Modern research has established the prejudice that Diocletian focused on defending Roman law against the influence of primitive legal concepts of non-Roman origin and aimed to protect classical law from any kind of change. This is based, on the one hand, on circular textual criticism, which declared all innovations in the jurisprudence of Diocletian’s chancellery to be the result of later alterations of the primary texts, and, on the other hand, on the assumption that the parties to a dispute confronted (...) the emperor directly with their own legal ideas, even though they knew that he judged only according to Roman law. An unbiased examination of Diocletian’s decisions on the law of obligations reveals a completely different picture: The rulings by which Diocletian’s chancellery purportedly reacted to popular legal ideas can almost always be explained by misunderstandings which stem from the concepts of classical Roman law itself. And once liberated from the exaggerated textual criticism of the 20th century, one can identify a variety of innovations that are more in keeping with Diocletian’s character than the obstinate conservatism that is commonly attributed to him in legal matters. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 2 Seiten: 311-326.

The essays reflect the work of a broad spectrum of disciplines in humanities and cultural studies. They present a new vision of the early modern era, which attempts to register the diverse and contradictory nature of early modern culture, transcending unambiguous notions of development such as "modernization" or "secularization.".

At first glance, the function that Kant ascribes to iustitia distributiva in private law is simply to facilitate the judge’s decision by cutting off disputes on difficult matters of fact. But only one of the four examples that Kant gives in order to illustrate the effects of distributive justice is a case in which there are two equally founded solutions available and Kant declares the easier one to be prevailing on the grounds of iustitia distributiva. In the three other cases (...) the solution assigned to distributive justice is not merely facilitating the jugdement, but is also the systematic one and opposed to a solution which has no basis in fundamental private law rules. Iustitia distributiva, thus, works through, and not against, private law system. The guideline for the distribution of rights is dogmatics, not equity. (shrink)

Activation of resting T lymphocytes through the T cell antigen receptor complex is initiated by critical phosphorylation and dephosphorylation events that regulate the function and interaction of a number of signaling molecules. Key elements in these reactions are members of the Src, Syk and Csk families of protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) and the phosphotyrosine phosphatases (PTPases) that regulate and/or counteract them, such as CD45. The PTKs can autophosphorylate and phosphorylate each other at multiple sites and, as the result of these (...) interactions, they are induced to phosphorylate other cellular proteins. These phosphorylation events lead to modulation of enzymatic activities and/or serve as binding sites for other signaling molecules having phosphotyrosine‐binding Src homology 2 (SH2) domains. As a result, these proteins translocate to the receptor complexes and are juxtaposed to the kinases that phosphorylate them. Some of the SH2‐domain‐containing polypeptides lack enzymatic activities and, instead, serve as adapter molecules that couple the signal to downstream effectors, such as regulators of the Ras proteins, and further into serine/threonine‐specific protein kinase cascades. Through largely unknown steps these reactions lead to the transcription of previously silent genes, activation of lymphocyte effector functions, progression through the cell cycle and cell proliferation. (shrink)

In recent years, the problem of value has been drastically pushed away towards the periphery of the discipline of literary studies. More and more, this fact has come to be experienced as a source of frustration and misunderstandings.1 In this article, I would like to show the great extent to which a value-oriented approach is in fact inevitable. By the same token, however, I will also indicate the disturbing ambiguities that the consideration of the value-dimension may reveal. The example I (...) will use for my demonstration, the case of the French photographic novel , is fairly straightforward , but at the same time it betrays my slightly polemical intentions, since this genre is undoubtedly held in low esteem both within and without the domain of literary scholarship.It seems reasonable to assume that our twentieth century, with its turbulent successions of competing fashions and trends, has radically affected the concept of value, that is, the dialectical game of valorization and devalorization. The notion of value has of course become subject to “devaluations” on the content-level, as the mixtures and the instabilities of the criteria called on clearly lattest.2 In addition—and more important—value has been disobjectified, that is, snatched from the object of the judgment and located on the side of the judging subject. Jan Baetens teaches French at the Vlaamse Economische Hogeschool . He is the author of three books: Aux frontiers du récit: “Fable” de Robert Pinget comme “nouveau nouveau roman” ; Hergé écrivain: microlectures de Tintin ; and Les Mesures de l’excès: notes pour un traverse de “Eglogues” de Renaud Camus et al. . He is currently at work on the various aspects of grammatextuality in literature and the comics. (shrink)

