Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Values in the social sciences -- Empathy, verstehen and values -- Moral values and qualitative research -- The political values of the research community -- Conclusion: how to do value-sensitive fieldwork -- Bibliography.

In this paper we develop a novel propositional semantics based on the framework of branching time. The basic idea is to replace the moment-history pairs employed as parameters of truth in the standard Ockhamist semantics by pairs consisting of a moment and a consistent, downward closed set of so-called transitions. Whereas histories represent complete possible courses of events, sets of transitions can represent incomplete parts thereof as well. Each transition captures one of the alternative immediate future possibilities open at a (...) branching point. The transition semantics exploits the structural resources a branching time structure has to offer and provides a fine-grained picture of the interrelation of modality and time. In addition to temporal and modal operators, a so-called stability operator becomes interpretable as a universal quantifier over the possible future extensions of a given transition set. The stability operator allows us to specify how and how far time has to unfold for the truth value of a sentence at a moment to become settled and enables a perspicuous treatment of future contingents. We show that the semantics developed along those lines generalizes and extends extant approaches: both Peirceanism and Ockhamism can be viewed as limiting cases of the transition approach that build on restricted resources only, and on both accounts, stability collapses into truth. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a thorough discussion and reconstruction of Bernard Bolzano’s theory of grounding and a detailed investigation into the parallels between his concept of grounding and current notions of normal proofs. Grounding (Abfolge) is an objective ground-consequence relation among true propositions that is explanatory in nature. The grounding relation plays a crucial role in Bolzano’s proof-theory, and it is essential for his views on the ideal buildup of scientific theories. Occasionally, similarities have been pointed out between Bolzano’s (...) ideas on grounding and cut-free proofs in Gentzen’s sequent calculus. My thesis is, however, that they bear an even stronger resemblance to the normal natural deduction proofs employed in proof-theoretic semantics in the tradition of Dummett and Prawitz. (shrink)

Suppose there comes a day when Homo sapiens has evolved into or been overtaken by techno sapiens. Will it then still make sense to speak of human beings as created in the image of God? What is the relevance of asking such a question today? I offer a sketch of the present state of development and discussion in artificial intelligence (AI) and artificial life (AL) and discuss some implications for the human condition. Taking into account both reality and fiction in (...) AI and AL, I hold that, regardless of the degree of realization, issues related to technological evolution inform the cultural agenda—at least the European–American one. I comment on antireductionist arguments and on arguments from philosophy and (history of) culture. I argue in favor of a consonance between neurotechnology and the Christian gospel in terms of realizing the marks of messianic life. However, issues of justice, reason versus nature, and perfection and finitude versus imperfection and immortality call for further illumination. Even though no principal opposition seems to exist between technological evolution and possible interpretations of the concept of the image of God (imago dei), a number of significant dissimilarities need to be addressed, such as the differences between technical improvement and forgiveness or transformation and between immortality and resurrection. The role of irregularity, disturbance, and error for creative processes in nature and culture is an exciting topic in science and technology as well as in theology. (shrink)

Many authors have recently highlighted the importance of prediction for language comprehension. Pickering & Garrod (P&G) are the first to propose a central role for prediction in language production. This is an intriguing idea, but it is not clear what it means for speakers to predict their own utterances, and how prediction during production can be empirically distinguished from production proper.

A central challenge of Amartya Sen’s comparative view of justice is to bring cultural diversity to bear on conceptualizing global justice, which includes building bridges across cultures that enable effective action, and rendering compatible the most beneficent of Rawlsian (or transcendental) intentions with irreducible cultural diversity. For social scientists meeting this challenge requires, first, taking account of variation of social practices in the social construction of meaning, and second, uncovering invisible frontiers of global justice that remain hidden due to conceptual (...) or empirical oversight. The latter is especially true for contemporary International Relations (IR) theory, which assumes state actors to be the main interlocutors in the global realm, and thus precludes consideration of micro-level forms of inter-national relations (understood as interaction among all types of actors that takes place across country borders and that bears traits of national identity). Alternatively, Sen’s micro-perspectival approach offers a welcome support for pluralist approaches that both appreciate non-state access to contestation in the international arena, and account for the meaning-in-use of fundamental norms (democracy, rule of law, human rights) in different cultural and inter-national contexts. (shrink)

The internet could be an efficient political instrument if it were seen as part of a democracy where free and open discourse within a vital public sphere plays a decisive role. The model of deliberative democracy, as developed by Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib, serves this concept of democracy best. The paper explores first the model of deliberative democracy as a ‘two-track model’ in which representative democracy is backed by the public sphere and a developing civil society. Secondly, it outlines (...) the normative concept of the public sphere and its basic ideas, namely the uncoerced communication of equal participants with equal access and equal rights to intervene or propose themes. The third part for discussion shows how the internet could fit into this concept of public sphere and influence the quality of political debates, and emphasizes the important role it can play in the political process. (shrink)

