiquitous pleasure and instant fulfilment make our lives worse, not better? What if discontent isn't an obstacle to the good life but one of its essential ingredients? In Propelled, Andreas Elpidorou makes a lively (...) case for the value of discontent and illustrates how boredom, frustration, and anticipation are good for us. Weaving together stories from sources as wide-ranging as classical literature, social and cognitive psychology, philosophy, art, and video games, Elpidorou shows that these psychological states aren't unpleasant accidents of our lives. Rather, they illuminate our desires and expectations, inform us when we find ourselves stuck in unpleasant and unfulfilling situations, and motivate us to furnish our lives with meaning, interest, and value. Boredom, frustration, and anticipation aren't obstacles to our goals--they are our guides, propelling us into lives that are truly our own. (shrink)

Faced with the ongoing tragedy of poverty in our world today, many have long called for a common standard of global justice. Such a standard should not be tied to any one particular strand of justice conceptualizations and it should yet be in harmony with the central motivating beliefs of the various concerned moral worldviews. The article reframes global justice thinking by approaching a core problem, namely motivating people to care for distant needy strangers, in a concrete intercultural manner: it (...) sets out to study and compare the motivational underpinnings for an expansion of social justice, in an exemplary fashion, within two long-standing worldview traditions, namely Christian social ethics and contemporary Confucian ethics, in order to gain a more realistic impression of what a commonly shared and motivationally backed notion of global justice may look like. While the former expresses a universal concern for the poor, the latter has recently attracted interest, since Southeast Asian countries managed to lift millions of people out of abject poverty. As both traditions consider loving communal relationships to constitute the foundation of all justice considerations, the article inquires how this quest shapes each tradition’s way to motivate their adherents’ compliance with a vision of global justice. (shrink)

A central claim of biosemiotics is the ascription of semiotic competence to nonhumans. For strange historical reasons, this claim has been quite controversial in much of standard biological discourse. An analysis of ethnographic material from Greenland demonstrates that people regard animals as nonhuman "persons". i.e., as sensing and thinking beings. Like humans. animals are supposed to have knowledge about their environment. Taking this semiotic competence as a fact beyond any doubt enables skilled hunters and fishermen to rely not only on (...) their own interpretation of the environment. but also on the animals' interpretation of their environment The behaviour of fish, seals, and land animals, meditated by their acknowledged semiotic competence, can thus be interpreted as giving signs about the behaviour, e.g., of whales and icebergs. This a priori ascription of semiotic competence is also apparent in discussions about management and regulation of animals. Rather than discussing whether "the stock" is depleted, much of the discourse among fishermen and hunters focuses on whether animals can be semiotically disturbed by what people are doing. (shrink)

The choice construct (choose x: φ(x)) is useful in software specifications. We study extensions of first-order logic with the choice construct. We prove some results about Hilbert's ε operator, but in the main part of the paper we consider the case when all choices are independent.

This chapter presents “Scenic Narrative Microanalysis” and its potential contribution to research on significant interactive moments. It discusses the method’s roots at the intersection of two paradigm shifts. The first is the interactive turn in psychoanalysis, which itself is situated within the overarching cultural context of a performative turn. Second, as an approach addressing short-term interactions, SNMA points to the temporal turn in sociology, economics and technology, the background for microanalytic infant research approaches that have been influential since the 1970s. (...) Finally, the future prospects of interdisciplinary method triangulation within the research group are discussed. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 26, Issue 3, Page 384-390, September 2019.