To discuss moral behavior in organizations, a growing number of authors turn to a ‘virtue ethics’ approach. Central to this approach is the so-called moral character of individuals in organizations: a well-developed moral character enables organizational members to deal with the specific moral issues they encounter during their work. If a virtue ethics perspective is seen as relevant, one may ask how organizations can facilitate that their members can exercise and develop their moral character. In this paper, we argue that (...) the way tasks are defined and interlinked has a profound influence on “exercising and developing moral character”—it can enhance and frustrate it. In order to show how structures may support organizational members to exercise and develop their moral virtues, the paper first describes what it means to exercise and develop virtues in an organizational setting and what is required for it. Next, the paper sets out to explain how specific values on different structural parameters at different structural levels relate to exercising virtues in organizations. (shrink)

This intervention study explored the effects of a newly developed intergenerational encounter program on cross-generational age stereotyping. Based on a biographical-narrative approach, participants were invited to share ideas about existential questions of life. Therefore, the dyadic Life Story Interview had been translated into a group format, consisting of 10 90-min sessions. Analyses verified that LSEP participants of both generations showed more favorable CGAS immediately after, but also 3 months after the program end. Such change in CGAS was absent in a (...) control group. The LSEP-driven short- and long-term effects on CGAS could be partially explained by two program benefits, the feeling of comfort with and the experience of learning from the other generation. (shrink)

John R. Searle is one of the world's leading philosophers. During his long and outstanding career, he has made groundbreaking and lasting contributions to the philosophy of language, to the philosophy of mind, as well as to the nature, structure, and functioning of social reality. This volume documents the 13th Münster Lectures on Philosophy with John R. Searle. It includes not only 11 critical papers on Searle's philosophy and Searle's replies to the papers, but also an original article by John (...) R. Searle on his overall philosophical enterprise entitled "The Basic Reality and the Human Reality". -/- "I think Münster is probably unique among contemporary universities in its ability to produce such a high level of philosophical production from their philosophy students." - John R. Searle. (shrink)

The argument that automatic processes are responsible for affective/evaluative priming effects has been primarily based on studies that have manipulated the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; i.e., the interval between the onset of the prime and the onset of the target). Moreover, these SOA studies provide an insight in the time course of the activation processes underlying automatic affect/attitude activation. Based on a fine-grained manipulation of the SOA employing either the evaluative decision task (Experiment 1) and the pronunciation task (Experiment 2) (...) we concluded that affective priming, and hence automatic affect activation, is based on fast-acting automatic processes. The results of Experiment 3 provide a valid explanation for an apparent discrepancy between the results of Experiments 1 and 2 and previous findings. Finally, the results of Experiment 3 support the prediction of Jarvis and Petty (1996) that affective priming effects should be stronger for participants who are more chronically engaged in conscious evaluations. (shrink)

Walter Burley is mostly known for his defense of realism against William of Ockham. The concept of time that he developed in his late literal commentary on Aristotle's Physics has even been labelled 'extremely realistic,' in contrast to William of Ockham's so-called 'extremely subjectivistic' alternative. However, as is shown in this article, when Burley's concept of time is viewed against the background of medieval theories of time, it appears that it is mainly a restatement and further elaboration of opinions held (...) by Averroes. A detailed investigation of Burley's explanation of the reality, definition, and unicity of time, as well as of the relation between time and the intellective soul shows that his realism is certainly far less extreme than it has been believed. (shrink)

