Angesichts der gegenwärtigen Krisen des Kapitalismus hat das Werk von Karl Marx wieder an Aktualität gewonnen. Dieses Buch wirft grundlegende Fragen einer undogmatischen und kritischen Beschäftigung mit Marx und seinem Denken auf und stellt sie zur Diskussion. Es präsentiert internationale Forschungsansätze nach dem Scheitern der sich auf Marx berufenden politischen Regime. Aufgrund einer konsequenten Historisierung wird deutlich: Marx war durch seine Herkunft, seine Lebensstationen, sein Denken und seine politischen Aktivitäten fest im westeuropäischen Radikalismus verwurzelt. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersuchen die Beiträge (...) auch die Tragfähigkeit von Marx zur Analyse gesellschaftlicher Konstellationen im 21. Jahrhundert. Die Aufsätze behandeln exemplarisch Marx‘ ideengeschichtliche Kontexte, sein Engagement für die entstehende internationale Arbeiterbewegung, seine Kapitalismusanalyse, seine Kanonisierung und Nachwirkung. Mit Beiträgen von Heinz Bude, Axel Honneth, Jürgen Kocka, Gerd Koenen, Christina Morina, Wilfried Nippel, Jonathan Sperber, Gareth Stedman Jones u.a. • Renommierte Historiker und Sozialwissenschaftler ziehen Bilanz • Perspektiven für die Krisen des 21. Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

Background: Nurses working within acute psychiatric settings often face multifaceted moral dilemmas and incompatible demands. Methods: Qualitative individual and focus group interviews were conducted. Ethical considerations: Approval was received from the Norwegian Social Science Data Services. Ethical Research Guidelines were followed. Participants and research context: Thirty nurses working within acute psychiatric wards in two mental health hospitals. Results: Various coping strategies were used: mentally sorting through their ethical dilemmas or bringing them to the leadership, not ‘bringing problems home’ after work (...) or loyally doing as told and trying to make oneself immune. Colleagues and work climate were important for choice of coping strategies. Discussion: Nurses’ coping strategies may influence both their clinical practice and their private life. Not facing their moral distress seemed to come at a high price. Conclusions: It seems essential for nurses working in acute psychiatric settings to come to terms with distressing events and identify and address the moral issues they face. As moral distress to a great extent is an organisational problem experienced at a personal level, it is important that a work climate is developed that is open for ethical discussions and nourishes adaptive coping strategies and moral resilience. (shrink)

Background In this article, the sources and features of moral distress as experienced by acute psychiatric care nurses are explored. Research design A qualitative design with 16 individual in-depth interviews was chosen. Braun and Clarke’s six analytic phases were used. Ethical considerations Approval was obtained from the Norwegian Social Science Data Services. Participation was confidential and voluntary. Findings Based on findings, a somewhat wider definition of moral distress is introduced where nurses experiencing being morally constrained, facing moral dilemmas or moral (...) doubt are included. Coercive administration of medicines, coercion that might be avoided and resistance to the use of coercion are all morally stressful situations. Insufficient resources, mentally poorer patients and quicker discharges lead to superficial treatment. Few staff on evening shifts/weekends make nurses worry when follow-up of the most ill patients, often suicidal, in need of seclusion or with heightened risk of violence, must be done by untrained personnel. Provision of good care when exposed to violence is morally challenging. Feelings of inadequacy, being squeezed between ideals and clinical reality, and failing the patients create moral distress. Moral distress causes bad conscience and feelings of guilt, frustration, anger, sadness, inadequacy, mental tiredness, emotional numbness and being fragmented. Others feel emotionally ‘flat’, cold and empty, and develop high blood pressure and problems sleeping. Even so, some nurses find that moral stress hones their ethical awareness. Conclusion Moral distress in acute psychiatric care may be caused by multiple reasons and cause a variety of reactions. Multifaceted ethical dilemmas, incompatible demands and proximity to patients’ suffering make nurses exposed to moral distress. Moral distress may lead to reduced quality care, which again may lead to bad conscience and cause moral distress. It is particularly problematic if moral distress results in nurses distancing and disconnecting themselves from the patients and their inner selves. (shrink)