Quipus, knotted structures of woollen or cotton cords, were used as a bureaucratic tool in the Inca state. In the absense of a writing system, numerals and possibly other pieces of information were encoded on the quipus by tying knots into elaborately structured coloured cords. Though interpretation of the quipu contents is far from complete, some information on Inca mathematics can be deducted from the analysis of ancient specimen, especially when combined with the results of anthropological and linguistic research in (...) contemporary Andean societies. In this paper, the quipus are introduced, their structure is explained, and some results on mathematical concepts of the Incas are presented based on a comparison of mathematical and anthropological literature on the subject. (shrink)

What moral claims do undocumented immigrants have to membership? Joseph Carens has argued that illegal migrants with long-term residence have a claim to national membership because they already are de facto members of local communities. This article builds on the linkage between illegality, residence, and rights, but shifts the focus from the migrant to the state, and from membership-based arguments to the rule of law. I argue that the rule of law, as expressed in the principle of legal certainty, provides (...) an alternative justification for the regularization of resident undocumented migrants. The principle of legal certainty recognizes the right of individuals to make long-term plans for their lives by requiring that state action be reasonably predictable and nonarbitrary. Thus, as an expression of legal certainty, both civil and criminal codes have statutes of limitation that place a time limit beyond which most crimes and misdemeanors can no longer be prosecuted, and individuals can move on with their lives. Not only do these statutes recognize the individual’s right to be free from arbitrary state control, they also demand that the state cut its losses and accept the consequences of its failure to act in a timely manner. I contend that, in the absence of a statute of limitation on illegal entry, the deportation of settled migrants constitutes an arbitrary act of state power. The article explores a number of judicial rulings to illustrate the argument’s normative logic. (shrink)

Der Sammelband nimmt erstmalig seit Ende des Kalten Krieges für den deutschsprachigen Raum eine komprimierte Bestandsaufnahme der aktuellen Aktivitäten, rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen, politischen und militärischen Konfliktlinien und Kooperationsräume sowie weiterführender Trends und Herausforderungen im Weltraum vor. Dabei werden zum einen die rechtlichen, militärischen, wirtschaftlichen und technologischen Herausforderungen des Bedeutungszuwachses dieses strategisch gewichtigen Raumes analysiert. Zum anderen werden Handlungsfähigkeit und -bedarf ausgewählter Weltraummächte, ihre Kooperationsmöglichkeiten und Konfliktpotenziale sowie der internationale politische Regulierungsbedarf herausgearbeitet und darauf aufbauend politische Handlungsempfehlungen dargelegt.,,Eine hervorragend gelungene Bestandsaufnahme der (...) umfassenden Bedeutung des Weltraums." Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Karl Kaiser, Harvard University Die Herausgeber PD Dr. Antje Nötzold ist Privatdozentin und wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Professur Internationale Politik der TU Chemnitz. Dr. Enrico Fels ist Geschäftsführer des Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS) der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. Andrea Rotter ist Referatsleiterin für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik bei einer politischen Stiftung. Dr. Moritz Brake ist Senior Fellow am Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS) und Experte für Maritime Sicherheit und Strategie am German Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies (GIDS) als Reserveoffizier der Deutschen Marine. (shrink)

Geographisches Denken hat zu jeder Zeit die Vorstellungen der Menschen von der Welt geprägt. Im weiten Spektrum von Landschafts- und Länderkunde, Regional-, Stadt-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeographie sind die Zeitebenen allerdings ineinander verschlungen und beeinflussen sich gegenseitig. "Weltbildwechsel" ist eine zeitgemäße Einführung in diese spannende Geschichte des Fachs Geographie.

The transition semantics presented in Rumberg (J Log Lang Inf 25(1):77–108, 2016a) constitutes a fine-grained framework for modeling the interrelation of modality and time in branching time structures. In that framework, sentences of the transition language L_t are evaluated on transition structures at pairs consisting of a moment and a set of transitions. In this paper, we provide a class of first-order definable Kripke structures that preserves L_t-validity w.r.t. transition structures. As a consequence, for a certain fragment of L_t, validity (...) w.r.t. transition structures turns out to be axiomatizable. The result is then extended to the entire language L_t by means of a quite natural ‘Henkin move’, i.e. by relaxing the notion of validity to bundled structures. (shrink)

