One crucial design characteristic of auditory texts embedded in instructional videos is the speaker gender, which has received some attention from empirical researcher in the recent years. Contrary to the theoretical assumption that similarity between the speaker’s and the learner’s gender might positively affect learning outcomes, the findings have often been mixed, showing null to contrary effects. Notwithstanding the effect on the outcomes, a closer look at how the speaker’s gender and speaker–learner similarities further determine cognitive variables, such as different (...) cognitive load types, is overdue. Moreover, on the part of the learner, the role of situational interest in the learning topic that might be gender related has been neglected so far. Therefore, this study explored the role of speaker and learner gender and their interaction regarding learning outcomes. We broaden our perspective by investigating the effects of gender-related differences concerning situational interest in the topic being taught and by determining different types of cognitive load. In a 2 (female/male speaker) × 2 (female/male learner) within- and between-subject design, 95 students learned about female and male human sexual maturity with an instructional video containing auditory explanations. Analysis results indicate that speaker gender and speaker–learner gender similarity had no impact on learning gains, situational interest, and cognitive load types. However, the results demonstrate that learner’s gender, especially for the topic of female sexual maturity, matters the most in line with the assessed variables. Compared with males, females had higher learning gains, reported higher interest in the topic, and invested more germane cognitive resources. Thus, instructional designers may want to consider learner gender-dependent interest and how it can be triggered when creating videos with auditory explanations. (shrink)

Mitochondria and peroxisomes are essential subcellular organelles in mammals. Despite obvious differences, both organelles display certain morphological and functional similarities. Recent studies have elucidated that these highly dynamic and plastic organelles share components of their division machinery. Mitochondria and peroxisomes are metabolically linked organelles, which are cooperating and cross‐talking. This review addresses the dynamics and division of mitochondria and peroxisomes as well as their functional similarities to provide insight as to why these organelles share the fission machinery in evolutionary aspects.© (...) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for an account of the evolution of human values according to which it is only through the resolution of local conflicts that broader social values develop. Global issues can only be understood as issues of increasingly broadening our understanding of the local, our understanding of who are the neighbors with whom we must productively and amicably engage. My analysis argues primarily for open dialogue based on listening carefully and maintaining a strong awareness of our own (...) areas of systematic blindness to those with whom we disagree. While my approach offers no recipe here to guarantee successful resolution to value conflict, any other approach is far more likely to lead to failure. (shrink)

So far as his critical employment of the concept is concerned, the thing in itself is not a second object. The thing in itself is given in its appearances; it is the object which appears. In other words, the object is taken in a twofold sense. There is no contradiction, Kant maintained, in supposing that one and the same will is, as an appearance, determined by the laws of nature and yet, as a thing in itself, is free. He never (...) meant to hold that the self of the theoretical reason and the self of the practical reason are two separate and distinct entities. It is one and the same object considered from two perspectives. In this sense the thing in itself is purely a limiting concept. So far as the critical method is concerned, objects are always considered from a particular and limited perspective, e.g. science, morality, art, et cetera. This is the central meaning of his theory of appearances. In this employment of the concept it is completely meaningless to speak of the thing in itself as a cause of appearances. The critical distinction between appearances and things in themselves is not intended to be a distinction between subjective sense data and public objects, but between public objects as given according to two or more modes. This involves no extension of the category of causality beyond appearances. Moreover, it is not open to the charge that an unknown object is given the attribute of existence. The thing in itself is known as an appearance. By definition that is the only way that it could be known. To say that we know only appearances and not things in themselves is to state an obvious tautology, namely that objects are known only as they are known. (shrink)

While unicellular microbes such as phytoplankton (marine algae) have long been considered immortal unless eaten by predators, recent research suggests that under specific conditions entire populations of phytoplankton actively kill themselves; their assumed atemporality is being revised as marine ecologists recognize phytoplankton’s important role in the global carbon cycle. Drawing on empirical research into programmed cell death in marine microbes, this article explores how, in their study of microbial death, scientists change not only our understanding of microbial temporality, but also (...) reconstruct the relationship between life and death, biological individuality and assumptions about a natural teleology associated with bounded biological systems and genetic programmes. Reading this research together with a Derridean deconstruction of the limit between human and other animals with respect to death, this article explores how the deconstruction of individuality from within biology may suggest alternatives to our anthropocentric notion of time and embodiment. (shrink)