Ontological realism is a philosophical stance that provides a definitional framework for ontologies and is referred to by various applied ontologists. From a computer science perspective, ontologies are often associated with formal languages for the representation of ontologies like the Web Ontology Language (OWL). It has, however, not been made explicit how the realist framework is related to the representation formalism. We analyse how the representational units of OWL can be used for modelling realist ontologies. While OWL is sufficiently close (...) to the realist framework of ontologies to describe them, there are categories in OWL that are alien to realist ontologies or duplicate categories in realist ontologies. This clarification allows separating talk about ontologies in general from talk about their specific representation. (shrink)

BackgroundDefensive practice occurs when physicians provide services, such as tests, treatments and referrals, mainly to reduce their perceived legal or reputational risks, rather than to advance patient care. This behaviour is counter to physicians’ ethical responsibilities, yet is widely reported in surveys of doctors in various countries. There is a lack of qualitative research on the drivers of defensive practice, which is needed to inform strategies to prevent this ethically problematic behaviour.MethodsA qualitative interview study investigated the views and experiences of (...) physicians in Australia on defensive practice and its contribution to low value care. Interviewees were recruited based on interest in medico-legal issues or experience in a health service involved in ‘Choosing Wisely’ initiatives. Semi-structured interviews averaged 60 min in length. Data were coded using the Theoretical Domains Framework, which encapsulates theories of behaviour and behaviour change.ResultsAll participants (n = 17) perceived defensive practice as a problem and a contributor to low value care. Behavioural drivers of defensive practice spanned seven domains in the TDF: knowledge, focused on inadequate knowledge of the law and the risks of low value care; skills, emphasising patient communication and clinical decision-making skills; professional role and identity, particularly clinicians’ perception of patient expectations and concern for their professional reputation; beliefs about consequences, especially perceptions of the beneficial and harmful consequences of defensive practice; environmental context and resources, including processes for handling patient complaints; social influences, focused on group norms that encourage or discourage defensive behaviour; and emotions, especially fear of missing a diagnosis. Overall, defensive practice is motivated by physicians’ desire to avoid criticism or scrutiny from a range of sources, and censure from their professional peers can be a more potent driver than perceived legal consequences.ConclusionsThe findings call for strengthening knowledge and skills, for example, to improve clinicians’ understanding of the law and their awareness of the risks of low value care and using effective communication strategies with patients. Importantly, supportive cultures of practice and organisational environments are needed to create conditions in which clinicians feel confident in avoiding defensive practice and other forms of low value care. (shrink)

In this paper I trace Husserl’s transformation of his notion of phantasy from its strong leanings towards empiricism into a transcendental phenomenology of imagination. Rejecting the view that this account is only more incompatible with contemporary neuroscientific research, I instead claim that the transcendental suspension of naturalistic (or scientific) pretensions precisely enables cooperation between the two distinct realms of phenomenology and science. In particular, a transcendental account of phantasy can disclose the specific accomplishments of imagination without prematurely deciding upon a (...) particular scientific paradigm for its experimental investigation; a decision that is best left to the sciences themselves. (shrink)

In this article I address the idea that in Husserl’s eidetic ontology all possibilities are fixed ‘in advance’ so that actual objects and events—despite their contingency—can only ever unfold possibilities that are ‘permitted’ to them by their essences. I show how this view distorts Husserl’s ontology and argue that this distortion stems from a misconstrual of the relations between essences and facts, and between ideal and real possibilities. These ‘local’ misconstruals reflect, I contend, a ‘global’ misunderstanding that mistakes descriptive distinctions (...) for ‘real’ separations, and that remains indebted to a non-Husserlian understanding of the a priori–a posteriori-distinction. In support of this argument, I first lay out the relevant objection to Husserl’s eidetics as I understand it. Then, I clarify the relation between ideal and real possibilities in the context of Husserl’s eidetics as I see it. Finally, I make a general point about the status of Husserl’s ontological differentiations ‘in the midst of life,’ namely in how what they differentiate is effective and (tacitly) manifest ever only as one moment (amongst many) of the complex whole that is a concrete life of consciousness. I end with some remarks on what this might mean for future phenomenological research on the imagination. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the intentions of physicians are multiple, ambiguous, and uncertain—at least with respect to end-of-life care. This claim provides support for the conclusion that the principle of double effect is of little or no value as a guide to end-of-life pain management. This paper critically discusses this claim. It argues that proponents of the claim fail to distinguish two different senses of “intention,” and that, as a result, they are led to exaggerate the extent to which (...) clinical intentions in end-of-life contexts are ambiguous and uncertain. It argues further that physicians, like others who make life and death decisions, have a duty to get clear on what their intentions are. Finally, it argues that even if the principle of double effect should be rejected, clinical intentions remain ethically significant because they condition the meaning of extraordinary clinical interventions, such as that of palliative sedation. (shrink)