It is often assumed that Paul Grice, in one way or another, has made an important contribution to the theory of speech acts} Grice, as far as I can see, never expressly addresses Austin’s theory in his published work. He hardly ever uses the speech act terminology of "illocution", "perlocution", etc.2 So what does the more or less implicit Gricean contribution to the theory of speech acts consist in'? There is more than one good answer to this question. I shall (...) concentrate on a particularly influential one, which goes back to Strawson (1964). It says that Austin, in his account of the nature of illocutionary acts, over-emphasized the role of conventions; that Austin went wrong in characterizing illocutionary acts as acts which are essentially conventional. The Gricean contribution to speech act theory, according to the envisaged answer, is twofold, both diagnostic and therapeutic. First, it helps us see where and why Austin went wrong in taking illocutionary acts to be essentially conventional. Second, it suggests an essentially intentional — instead of an essentially conventional- element in illocutionary acts. In his 1964 paper Strawson tried to bring out, as regards the interplay of convention and intention in illocutionary acts, both what can be conceded to Austin and what must be learnt from Grice. Austin (1962: 115) had said that "the performance of an illocutionaiy act involves the securing of uptake". Strawson (1964: 158 ff) interprets Austin as meani_ng to say that the performance of an illocutionary act involves understanding of illocutionary force. Understanding of illocutionary force involves, according to Strawson, grasping a "compleX [speaker’s] intention" (ib.: 160), and it is here, of course, where he brings Gricean ideas into _Austin’s scheme of what the essence of illocution is. He says. (shrink)

In this article, Andreas Reichelt Lind explores the possibilities of a Deweyan account of education for democracy. To that end, an account emphasizing democratic habit formation, direct experience of democracy as a way of life, and the distinction between being and becoming is explicated and discussed. Lind shows how these elements together point to the issue of designing educational environments and then discusses in a preliminary way the implications of this insight from the perspective of education for democracy. The (...) article's contribution is twofold. First, it explicitly contributes to a reconstruction of Dewey in relation to the issue of educating for democracy. This represents a reframing of his writings. Second, it highlights and discusses some theoretical implications of the possibilities inherent in the Deweyan account of education for democracy. (shrink)

Organized immaturity, the reduction of individual capacities for public use of reason constrained by sociotechnological systems, constitutes a significant pushback against the project of Enlightenment. Forms of immaturity have long been a concern for philosophers and social theorists, such as Kant, Arendt, Fromm, Marcuse, and Foucault. Recently, Zuboff’s concept of “surveillance capitalism” describes how advancements in digital technologies lead to new, increasingly sophisticated forms of organized immaturity in democratic societies. We discuss how sociotechnological systems initially designed to meet human needs (...) can inhibit the multidimensional development of individuals as mature citizens. To counteract these trends, we suggest two mechanisms: disorganizing immaturity as a way to safeguard individuals’ and collectives’ negative freedoms (freedoms from), and organizing maturity as a way to strengthen positive freedoms (freedoms to). Finally, we provide an outlook on the five further articles that constitute the Business Ethics Quarterly Special Issue “Sociotechnological Conditions of Organized Immaturity in the Twenty-First Century.”. (shrink)

In recent decades historians of science have argued that observation became something of a way of life in the early modern period. This article expands this analysis by shifting focus from observational practices within natural and experimental philosophy to a number of discourses and practices of self-examination and self-observation in eighteenth-century Germany. While the initial aim of these was therapeutic rather than scientific, therapeutic connotations were partly replaced by epistemic virtues and techniques adopted from natural and experimental philosophy toward the (...) end of the century. The article further argues that the subordination of self-observation to scientific modes of procedure reflected the increasingly radical interest in human subjectivity and, by extension, the emergence of a modern civic and individual self. (shrink)

Are professional roles bound by the norms of ordinary morality? This article begins with a discussion of two existing models that give contrary answers to this question; the practice model detaches professional ethics from ordinary morality, while the translation model denies any real divergence. It is argued that neither model can give a satisfying account of how professional roles ground distinct claims that are morally authoritative. The promise model is articulated and defended, wherein the obligations of professional roles are grounded (...) in an act of self-binding by the profession; the public is the promisee, and thereby entitled to make role-dependent claims. This model retains a connection to ordinary morality, but does not reduce role authority to individual conscience. Legitimate promises bind the role holder even in the face of moral disagreement. (shrink)

Papers by Andreas Bartels, Ansgar Beckermann, Frédéric Bouchard, Thomas Breuer, Bruno Eckhardt, Bruce Glymour, Claus Kiefer, Roberta Millstein and Alexander Rosenberg.