Having indicated my own enthusiasm for the project, I must hasten to add that it is precisely the explicit philosophical concern of existential psychoanalysis which constitutes its greatest vulnerability. No matter how strong one's interest in metaphysics may be and, hence, his initial sympathy with the metaphysical component in existential psychoanalysis, if one is critical and honest he cannot long avoid the question: what will be the results for psychoanalysis as a science? Two considerations are bound to give the philosopher (...) pause: Modern experimental science deliberately and willfully cut itself free from metaphysical speculation; up to the point where it failed to take this step, its progress was minimal. There are, I think, obvious dangers involved in empirical science either becoming too explicitly metaphysical or attempting to adapt itself to an antecedently available metaphysical system. I do not mean to suggest that metaphysics has not or cannot contribute to natural science, but only to underscore the fact that natural science has attained at least a relative autonomy. The physicist develops his own metaphysics to serve his own purposes and there is good reason to believe that he is well advised in doing so. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Divine Person" as Analogous NameDylan SchraderThe position of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Thomistic school that human beings cannot name God and creatures univocally is well-known.1 This includes the term "person," which is predicated of the Trinity, of angels, and of human beings truly but analogically. In contrast, it might seem that, when speaking of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in respect of one another, "divine person" must (...) be univocal.2 [End Page 217]The seventeenth-century Discalced Carmelites of Salamanca (the Salmanticenses) thought otherwise. They argued that the ratio3 of "divine person" is common to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit not univocally, but analogically, and that this follows from established Thomistic principles.4 Their position makes for an interesting case study in religious language, as the Salmanticenses apply a highly developed material logic to the central mystery of Christian faith.Words, Concepts, and ThingsIn On Interpretation (Peri hermeneias), Aristotle explains that words immediately signify concepts and, by means of concepts, things.5 This so-called "semantic triangle" makes it easy to misunderstand univocity and analogy if we do not first determine how a particular thinker conceives of the relationship among words, concepts, and things. To discern how the Salmanticenses understood this relationship, it is most helpful to look to their counterparts, the Discalced Carmelites at neighboring Alcalá de Henares outside Madrid, commonly called the Complutenses.6 The Complutenses' Artium cursus [End Page 218] serves as philosophical handmaid to the Salmanticenses' Cursus theologicus, and is therefore essential for correctly interpreting the latter's claims about grammar, logic, and metaphysics.7To begin with the verbal element, this is how the Complutenses, following a fairly typical account, explain the difference between a vocal sound, a name, and a term: A vocal sound (vox) is speech considered simply as an audible phenomenon, the pure sound wave. A name (nomen) is a vocal sound that signifies something. A term (terminus) is a name insofar as it serves as one end of a proposition.8 Terms may be purely mental (as when a proposition is conceived of in the mind alone), or they may be spoken or written.Names and terms are useful precisely because they signify. The Complutenses define "signifying" (significare) as "representing to the knowing power something other than [the signifier] itself."9 A name or term points beyond itself so that something else can become known to the mind through that name or term.When it comes to spoken (or written) terms, a term is "common" (communis) if it signifies more than one thing. Common terms may be "non-transcendent" (non transcendens) or "transcendent" (transcendens). Common terms are non-transcendent if they are predicated of certain things (such as "man" or "animal"). They are transcendent if they are predicated of all things. Six terms are usually acknowledged to be transcendent: "being" (ens); "thing" (res); "true" (verum); "good" (bonum); "something" (aliquid); and "one" (unum).10 [End Page 219]Here it is necessary to distinguish first and second "intention" (intentio).11 The Carmelites take "first intention" properly to be the act whereby the intellect knows things in accord with what is in them as realities.12 This act of the intellect is the "formal first intention," while the thing known is the "objective first intention." A name signifying a thing in this way is a "name of first intention."But the intellect can also attend to those things not in accord with what is in them from their own perspective as realities, but instead with reference to their character as acted upon by the intellect itself. This act is called "second intention."13 An example of first intention is the intellect's knowing that "man is an animal," whereas an example of second intention is its knowing that "'animal' is a genus."The Complutenses stress that first and second intention are, properly speaking, acts of the intellect—distinct ways of attending to what it knows—even though logicians often use "first intention" and "second intention" as shorthand to refer to the objects of these acts.14 In fact, because objective second intentions (the objects of the intellect's second-intentional acts) are beings of reason... (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Über den Stand der indischen Philosophie zur Zeit Mahaviras und Buddhas" verfügbar.

The purpose of Wissenschaft und Weltanschaunng , 1 by Aloys Wenzl, is to provide a rational explanation of the world which shall give us greater insight into its nature than either common sense or the natural sciences can give us. Philosophy, Professor Wenzl says in his introduction, springs from the desire for a weltanschaunng , for insight into the significance of life. But it also springs from a desire for rational explanation , and aims at objective validity. It proposes to (...) give a truer, more complete, and more intelligible account of reality than appearances provide. This idea of a more intelligible explanation underlies the whole of Professor Wenzl's book. We want more than knowledge of empirical facts, we want knowledge of reasons , or, as he often puts it, insight . We want to see that though things seem to be contingent, they are really necessary. (shrink)