In order to develop the ontology of tendencies for use in the representation of medical knowledge, tendencies are compared with other kinds of entities possessing the realizable-realization structure, specifically: dispositions, propensities, abilities and virtues. The peculiarities of tendencies are discussed and a standard schema of tendency ascription is developed in order to represent the relations between the ascriptions of tendency tokens to particulars and the ascriptions of tendency types to universals. Two nonstandard cases and their epistemic variants are discussed.

Scholars have recognized that contentious political action typically draws on relatively stable scripts for the enactment of claims making. But if such repertoires of political practice are generally reproduced over time, why and how do new modes of practice emerge? Employing a pragmatist perspective on social action, this article argues that change in political repertoires can be usefully understood as a result of situated political innovation—i.e., of the creative recombination of existing practices, through experimentation over time, by interacting political agents (...) for whom old repertoires were proving inadequate to the changing context of action. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by applying it to explain the historical emergence of a new set of populist mobilizing practices in early twentieth-century Peru. The results have implications for the study of political action and historical change. (shrink)

This article presents an analysis and evaluation of what I call the “I’m not stupid” argument. This argument has ancient roots, which lie in Aristotle’s famous description of the weak man’s and strong man’s arguments. An “I’m not stupid” argument is typically used in a context of accusation and defense, by a defendant who argues that they did not commit the act of which they have been accused. The analysis of this type of argument takes the shape of an argumentative (...) pattern, which displays a full-fledged representation of its argumentation structure. It is based on a collection of ten contemporary instances of the “I’m not stupid” argument. Although ten instances constitute a small collection, the wide variation in the argumentative elements that they express explicitly or leave implicit made it possible to identify five new key premises in comparison with previous analyses of the weak man’s and strong man’s arguments (Walton, Tindale and Gordon 2014 in _Argumentation_ 28:85–119, 2014; Walton 2019 in _Argumentation_ 33:45–74, 2019). These new premises show that the crucial point of an evaluation of this argument is the arguer's supposedly rational character in making a gain-loss calculation. They also show that we need empirical data to strengthen our analyses of argument schemes and argumentation structures. (shrink)

Much work in social ontology analyzes how social entities are based on collective intentionality. A neglected perspective is, however, the distinction between those social entities that are explicitly established (often called formal institutions, like marriages), those that are established but not explicitly (informal institutions, like friendships), and those that are not established at all (social macro entities, like episodes of inflation). To shed more light on this trichotomy, a collection of examples taken from the works of John Searle will be (...) discussed, comprising money, marriages, friendship, cocktail parties, natural language, and episodes of inflation. The chapter argues that explicit establishment confers certain typical characteristics on formal institutions that informal institutions lack, thus explaining the typical differences between marriages and friendship. The focus on explicit establishment further develops Khalidi’s classification of social kinds, and it contributes to Epstein’s quest for grounds and anchors of social entities. It can thus contribute to overcoming the narrow focus on collective intentionality. (shrink)

Some commentators have recently proposed that “clinical equipoise,” although widely accepted, is not necessary for morally acceptable research on human subjects. If this concept is rejected, however, we may find that trials not in the best medical interests of their subjects—”bad deal trials”—could be justified. To avoid exploiting participants, we must find a way to distribute the risks fairly, even if it means embracing radical changes in the way clinical research is conducted.

: "Clinical pragmatism" is an important new method of moral problem solving in clinical practice. This method draws on the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey and recommends an experimental approach to solving moral problems in clinical practice. Although the method may shed some light on how clinicians and their patients ought to interact when moral problems are at hand, it nonetheless is deficient in a number of respects. Clinical pragmatism fails to explain adequately how moral problems can be solved experimentally, (...) it underestimates the relevance and importance of judgment in clinical ethics, and it presents a questionable account of the role that moral principles should play in moral problem solving. (shrink)

Special Issue, n. I, ch. 1, On the Transcendental.

