This article sketches an idealized strategy for the identification of neural correlates of consciousness. The proposed strategy is based on a state space approach originating from the analysis of dynamical systems. The article then focuses on one constituent of consciousness, phenomenal awareness. Several rudimentary requirements for the identification of neural correlates of phenomenal awareness are suggested. These requirements are related to empirical data on selective attention, on completely intrinsic selection and on globally unconscious states. As an example, neuroscientific findings on (...) synchronized γ activity are categorized according to these requirements. (shrink)

Wilhem Köllers Arbeit überschreitet die Grenzen zwischen Sprachwissenschaft und Philosophie. Er zeigt, dass sprachlicher Ausdruck und Denken in Sprache immer Perspektivierungen schafft, also 'Veränderungen' der Wirklichkeit, die die Sprache vorgeblich objektiv abbildet. Diese These wird mit einer Vielzahl von Beispielen und Theorien aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen untermauert (Evolutionsbiologie, Linguistik, Psychologie, Philosophie, Metapherntheorie usw.) Eine ähnlich weit gespannte Untersuchung zu sprachlichen Perspektivitätsphänomenen, die sich von grammatischen Zeichen bis zu Textmustern erstreckt, gibt es bisher nicht. Das Werk ist insbesondere für Sprachwissenschaftler, Philosophen und (...) Kulturwissenschaftler von Interesse. (shrink)

With an inside view from an expert in the field and a clear and engaging writing style, Asian Philosophies, Seventh Edition invites students and professors to think along with the great minds of the Asian traditions. Eminent scholar and teacher John M. Koller has devoted his life to understanding and explaining Asian thought and practice. He wrote this text to give students access to the rich philosophical and religious ideas of both South and East Asia. New to this seventh (...) edition: Added material on Confucianism, including focused coverage of (1) the Analects and society and (2) ren and nature; Additional information on Theravada Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism as well as new in-depth coverage of ecological attitudes in Buddhism; Expanded coverage of ecological attitudes in all of the Asian traditions; Brief excerpts from primary sources to help better explain the key concepts; Added timelines for essential texts in each tradition; Improved Glossary and Pronunciation Guide; Additional text boxes, to help students quickly understand key ideas, texts, and concepts; Updated Further Reading sections. (shrink)

This study, based on the phenomenological approach, was aimed at exploring the meaning of privacy for forensic psychiatric patients. The narratives of two such patients, diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized on a forensic unit because of a killing offence, were analysed by means of qualitative content analysis. The study was conducted in a Swiss psychiatric clinic with forensic units. The results demonstrated that ‘privacy’ is not a question of luxury but a very basic human right. The ethical implications for nurses (...) acting as key workers in such situations are highlighted. Recommendations for practice are detailed. (shrink)

An analysis of the Jain metaphysics of non-absolutism (anekāntavāda) shows how the epistemological theory of points of view (nayavāda) and the sevenfold schema of predication (saptabhaṅgī) provide a foundation for the central Jain principle of nonviolence (ahiṃsā).

Philosophical discussions on causal inference in medicine are stuck in dyadic camps, each defending one kind of evidence or method rather than another as best support for causal hypotheses. Whereas Evidence Based Medicine advocates the use of Randomised Controlled Trials and systematic reviews of RCTs as gold standard, philosophers of science emphasise the importance of mechanisms and their distinctive informational contribution to causal inference and assessment. Some have suggested the adoption of a pluralistic approach to causal inference, and an inductive (...) rather than hypothetico-deductive inferential paradigm. However, these proposals deliver no clear guidelines about how such plurality of evidence sources should jointly justify hypotheses of causal associations. We here develop such guidelines by first giving a philosophical analysis of the underpinnings of Hill’s viewpoints on causality. We then put forward an evidence-amalgamation framework adopting a Bayesian net approach to model causal inference in pharmacology for the assessment of harms. Our framework accommodates a number of intuitions already expressed in the literature concerning the EBM vs. pluralist debate on causal inference, evidence hierarchies, causal holism, relevance, and reliability. (shrink)

One way to construct semantic representations in a robust manner is to enhance shallow language processors with semantic components. Here, we provide a model theory for a semantic formalism that is designed for this, namely Robust Minimal Recursion Semantics (RMRS). We show that RMRS supports a notion of entailment that allows it to form the basis for comparing the semantic output of different parses of varying depth.