The globalization of production and trade has contributed to the rise in complex global value chains where the reach of state regulation is limited. As an alternative, private regulation, developed and administered by companies, industry associations, and nongovernmental organizations, has emerged to safeguard economic, environmental, and social sustainability in producer countries and along the value chain. The academic literature on private regulation in global value chains has grown over the last decade, but currently few major reviews of the research have (...) been undertaken. This paper examines peer-reviewed research in the relevant disciplines published in academic journals up to December 2011. Our goal is to identify and classify the topics and theories in the global value chain literature. We conclude that the number of articles explicitly examining private regulation, in a global value chain context, is relatively small when considering the importance and growth of these chains in the world’s economy. We also conclude that agriculture, forestry, and apparel manufacturing are the most often studied economic sectors; in contrast, other sectors, such as the information, communication and technology, with their complex global value chains, and often problematic environmental and social conditions, are understudied. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility of resistance under conditions of extreme state power in liberal democracies. It examines the strategies of migrants without legal status who, when threatened with one of the most awesome powers of the liberal state—expulsion—shed their legal identity in order to escape the state’s reach. Remarkably, in doing so, they often succeed in preventing the state from exercising its sovereign powers. The article argues that liberal states are uniquely constrained in their dealing with undocumented migrants. Not (...) only are they forced to operate within the constraints of the international legal order—making repatriation contingent on the possession of identity documents—but the liberal state is also constitutionally limited in its exercise of coercion against the individual. The article concludes that it is those individuals who have the weakest claims against the liberal state that are most able to constrain its exercise of sovereignty. (shrink)

For Seneca, the firmness of the Wise is shown in his ability to remain calm against attacks, as he explains in his treatise of that name. Attacks can come in the form of injustice, iniuria, and disparagement, contumelia; Seneca proves that neither of them affects the wise man. Contumelia is linked to contemptus in definition and conceptualization so that the remarks on how to deal with disparagement contain clues as to what contemptus means for Seneca. The article argues that Seneca (...) understands the term in a double sense: First, contemptus denotes a reprehensible attitude. Second, it designates a kind of indifference which is to be understood in the context of Stoic apatheia. (shrink)

Applied philosophy is experiencing its “golden days,” as Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen says in his insightful introduction to A Companion to Applied Philosophy. Applied philosophy seems to be distinguished from its opposite, pure philosophy, usually understood as traditional philosophy, which deals with subjects such as free will, consciousness, or knowledge in philosophical subdisciplines like ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. To embrace applied philosophy could thus mean to advocate for a philosophy that deals with questions “relevant to ‘the important questions of everyday life,’” as (...) Leslie Stevenson puts it, as opposed to questions that arise from within the subdisciplines of pure philosophy. (shrink)

I explore three challenges for the current dialogue between science and religion: the challenges from hermeneutics, feminisms, and postmodernisms. Hermeneutics, defined as the practice and theory of interpretation and understanding, not only deals with questions of interpreting texts and data but also examines the role and use of language in religion and in science, but it should not stop there. Results of the post‐Kuhnian discussion are used to exemplify a wider range of hermeneutical issues, such as the ideological potential of (...) scientific concepts, the dynamics of interdisciplinarity, and the significance of the socioeconomic situatedness of science and religion. Feminist research analyzes the consequences of the interplay of masculine, feminine, and gender typologies in religion and science. Examples from the history of science as well as current scientific conceptualizations indicate that beliefs in the inferiority of woman form part of our inherited scientific, religious, and metaphysical framework. It is argued that postmodernism in its most constructive form shares the best fruits of modernity, especially of the Enlightenment, while avoiding some of its most serious mistakes. In conclusion, reflecting on the three publics engaged in the dialogue between science and religion—academe, religious communities, and societies—I offer constructive suggestions and critical observations concerning the future of this dialogue. (shrink)

How is it possible to develop an identity that lives from the meaningful relationship to a concrete tradition without falling into fundamentalist self-closure when trying to maintain this relationship? The present study addresses this question by interpreting Alasdair MacIntyre's traditional concept in response to the lack of orientation in contemporary society. The American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre assumes that modern societies can only convey identity through the traditions they contain. He defines "tradition" as a discussion about the correct interpretation of the (...) traditional content. MacIntyre sees coexistence in plural societies as a permanent encounter of different, traditional identities that struggle to convince each other of the truthfulness of their own worldview. The consequence is not blind conflict, but rather the acquisition of cultural language skills: Real encounters occur when a tradition learns to understand its counterpart from its genuine perspective. In this way, MacIntyre makes communicative competence the guiding factor of its model. In conversation with Karl Barth's theology, the study further develops this model from a Protestant perspective. Barth is received as the 20th century theologian who most consistently thought of Christian identity in particular terms. Even more than for Barth, the self-assurance of Christian tradition is being put to the test today. The study develops a model of Christian orientation in pluralism, which is based on the interplay of cultural competence and trust in the sustainability of one's own religious identity. (shrink)