This article critically analyzes the principle of beneficence and the principle of nonmaleficence in clinical medical ethics. It resists some recent skepticism about the principle of nonmaleficence, and then seeks to explain its role in medicine. The article proposes that the two principles are informed by different accounts of what is in the patient’s best interests. The principle of beneficence is tied to the patient’s best overall interests, whereas the principle of nonmaleficence is tied to the patient’s best medical interests (...) only. The article argues that the principle of nonmaleficence takes priority over the principle of beneficence in that it filters the treatment options that are appropriately subject to the principle of beneficence. Understanding how both principles can play an important role in medical practice, and how they relate when they come into conflict, can help clinicians to avoid certain mistakes in thinking about their duties to their patients. (shrink)

ABSTRACT When applying moral principles to concrete cases, we assume a background shared understanding of the boundaries of the persons to whom the principles apply. In most contexts, this assumption is unproblematic. However, in end‐of‐life contexts, when patients are receiving ‘artificial’ life‐support, judgments about where a person's self begins and ends can become controversial. To illustrate this possibility, this paper presents a case in which a decision must be made whether to deactivate a patient's pacemaker as a means to hasten (...) his death. After discussing some common moral principles that are often applied to resolve ethical problems at the end of life and after explaining why they are of no help here, the paper argues that the correct analysis of this case, and of cases of this sort, turns on considerations that relate to the constitution of the self. These considerations, the paper further argues, sometimes resist resolution. The constitution of the self is fixed in large measure by our concepts and social conventions, and these do not always provide determinate grounds for delimiting the boundaries of the self. (shrink)

Ethical research on human subjects requires that subjects, if they have the capacity to do so, give free and informed consent to participate in the trials in which they are enrolled. This requirement, which is commonly referred to as the principle of informed consent, was prominently endorsed by the authors of the Belmont Report in 1978, and it remains widely accepted today. Yet while the principle of informed consent is by now almost universally accepted, the responsibilities that it imposes on (...) those who conduct research on human subjects is a more contentious matter. New challenges to securing informed consent have emerged since the publication of the Belmont Report, and responding to these challenges requires... (shrink)

The ethical standards that regulate clinical research have multiple rationales. Among them is the need to protect potential subjects from making imprudent decisions, which extends beyond the soft paternalistic concern to protect people from making uninformed decisions to participate in trials. This article argues that a plausible risk/benefit restriction on clinical trials is presumptively justified by hard paternalism, which in turn is supported by a deeper fairness-based rationale. This presumptive case for hard paternalism in research is not defeated by the (...) alleged right to participate in clinical trials, by concerns about insult or status, by the need to conduct early phase trials that promise little to no benefit to participants, or by the recognition that some potential subjects are altruistically motivated. (shrink)

Margaret Gilbert has defended the claim that her plural subject theory can give a reasonable account of retrospective (or backward-looking) collective responsibility. On one occasion, publishing in this periodical, she writes that she deliberately left out the discussion of prospective (or forward-looking) collective responsibility, or the “responsibilities” of a collective. In the present paper, I want to show that plural subject theory, in fact, also allows accounting for prospective responsibilities of groups and institutions. In order to do so, I will (...) first sketch the social ontological background of my discussion which is, in fact, an amended version of Gilbert’s theory of plural subjects (§ 2). Based on the assumption that a prospective responsibility accrues from some kind of commissioning, I will then discuss a variety of possible sources of prospective collective responsibilities: self-commissioning, third-party commissioning and what I will call commissioning by unique capability (§ 3). Having done so, I will discuss some consequences of this account and defend it against objections (§ 4). (shrink)

In this paper, I draw from Kantian and Husserlian reflections on the self-awareness of thinking for a contribution to the cognitive phenomenology debate. In particular, I draw from Kant’s conceptions of inner sense and apperception, and from Husserl’s notions of lived experience and self-awareness for an inquiry into the nature of our awareness of our own cognitive activity. With particular consideration of activities of attention, I develop what I take to be Kant’s and Husserl’s “agentive” and “proprietary” accounts. These, I (...) believe, augment contemporary discussions in interesting ways and further bolster the case for cognitive phenomenology. Moreover, the historical comparison highlights a number of assumptions made today that were not yet part of the framework at the time of Kant or at the time of Husserl. This helps reflect on the legitimacy of these assumptions. (shrink)