The processing of metaphors and idioms has been the subject of neuroscientific research for several decades. However, results are often contradictory, which can be traced back to inconsistent terminology and stimulus control. In this systematic review of research methods, we analyse linguistic aspects of 116 research papers which used EEG, fMRI, PET, MEG, or NIRS to investigate the neural processing of the two figurative subtypes metaphor and idiom. We critically examine the theoretical foundations as well as stimulus control by performing (...) a systematic literature synthesis according to the PRISMA guidelines. We explicitly do not analyse the findings of the studies but instead focus on four primary aspects: definitions of figurative language and its subtypes, linguistic theory behind the studies, control for factors influencing figurative language processing, and the relationship between theoretical and operational definitions. We found both a lack and a broad variety in existing definitions and operationalisation, especially in regard to familiarity and conventionality. We identify severe obstacles in the comparability and validation potential of the results of the papers in our review corpus. We propose the development of a consensus in fundamental terminology and more transparency in the reporting of stimulus design in the research on figurative language processing. (shrink)

In this essay, we aim to provide an overview of the periodic table’s origins and history, and of the elements which conspired to make it chemistry’s most recognisable icon. We pay attention to Mendeleev’s role in the development of a system for organising the elements and chemical knowledge while facilitating the teaching of chemistry. We look at how the reception of the table in different chemical communities was dependent on the local scientific, cultural and political context, but argue that its (...) eventual universal acceptance is due to its unique ability to accommodate possessed knowledge while enabling novel predictions. Furthermore, we argue that its capacity to unify apparently disconnected phenomena under a simple framework facilitates our understanding of periodicity, making the table an icon of aesthetic value, and an object of philosophical inquiry. Finally, we briefly explore the table’s iconicity throughout its representations in pop art and science fiction. (shrink)

My paper consists of two parts. The first part deals with the fundamental normative standards of domestic social justice on the one hand and global justice on the other, standards that are requisite in order to identify injustices on both levels. On this basis, the second part focuses on the interrelations between domestic social justice and global justice with particular attention to the interdependencies between domestic and global injustices.

This paper presents the contributions of Alcindo Flores Cabral, professor of Chemistry at the Faculdade de Agronomia Eliseu Maciel, nowadays part of the Universidade Federal de Pelotas, to chemistry teaching. It is a contribution almost unknown to the Brazilian chemical community, although recognized as valuable by several renowned chemists abroad, like W. Hückel, G. Charlot, F. Strong, E. Fessenden and others. Cabral’s innovative helical representation is presented in connection not only with contemporary representations, but also an incursion is made into (...) the first helical systems proposed, those of Hinrichs and of Baumhauer. Some comments are made not only on Cabral’s Classificação Natural dos Elementos, published in 1946, but also about other texts he wrote for an efficient chemistry teaching. (shrink)

We study questionnaire responses to situations in which sacrificing one life may save many other lives. We demonstrate gender differences in moral judgments: males are more supportive of the sacrifice than females. We investigate a source of the endorsement of the sacrifice: antisocial preferences. First, we measure individual proneness to spiteful behavior, using an experimental game with monetary stakes. We demonstrate that spitefulness can be sizable—a fifth of our participants behave spitefully—but it is not associated with gender. Second, we find (...) that gender is consistently associated with responses even when we account for individual differences in the propensity to spitefulness. (shrink)

Die Publikation hat das Ziel, Analogierelationen als heuristische Zauberstäbe bzw. als semiotische Universalien anzusehen, über die sich Unbekanntes mit Hilfe von Bekanntem heuristisch erschließen lässt. Das bedeutet, dass Analogien zugleich analysierende, synthetisierende und spielerische Grundfunktionen zukommen, die uns sehr vielfältige Resonanzräume eröffnen können. Es beinhaltet weiter, dass Analogieannahmen auch dazu dienlich sind, die Welt der Objekte in einen fruchtbaren Interaktionszusammenhang zu der Welt der Subjekte zu bringen. Dadurch lässt sich dann auch die These Cassirers sehr gut exemplifizieren, das der Mensch (...) ein genuines Zeichenwesen (animal symbolicum) ist, das sich seine Lebenswelt mit Hilfe kultureller Zeichen erschließen kann und muss. Deshalb richtet sich das Erkenntnisinteresse hier dann auch nicht nur auf die allgemeinen kulturgeschichtlichen, philosophischen und semiotischen Aspekte des Analogiephänomens, sondern insbesondere auch auf die Analogieimplikationen unserer lexikalischen, grammatischen, metaphorischen, funktionalen und textuellen Sinnbildungsmuster, um die Welt der Objekte mit der Welt der Subjekte in einen fruchtbaren Interaktionszusammenhang miteinander zu bringen. (shrink)