Cet article fait le point sur la grande diversité de la manière dont la notion de populaire est perçue dans les «Cultural Studies». Grosso modo, les différences qui se manifestent tiennent d'abord au fait que les études culturelles ne constituent pas une discipline homogène: le poids des traditions nationales pèse en effet très fortement sur la manière dont le populaire est conçu et jugé en Grande-Bretagne et aux Etats-Unis . Elles sont liées ensuite au fait que le populaire en soi (...) a fait l'objet d'évaluations très contrastées au cours du développement des études culturelles, qui se sont détachées progressivement de leur défense inconditionnelle de la culture ouvrière. L'émergence du populisme et ses rapports avec le néo-libéralisme s'avèrent décisifs dans les nouvelles évolutions du populaire.This article deals with the various ways in which the concept of "popular" has been dealt with in Cultural Studies. Roughly speaking, the dramatic variety of interpretations has to do first of all with the fact that Cultural Studies is not a homogeneous discipline: national traditions, for instance, continue to play a very important role, so that British Cultural Studies does not analyze the popular the same way as American Cultural Studies . Second, the differences within the field are explained by the fact that the interpretation of the popular has shifted dramatically during the decades in which Cultural Studies developed as an autonomous disciplinary field, progressively ceasing to be the sole study of working class culture. The emergence of populism and its relationships with neo-liberalism play a decisive role in this shifting appreciation. (shrink)

The "West," the "Atlantic community," the "transatlantic alliance"--these were expressions used widely during the decades of east-west conflict, distinguishing the West from the negative image of the eastern bloc. The end of the old political order in Eastern Europe gave the Atlantic community the opportunity to redefine its self-image. In this book, high-ranking experts and politicians examine the question of whether and to what extent this chance was used. The highly endorsed values of this community are put to the test (...) here and the idea of a "civic society" discussed: is it the appropriate groundwork for a new bridge across the Atlantic? (shrink)

In the 1970s Codd introduced the relational algebra, with operators selection, projection, union, difference and product, and showed that it is equivalent to first-order logic. In this paper, we show that if we replace in Codd’s relational algebra the product operator by the “semijoin” operator, then the resulting “semijoin algebra” is equivalent to the guarded fragment of first-order logic. We also define a fixed point extension of the semijoin algebra that corresponds to μGF.

In the 1970s Codd introduced the relational algebra, with operators selection, projection, union, difference and product, and showed that it is equivalent to first-order logic. In this paper, we show that if we replace in Codd’s relational algebra the product operator by the “semijoin” operator, then the resulting “semijoin algebra” is equivalent to the guarded fragment of first-order logic. We also define a fixed point extension of the semijoin algebra that corresponds to μGF.

Biographical note: Sascha Bru, Genth University, Belgium; Peter Nicholls, University of Sussex, UK.

This publication forms a basis for the interdisciplinary development of a certification system for artificial intelligence. In view of the rapid development of artificial intelligence with disruptive and lasting consequences for the economy, society, and everyday life, it highlights the resulting challenges that can be tackled only through interdisciplinary dialogue between IT, law, philosophy, and ethics. As a result of this interdisciplinary exchange, it also defines six AI-specific audit areas for trustworthy use of artificial intelligence. They comprise fairness, transparency, autonomy (...) and control, data protection as well as security and reliability while addressing ethical and legal requirements. The latter are further substantiated with the aim of operationalizability. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Publikation dient als Grundlage für die interdisziplinäre Entwicklung einer Zertifizierung von Künstlicher Intelligenz. Angesichts der rasanten Entwicklung von Künstlicher Intelligenz mit disruptiven und nachhaltigen Folgen für Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Alltagsleben verdeutlicht sie, dass sich die hieraus ergebenden Herausforderungen nur im interdisziplinären Dialog von Informatik, Rechtswissenschaften, Philosophie und Ethik bewältigen lassen. Als Ergebnis dieses interdisziplinären Austauschs definiert sie zudem sechs KI-spezifische Handlungsfelder für den vertrauensvollen Einsatz von Künstlicher Intelligenz: Sie umfassen Fairness, Transparenz, Autonomie und Kontrolle, Datenschutz sowie Sicherheit und (...) Verlässlichkeit und adressieren dabei ethische und rechtliche Anforderungen. Letztere werden mit dem Ziel der Operationalisierbarkeit weiter konkretisiert. (shrink)