In an era of rapidly rising health care costs, physicians and policymakers are searching for new and effective ways to contain health care spending without sacrificing the quality of services provided. These proposals are increasingly articulated in terms of an ethical duty of stewardship. The duty of stewardship in medicine, however, is not at present well understood, and it is frequently conflated with other duties. This article presents a critical analysis of the notion of stewardship, which shows that it has (...) an important and distinctive place in medical ethics. It claims that stewardship in medicine concerns the responsible use of a society’s medical resources and it discusses the extent to which medical professionals are the proper stewards of these resources. The article argues that the duty of stewardship is best understood as a duty that applies in a space between the obligations of health care providers to provide beneficent care to their patients on the one hand and the obligations of citizens to bring about and support a just health care system on the other. Seen with clear eyes, stewardship in medicine is neither a consequence of beneficent medical care nor a substitute for justice. (shrink)

Used informally, the Reductio ad Absurdum (RAA) consists in reasoning appealing to the logically implied, absurd consequences of a hypothetical proposition, in order to refute it. This kind of reasoning resembles the Argument from Consequences, which appeals to causally induced consequences. These types of argument are sometimes confused, since it is not worked out how these different kinds of consequences should be distinguished. In this article it is argued that the logical consequences in RAA-argumentation can take different appearances and that (...) it therefore must be concluded that RAA cannot be characterised by a specific content, but must instead be characterised as an argument form. Furthermore, clues are provided to distinguish RAA reasoning from the Argument from Consequences. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of writers have proposed voluntary stopping of eating and drinking as an alternative to physician-assisted suicide. This paper calls attention to and discusses some of the ethical complications that surround the practice of voluntary stopping of eating and drinking. The paper argues that voluntary stopping of eating and drinking raises very difficult ethical questions. These questions center on the moral responsibility of clinicians who care for the terminally ill as well as the nature and limits (...) of the authority they exercise over them. (shrink)

Ethics of any kind basically assume that all human beings by nature aim at happiness. However, this general starting point has to be made concrete in order to be relevant for action, and hence suitable for moral appreciation. What does my happiness consist in? Contrary to what has often been taken for granted, the concrete aim is not instrumental or subsidiary to the overall aim of happiness. To me, my particular aim is rather identical with happiness. The choice I make (...) — if choice it is — indeed constitutes my happiness, i.e. the overall aim that directs my existential choices. This article is focused on the way Aristotelian ethics envisages the concreteness of this overall aim. This is not the concreteness of the means leading to the aim, which has often been discussed in Aristotelian scholarship, but happiness itself, taken as the specific but nevertheless universal aim that I seek to accomplish in my life. The main arguments are taken from Nicomachean Ethics VI and III. These texts, central to any discussion of Aristotle's views on the role of choice and deliberation in acquiring happiness, are re-interpreted, avoiding the deadlock of a debate between intellectualists and non-intellectualists. (shrink)

In recent decades, evidence-based medicine has become one of the foundations of clinical practice, making it necessary that healthcare practitioners develop keen critical appraisal skills for scientific papers. Worksheets to guide clinicians through this critical appraisal are often used in journal clubs, a key part of continuing medical education. A similar need is arising for health professionals to develop skills in the critical appraisal of medical ethics papers. Medicine is increasingly ethically complex, and there is a growing medical ethics literature (...) that modern practitioners need to be able to use in their practice. In addition, clinical ethics services are commonplace in healthcare institutions, and the lion’s share of the work done by these services is done by clinicians in addition to their usual roles. Education to support this work is important. In this paper, we present a worksheet designed to help busy healthcare practitioners critically appraise ethics papers relevant to clinical practice. In the first section, we explain what is different about ethics papers. We then describe how to work through the steps in our critical appraisal worksheet: identifying the point at issue; scrutinising definitions; dissecting the arguments presented; considering counterarguments; and finally deciding on relevance. Working through this reflective worksheet will help healthcare practitioners to use the ethics literature effectively in clinical practice. We also intend it to be a shared evaluative tool that can form the basis of professional discussion such as at ethics journal clubs. Practising these critical reasoning skills will also increase practitioners’ capacity to think through difficult ethical decisions in daily clinical practice. (shrink)