Connexive logics aim to capture important logical intuitions, intuitions that can be traced back to antiquity. However, the requirements that are imposed on connexive logic are actually not enough to do justice to these intuitions, as I will argue. I will suggest how these demands should be strengthened.

This book aims to lay bare the logical foundations of tractable reasoning. It draws on Marvin Minsky's seminal work on frames, which has been highly influential in computer science and, to a lesser extent, in cognitive science. Only very few people have explored ideas about frames in logic, which is why the investigation in this book breaks new ground. The apparent intractability of dynamic, inferential reasoning is an unsolved problem in both cognitive science and logic-oriented artificial intelligence. By means of (...) a logical investigation of frames and frame concepts, Andreas devises a novel logic of tractable reasoning, called frame logic. Moreover, he devises a novel belief revision scheme, which is tractable for frame logic. These tractability results shed new light on our logical and cognitive means to carry out dynamic, inferential reasoning. Modularity remains central for tractability, and so the author sets forth a logical variant of the massive modularity hypothesis in cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper is motivated by the question whether there exists a logic capturing polynomial time computation over unordered structures. We consider several algorithmic problems near the border of the known, logically defined complexity classes contained in polynomial time. We show that fixpoint logic plus counting is stronger than might be expected, in that it can express the existence of a complete matching in a bipartite graph. We revisit the known examples that separate polynomial time from fixpoint plus counting. We show (...) that the examples in a paper of Cai, Fürer, and Immerman, when suitably padded, are in choiceless polynomial time yet not in fixpoint plus counting. Without padding, they remain in polynomial time but appear not to be in choiceless polynomial time plus counting. Similar results hold for the multipede examples of Gurevich and Shelah, except that their final version of multipedes is, in a sense, already suitably padded. Finally, we describe another possible candidate, involving determinants, for the task of separating polynomial time from choiceless polynomial time plus counting. (shrink)

In this paper I review empirical methods applied in recent analysis of decision-making on priorities in health care. I outline a number of discrete methods and discuss their applicability and efficacy in the field of bioethics. Three key methodological issues seem to be important: choice of subject group; choice of approach and the extent of background information given to respondents. I conclude that a combination method is needed to give a comprehensive representation of values in priority setting and thus to (...) meet the overall objectives of empirical ethics. (shrink)

This article argues that it is possible to act paternalistically towards future people, as long as the following requirements are met: the act/choice is not such that it will prevent the future person from coming into existence; the action/choice is such that it can be taken by the future person herself without significant disadvantage to her; and the act/choice is not such that there is significant uncertainty at the time of choice about the preferences of the future person. I argue (...) that the possibility of acting paternalistically towards future people is of practical as well as theoretical importance. This is true since some of the policies we might choose to pursue on behalf of future people are paternalistic, in particular constitutional policies implemented because we do not trust future people to choose wisely. I end the paper by pointing out why it is valuable to approach intergenerational issues through both the paternalistic prism and the prism of theories of justice. (shrink)

Is there a substantial difference between a portrait depicting the sitter’s face made by an artist and an image captured by a machine able to simulate the neuro-physiology of facial perception? Drawing on the later Wittgenstein, this paper answers this question by reference to the relation between seeing a visual pattern as (i) a series of shapes and colours, and (ii) a face with expressions. In the case of the artist, and not of the machine, the portrait’s creative process involves (...) the ability to see both aspects. From the perspective of the image’s viewer, the distinction is more difficult to draw. I address this difficulty by further distinguishing between two attributes of portraits: their representational accuracy, and their ability to convey the artist’s reflection on her experience of seeing the sitter face-to-face. While artificial intelligence can mimic this latter reflective ability, it cannot exactly reproduce it. (shrink)