One of the most robust findings in psychopathology is the fact that specific phobias are more prevalent in women than in men. Although there are several theoretical accounts for biological and social contributions to this gender difference, empirical data are surprisingly limited. Interestingly, there is evidence that individuals with stereotypical feminine characteristics are more fearful than those with stereotypical masculine characteristics; this is beyond biological sex. Because gender role stereotypes are reinforced by parental behavior, we aimed to examine the relationship (...) of maternal gender stereotypes and children’s fear. Dyads of 38 mothers and their daughters were included. We assessed maternal implicit and explicit gender stereotypes as well as their daughters’ self-reported general fearfulness, specific fear of snakes, and approach behavior toward a living snake. First, mothers’ fear of snakes significantly correlated with their daughters’ fear of snakes. Second, mothers’ gender stereotypes significantly correlated with their daughters’ self-reported fear. Specifically, maternal implicit gender stereotypes were associated with daughters’ fear of snakes and fear ratings in response to the snake. Moreover, in children, self-reported fear correlated with avoidance of the fear-relevant animal. Together, these results provide first evidence for a potential role of parental gender stereotypes in the development and maintenance of fear in their offspring. (shrink)

Die Studie untersucht Gottesbilder von Kindern und Jugendlichen. Im Zentrum stehen Zeichnungen von Sechst- und Zehntklässlern, die Brüche und Spannungen enthalten. Ungewohnte Darstellungen kommen zum Vorschein: Gott nimmt beispielsweise eine Auszeit, er beschützt und überwacht die Welt oder er erscheint als Fata Morgana. Die Untersuchung orientiert sich methodologisch an der dokumentarischen Bild- und Textinterpretation: Sie schafft erstmals Einsichten in das Ringen von Kindern und Jugendlichen um die eigene Gottesvorstellung. Im Fokus steht die Frage, inwiefern Kinder und Jugendliche von sich aus (...) theologisieren. Ermöglicht der empirische Zugriff, besondere Typen des Gottesbildes zu identifizieren, so greifen exemplarisch ausgewählte systematisch-theologische Modelle diese Problemstellungen auf. Deren reflektierte Anwendung eröffnet die Möglichkeit, ein passgenaues Setting für ein weiteres Theologisieren zu konturieren. (shrink)

Wie kam der Mensch zu der Vorstellung, dass es Götter gibt? Enthält die Sprache des Mythos Hinweise auf Ursprung und Entwicklung des religiösen Denkens? In einer wissenschaftshistorischen Studie wird hier die Theorie des Klassischen Philologen Hermann Usener (1834-1905) vom Ursprung der Religion (1896) und deren Rezeption in den Werken von Albrecht Dieterich, Ludwig Radermacher, Aby Warburg und Walter F. Otto untersucht. Mit seiner strukturanalytisch entwickelten Lehre von der religiösen Begriffsbildung hat Usener die seit der Romantik geführte Ursprungsdebatte neu aufgerollt und (...) dazu inspiriert, sein Projekt aufzugreifen und kritisch fortzuschreiben. (shrink)

Stress-related psychopathology is on the rise, and there is a pressing need for improved prevention strategies. Positive appraisal style, the tendency to appraise potentially threatening situations in a positive way, has been proposed to act as a key resilience mechanism and therefore offers a potential target for preventive approaches. In this article, we review n = 99 studies investigating associations of positive cognitive reappraisal, an important sub-facet of positive appraisal style, with outcome-based resilience and relevant other outcomes, which are considered (...) resilience-related. According to the studies reviewed, positive cognitive reappraisal moderates the relation between stressors and negative outcomes and is positively related to several resilience-related outcomes. It also mediates between other resilience factors and resilience, suggesting it is a proximal resilience factor. (shrink)

Aus geteilten Zeiten: Studien zur Nanbeichao-Periode. Geburtstagsgabe für Shing Müller 宋馨. Edited by Roderich Ptak. Deutsche Ostasienstudien, vol. 35. Gossenberg: Ostasien Verlag, 2020. Pp. vi + 216. €29.

Digitalization and the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will bring about substantial changes in all aspects of life. This happens in a world marked by the poisonous synergy of five Ps, polarization, populism, protectionism, post‐truth, patriarchy, as well as an ambiguous interplay of secularization and new visibility of religion.If development of AI is to be beneficial for people and planet a number of challenges must be met. In this regard, religion‐and‐science dialogue needs improvement in making things not only intellectually but (...) also spiritually fit. Ethics should be involved from the beginning rather than being called upon first when problems arise. Faith communities have a prophetical, diaconal, ethical, and theological role.Based on the characterization of life as a fourfold web of relationality, personal, social, political, as well as global issues are identified and discussed. These include mental health disorders, addiction, manipulation, and self‐exploitation. Reflections on leadership suggest resilience, coexistence, and hope as theological key components for navigating the uncharted realms of the digital age. (shrink)