A popular argument goes thus: This is a construction, hence it is not real. Adding an appropriate adjective (social, mental, human, …) in front of “construction” or cognate terms like “(legal) fiction” yields a whole family of related arguments, all of which, or so I will argue, are fallacious. Contrary to popular opinion, these arguments fail both on the epistemic and the ontic sense of construction. Ontic constructions exist at least at one point in time, while epistemic constructions may well (...) correspond to reality. The motivation behind these fallacious arguments can often be found in a misconceived conception of ontology and reality. A full theory of reality must take constructed entities into account because important domains of reality (mental life, social reality, technical artefacts, art and fiction) essentially depend on mental or social constructions. (shrink)

Clinical trials emerged in rapid succession as the COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented need for life-saving therapies. Fair and equitable subject selection in clinical trials offering investigational therapies ought to be an urgent moral concern. Subject selection determines the distribution of risks and benefits, and impacts the applicability of the study results for the larger population. While Research Ethics Committees monitor fair subject selection within each trial, no standard oversight exists for subject selection across multiple trials for the same disease. (...) Drawing on the experience of multiple clinical trials at a single academic medical centre in the USA, we posit that concurrent COVID-19 trials are liable to unfair and inequitable subject selection on account of scientific uncertainty, lack of transparency, scarcity and, lastly, structural barriers to equity compounded by implicit bias. To address the critical gap in the current literature and international regulation, we propose new ethical guidelines for research design and conduct that bolsters fair and equitable subject selection. Although the proposed guidelines are tailored to the research design and protocol of concurrent trials in the COVID-19 pandemic, they may have broader relevance to single COVID-19 trials. (shrink)

The network society is generally challenging for today's communication practitioners because they are no longer the sole entities responsible for communication processes. This is a major change for many of them. In this paper, it will be contended that the normative practice model as developed within reformational philosophy is beneficial for clarifying the structure of communication practices. Based on this model, we argue that government communication should not be considered as primarily an activity that focuses on societal legitimation of policy; (...) rather, it focuses on clarifying the meaning of the actions of the government. If the government can convincingly answer the question about the reason for their actions, societal legitimation will subsequently follow. Hence, it is argued that government communication is primarily linguistically qualified. (shrink)

In English discourse one can find cases of the expression ‘not for nothing’ being used in argumentation. The expression can occur both in the argument and in the standpoint. In this chapter we analyse the argumentative and rhetorical aspects of ‘not for nothing’ by regarding this expression as a presentational device for strategic manoeuvring. We investigate under which conditions the proposition containing the expression ‘not for nothing’ functions as a standpoint, an argument or neither of these elements. It is also (...) examined which type of standpoint and which types of argument scheme the expression typically co-occurs with. In doing so we aim to develop a better understanding of the role and effects of ‘not for nothing’ when used in argumentation. Finally, we show that the strategic potential of ‘not for nothing’ lies in its suggestion that sufficient support has been provided while this support has in fact been left implicit. (shrink)

This book discusses the philosophy of influential contemporary philosopher Peter van Inwagen. Looking at perennial philosophical problems from a modern point of view, Peter van Inwagen’s philosophy masterfully combines positions that have been considered irreconcilable: incompatibilism concerning free will, materialism, organicism, theism and realism concerning fictional entities. As readers will discover, his arguments are witty, surprising and deep. -/- The book includes Peter van Inwagen’s Münster Lecture of 2015 on free will, as well as eleven papers from the Münster colloquium (...) discussing central themes of his philosophy, and a reply to each paper by Peter van Inwagen himself. Introducing his philosophy and relating his work to other contemporary views, this book is of interest to graduate students and professionals in philosophy alike. (shrink)