Der Beitrag behandelt die Konzepte von Gerechtigkeit und Gleichheit im Kontext des gesellschaftspolitischen Diskurses der Moderne, in dem die Gestaltung staatlich organisierter Gesellschaften insgesamt, ihrer staatlichen Ordnung wie auch ihrer ökonomischen Verfassung, zur Debatte steht. Um die sehr komplexe Struktur der Ideen von Gerechtigkeit und Gleichheit zu erhellen, wird zunächst das Vokabular von Gerechtigkeit und Gleichheit untersucht, um seine vielfältigen Verwendungsweisen und die damit verbundenen normativen Forderungen herauszuarbeiten. Davon ausgehend wird dann die moderne Vorstellung sozialer Gerechtigkeit und Gleichheit in den (...) Blick genommen und ihre grundlegenden Postulate an die politische und ökonomische Ordnung moderner Staaten skizziert. (shrink)

Augmented Reality (AR) is commonly defined as a digital layer of information viewed on top of the physical world through a smartphone, tablet or eyewear. Increasingly, this understanding of AR is shifting to a dynamic framework of ‘smart things’, including wearable technology, sensors and artificial intelligence (AI), with the ability to intercede in key moments and to deliver contextual and meaningful experiences. The things that come into context are the logical next steps in an evolutionary development towards computers that are (...) better able to show empathy in relation to people: even more human-oriented, anticipative and ubiquitous. Thus, this outsourcing of meaning to empathic technologies points to one of the fundamental questions concerning the relation of human and technology – the nature of the trust that users place in technology. (shrink)

As digital media becomes more central to the lives of adolescents, it also becomes increasingly relevant for their sexual communication. Sexting as an important image-based digital medium provides opportunities for self-determined digital communication, but also carries specific risks for boundary violations. Accordingly, sexting is understood either as an everyday, or as risky and deviant behavior among adolescents. In the affectedness of boundary violations gender plays an important role. However, it is still unclear to what extent digital sexual communication restores stereotypical (...) gender roles and restrictive sexuality norms or, alternatively, enables new spaces of possibility. In this sense, current research points to a desideratum regarding adolescents’ orientations toward sexting as a practice between spaces of possibility and boundary violations. This paper discusses the possibilities, but also the risks, of intimate digital communication among adolescents. The main question is, how adolescents themselves perceive sexting practices and how they position themselves between both spaces for possibility and for the exchange of unwanted sexual content. For this purpose, orientations toward normalities and gender of students are reconstructed. To answer these questions, twelve single-sex, group discussions were carried out with students aged 16 and 17 at five different secondary schools in northern Germany. A total of 20 boys and 22 girls took part. The group discussions were structured by a narrative generating guideline. The analysis draws its methodology from the Documentary Method, regarding implicit and explicit forms of knowledge and discourse. It results in a typology of three types with different orientations. The study shows, that most of the students consider sexting to be a risky practice; only one type shows normality in the use of sexting. At the same time, some of the young people are interested in experimenting with image-based intimate digital communication. Further, gender differences in use and affectedness are also documented. In this way, orientations toward gender stereotypes “favor” both the attribution of responsibility to girls, and overlook the responsibility of students who perpetrated the boundary violation. The orientations of adolescents should be taken more into account in research as well as in educational programs for the prevention of sexual violence. (shrink)

Palabras pronunciadas por Jürgen Habermas en el Memorial a Richard Rorty con motivo de su fallecimiento, ceremonia que tuvo lugar en la Universidad de Stanford el día 2 de noviembre de 2007.

Ausgehend von einer minimalen, mit unterschiedlichen moralisehen Vorstellungen verträglichen Bestimmung des Begriffs der Moral, die im wesentlichen an eine Explikation von Stephan Körner anknüpft, wird die Möglichkeit einer rationalen, intersubjektiv konsensfähigen Begründung moralischer Standards erörtert. Dabei werden zwei verschiedenartige Konzeptionen einer solchen Begründung unterschieden, nämlich die individualistische und die universalistische Konzeption, denen jeweils verschiedene Konzepte praktischer Rationalität zugrundeliegen: das Konzept individueller und das Konzept universeller praktischer Rationalität. Während die individualistische Konzeption eine Begründung der Moral ausschließlich auf der Grundlage der realen (...) individuellen Interessen der Menschen zu liefern versucht, gehen die Spielarten der universalistischen Konzeption stets von der idealisierten Vorstellung eines unparteilichen Standpunkts aus, von dem aus alle die gleichen Gründe haben, bestimmte Standards der Moral anzunehmen. Eine eingehende Diskussion des rational-individualistischen Modells führt zum Ergebnis, daß das Konzept individueller praktischer Rationalität für sich allein keine tragfähige Grundlage einer annehmbaren Vorstellung von Moral darstellt und daß eine angemessene Konzeption der rationalen Moralbegründung jedenfalls bestimmter Annahmen universeller Art bedarf. (shrink)