Heidegger is noted for his concern with the nothing, das Nichts, and this may be partially due to the way in which his ideas were first introduced. Whereas the positivists regarded his writings as nonsense, employing his references to nothingness to prove them so, other of his interpreters took his thought seriously but regarded it as fundamentally nihilistic. He was pictured as an irrationalist philosopher, preoccupied with death and negativity. It is this representation of Heidegger which still prevails to a (...) large extent among philosophers in this country. Unlike the positivists, they accept what he says as meaningful and important but as having consequences which must be rejected not only as mistaken but, perhaps, as immoral. That this appraisal requires careful examination is indicated by the fact that not a few theologians have borrowed heavily from Heidegger and found in his writings important positive suggestions. The impression that Heidegger is a nihilist or even an irrationalist is mistaken from the ground up; it is difficult to understand how it could be sustained by anyone who had struggled through any one of Heidegger's essays. (shrink)

This 1993 book discusses the rise of the marginalist conception of the firm in the context of economic thought over the past two centuries, and explains why economists continue to defend a theory with demonstrable shortcomings. Professor Schrader argues that the marginalist view of the firm retains its support not through any comparative advantage in empirical or predictive power, but by virtue of its being a part of the predominant marginalist economic programme. The clear problems that beset the marginalist (...) approach to the firm signal a general dilemma for economic theory as a whole. (shrink)

Studien zu einer Comte- und Marx-Kritik W. Schrader. Der ausgesparte Titel Aus der dargelegten Situation aber lassen sich nun ebenfalls jene Sonderbarkeiten erklären, auf die wir für Marx' Aufgreifen eines negativen Ideologiebegriffes ...

philosophische Untersuchungen zur ersten innermarxistischen Grundlagendiskussion W. Schrader. 15. Theorie als Weltentwurf Wir wollen nun in den folgenden Überlegungen das positive Bedeutungsfeld des Ideologiebegriffes abstecken ...

Until comparatively recently the complete text of the Opus Postutmum has not been available to students of the Kantian philosophy.Prior to the publication of Adickes’ commentary on this material in 1920, students of Kant were almost wholly dependent upon Reicke's incomplete and markedly inadequate edition of 1882–84. 2 Adickes’ commentary, with its abundance of quoted passages, provided an access to a great deal of material hitherto unavailable. But it was not until the publication of the Academy Edition in 1936 that (...) the complete text became available for independent study. Because of the recent publication of the full text, most accounts of Kant's position in the Opus Postumum have depended upon Reicke's inadequate edition or, as has been more frequently the case, upon Adickes’ commentary. 3 In view of the considerable influence it has had upon Kant interpretation, Adickes’ analysis of the Opus Postumum warrants a careful and critical examination. (shrink)

Harris is not unaware of the problem involved or of the fact that a very large number of philosophers would disagree with his own stand on the matter. He even goes so far as to call it a paradox--though he hastens to make clear that he does not actually regard it as such. "How can a finite and imperfect fragment aspire so to transcend its own limits as to cancel its fragmentary and imperfect character, which yet must be maintained in (...) order that its knowledge should not be defective"? Employing the same argument which Hegel used against Kant's theory of the Thing-in-itself, Harris adds that "to know of limitations is at once to have transcended them". Now there can be no doubt that this is the case. To be aware of finiteness or subjectivity is to be one step beyond it, to recognize it for what it is. And some ideal or idea is required by virtue of which we can assess the limitations of our situation. But, we must inquire, what purchase do we thereby acquire on the absolute? What sort of transcendence do we achieve? Is absolute knowledge always implicit in our imperfect knowledge of the world in such a way that we can hope to put our imperfections behind and achieve a level of thought and knowledge at which being and truth are one? Or is knowledge necessarily infected with a mode of subjectivity which is ineradicable? (shrink)

In the case of existential philosophy the division is understandable. The existentialist philosophers are clearly engaging in a program which has long been regarded as disreputable by the British. But in the case of phenomenology the divergence is an odd one, indeed. For what is phenomenology if not the "presuppositionless" reflection upon that which is "given" to consciousness? And what is "analysis" if not the unbiased and non speculative examination of experience? If phenomenology is actually "presuppositionless" and, further, if "analysis" (...) is free of doctrinal commitment, how can they be either different or opposed? If there is or has been a difference between them, has it not been of necessity more accidental than essential, more a matter of choice of subject matter than of method or philosophical doctrine? The fact that some British philosophers are now beginning to dip their toes in the waters of French phenomenology, and even to make use of such phenomenological categories as "intentionality," suggests that this is the case. But to the extent that there have been unavowed "presuppositions" in phenomenology and implicit doctrines in "analysis," the differences have been genuine and substantival. They do differ, as a matter of fact, with respect both to what is "given" for analysis and what is involved in analytic reflection itself. (shrink)

In this essay we argue for the Janus-faced nature of hope. We show that attempts to sanitise the concept of hope either by separating it conceptually from other phenomena such as wishful thinking, or, more generally, by seeking to minimise the negative aspects of hope, do not help us to understand the nature of hope and its functions as regards religion. Drawing on functional accounts of religion from Clifford Geertz and Tamas Pataki, who both—in their different ways—see the function of (...) religion in terms of its capacity to satisfy deep psychological needs, we demonstrate that religion uniquely positions itself with regard to hope’s two faces, simultaneously exploiting positive and negative aspects of hope. (shrink)