In the literature the term “natural balance” occurs frequently and is used for highly divergent collections of facts and for results arrived at by different methods. In this paper it is attempted to give a review of the many possible meanings of “balance in nature”, and to evaluate the application of the term in the scientific literature.To achieve this twofold objective it seemed useful to start by giving as objective as possible a description of the “balance situation” in natural communities, (...) in analogy with the original physical concept and according to strict scientific criteria. On the basis of this working standard, part of the ecological literature is discussed with respect to statements and presumptions concerning “balance”. The extensive literature is classified according to several groups, on the one hand on the basis of the nature of the views , on the other hand according to the importance that certain authors attach to the theory of a given author. For each of these groups, an evaluation of the content of the term “balance” is given. It was found that the reasoning is not always sound and that the nature of the data on which the concept is based varies widely, which also holds for the method of reasoning applied in the conclusions drawn. In none of the publications arguments were found supporting the existence of a natural “balance situation” as formulated in the standard description. Consequently, it seemed justified to conclude that it is not correct to apply a concept “natural balance”, defined purely scientifically, to natural situations, either because “balance” in the indicated sense is simply not present or because the situation under consideration is not a natural one . The concept “natural balance” has had only heuristic value for scientific research. In other contexts it has a different value, because there criteria other than scientific or methodological ones hold for the content of a concept. It is therefore not objectionable to use the term “natural balance” in common parlance, especially since this usage makes it possible to convey to the layman a great deal in few words. (shrink)

In the industrialized countries university research and state-financed research are increasingly evaluated from the point of view of their contribution to technology transfer, industrial innovation, and the competitiveness of national industries. Political debates on the viability of orienting basic research toward practical applications are paralleled by discussions, among social scientists, about the risks and opportunities of political direction over science. These debates are the frame of reference for this study, which analyzes the differences between basic and applied research, their correlates (...) and consequences, in high-temperature superconductor research in the Federal Republic of Germany. It will be shown that basic and applied research are fundamentally different in their social organization, their research goals, and their research strategies. These differences are in contrast to the call of science policy for more intense interaction and assimilation. Nevertheless, there are conditions under which basic or applied re searchers will partially follow "foreign" orientations and strategies. These conditions may, in part, be shaped by policy decisions. (shrink)

In fisheries biology of the late 19th century, the challenges posed to taxonomy by Darwinian theory intersected with attempts to increase the productivity of marine populations. Addressing both discourses, the influential German zoologist Friedrich Heincke developed a set of methods to determine exactly the differences between varieties or races of herring. In taxonomy, his methods contributed to the development of a biological species concept; in fisheries biology, they allowed tracing the herrings' migrations, which ultimately aided in divising schemes for sustainable (...) fisheries. Heincke's use of mathematical statistics, some of them borrowed from anthropometry, served to distinguish his ‚exact’ approach from that of typological taxonomists. Beyond its use as a rhetorical ploy, exactness gained meaning in the epistemic regime of exact reproduction of measurements, which entailed the replication of measurement techniques for the purpose of comparison e.g. of herrings caught at different locations. This exactness was enabled by the formalisation of the process of taxonomic identification. (shrink)

Digitalization has become a cornerstone of competitiveness in the industrial arena, especially in the cases of small lot sizes with many variants in the goods produced. Managers of industrial facilities have to handle the complexity that comes along with Industry 4.0 in diverse dimensions to leverage the potentials of digitalization for their sites. This article describes major drivers of this complexity in current industrial automation to outline the environment of today’s challenges for managers of this technical transition—and shows how managed (...) industrial security services can contribute to stabilize the industrial system. An outlook is given to future automation scenarios as well as the major concepts involved in their protection. (shrink)

This article analyses how recent critiques of secularism in political philosophy and cultural anthropology might productively be combined and contrasted with each other. I will show that Jürgen Habermas' postsecularism takes insufficient account of elementary criticisms of secularism on the part of anthropologists such as Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood. However, I shall also criticize Saba Mahmood’s reading of secularism by arguing that, in the end, she replaces the secular–religious divide with a secularity–piety divide; for example, in her reading of (...) Nasr Abu Zayd’s secular Islamic hermeneutics. This inhibits the use of her framework of analysis for a criticism of a problem central to Habermas' postsecularism, namely that it remains focused on specific intensities of belief. I shall then argue that, combined with the anthropological critiques of the secular, the political-historical nature of the fanaticism–piety–violence nexus should be integrated into political philosophical debates on secularism and postsecularism. (shrink)