Die Relativitatstheorien (RT) Einsteins gehoren zu den meistdiskutierten Theorien der Physik des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Nach der Formulie­ rung der sog. 'speziellen Relativitatstheorie' (SRT) im Jahr 1905 nah­ men zunachst nur einige Spezialisten von ihr Kenntnis, bis mit ungefiihr fiinf Jahren Verspatung dann auch zunehmend Nicht-Physiker sich mit ihr zu beschaftigen begannen, angeregt durch populiirwissenschaftliche, all­ gemeinverstiindliche 'Einfiihrungen' von Kollegen Einsteins wie z. B. Paul Langevin in Frankreich oder Max von Laue in Deutschland. Diese Pha­ senverschiebung zwischen fachwissenschaftlichem Ausbau der Theorie (...) und offentlicher Notiznahme wiederholte sich bei Einsteins 'allgemeiner Theorie der Relativitat und Gravitation' (ART). Zwischen 1913 und 1915 in ihren wesentlichen Ziigen ausformuliert, wurde sie erst nach einer spektakuliiren experimentellen Bestatigung im Jahr 1919 einem breiterem Publikum be­ kannt. In meiner Arbeit werde ich den Facettenreichtum der Ausdeutungen, die beide RT erfuhren, zunachst zu referieren und durch repriisentative Zi­ tate aus der Literatur der Zeit zu belegen haben. Der Umfang dieser Arbeit geht wesentlich auf das Konto dieser ausgewahlten Belege - davon verspre­ che ich mir, dafi nicht nur bislang unveroffentlichte Dokumente, sondern auch entlegene Texte hier in ihren zentralen Passagen leicht zuganglich ge­ macht werden. Fernerhin werde ich aber auch zu analysieren haben, warum derartig vielfaltige, einander mitunter diametral entgegengesetzte Interpre­ tationen einer wissenschaftlichen Theorie vorgelegt wurden. (shrink)

The theory of nonlinear complex systems has become a successful and widely used problem-solving approach in the natural sciences - from laser physics, quantum chaos and meteorology to molecular modeling in chemistry and computer simulations of cell growth in biology. In recent times it has been recognized that many of the social, ecological and political problems of mankind are also of a global, complex and nonlinear nature. And one of the most exciting topics of present scientific and public interest is (...) the idea that even the human mind is governed largely by the nonlinear dynamics of complex systems. In this wide-ranging but concise treatment Prof. Mainzer discusses, in nontechnical language, the common framework behind these endeavours. Special emphasis is given to the evolution of new structures in natural and cultural systems and it is seen clearly how the new integrative approach of complexity theory can give new insights that were not available using traditional reductionistic methods. (shrink)

Attention is automatically allocated to stimuli that are opposite in valence to the current motivational focus (Rothermund, 2003; Rothermund, Voss, & Wentura, 2008). We tested whether this incongruency effect is due to affective–motivational counter-regulation or to an increased salience of stimuli that mismatch with cognitively activated information. Affective processing biases were assessed with a search task in which participants had to detect the spatial position at which a positive or negative stimulus was presented. In the motivational condition, positive or negative (...) affective–motivational states were induced by performance feedback after each trial. In the cognitive activation condition, participants memorised the word “good” or “bad” during the search task. The affective incongruency effect was replicated in the motivational condition, whereas an affective congruency effect obtained in the cognitive activation condition. These findings support an explanation of affective incongruency effects in terms of automatic counter-regulation that is motivational in nature. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to propose a unified approach to the split scope readings of negative indefinites, comparative quantifiers, and numerals. There are two main observations that justify this approach. First, split scope shows the same kinds of restrictions across these different quantifiers. Second, split scope always involves low existential force. In our approach, following Sauerland, natural language determiner quantifiers are quantifiers over choice functions, of type <<,t>,t>. In split readings, the quantifier over choice functions scopes above other (...) operators (such as intensional verbs like must or can). Determiner quantifiers leave a choice-function trace when they move and this trace combines with the noun restriction, which is interpreted low. That split scope always involves low existential force is derived, without stipulation, from Kratzer’s idea that low existential force can be achieved via binding (into the noun restriction). (shrink)

Historical Justice and Memory highlights the global movement for historical justice—acknowledging and redressing historic wrongs—as one of the most significant moral and social developments of our times. Such historic wrongs include acts of genocide, slavery, systems of apartheid, the systematic persecution of presumed enemies of the state, colonialism, and the oppression of or discrimination against ethnic or religious minorities. The historical justice movement has inspired the spread of truth and reconciliation processes around the world and has pushed governments to make (...) reparations and apologies for past wrongs. It has changed the public understanding of justice and the role of memory. In this book, leading scholars in philosophy, history, political science, and semiotics offer new essays that discuss and assess these momentous global developments. They evaluate the strength and weaknesses of the movement, its accomplishments and failings, its philosophical assumptions and social preconditions, and its prospects for the future. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pathogen led to a fast expanding pandemic because it proved lethal in certain populations but could be transmitted by persons who appeared healthy. As a result, researchers came under unprecedented time pressure to develop a vaccine. This case study focuses on the first COVID-19 vaccine, which was approved for use in humans, known as Comirnaty, the BioNTech-Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine or Vaccine BNT162b2. With the benefit of hindsight, we show how close collaboration with regulators and trust-based decisions meant that (...) the race for a COVID-19 vaccine was won without purposefully infecting healthy participants with an infectious agent that can cause severe illness or death and for which no rescue therapy had existed. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungEs wird die wechselseitige Beeinflussung Einsteins und Schlicks anhand ihrer ab 1915 erhaltenen Korrespondenz in vier Schwerpunkten untersucht. Schlicks Selbstverständnis als Philosoph wie auch einzelne Themata seines Denkens (wie etwa das der Einfachheit) bildeten sich mit seiner Auseinandersetzung um die Relativitätstheorie Einsteins heraus, deren systematische Explikation durch Schlick auf Einsteins Beifall stieß. Als die Ursache für das Auseinanderdriften beider Denker nach 1925 werden fundamentale Differenzen im Wirklichkeitsverständnis und in der Interpretation des Kausalitätsprinzips aufgewiesen, die beide auch zu komplementären Formen der (...) Wissenschaftsgeschichtsbetrachtung führten. (shrink)

THIS PAPER is not a piece of "research"; it simply offers a series of reflections on the transcendental method. It is occasioned by the realization that, while this method is interesting and important in the opinion of some, it can count on little familiarity in the United States. And where philosophers and students of philosophy make the effort, they have great difficulty appreciating transcendental philosophy or understanding its proposals. This difficulty is, as I say, largely circumstantial and due to a (...) lack of familiarity with the relevant works, but, viewed less superficially, it is motivated by a positive affiliation to another philosophical tradition. In fact, the positions of this other tradition are, if largely in a modern guise, the very ones against which transcendental philosophy reacted. This historical relationship has also systematic relevance. In many ways, pre-transcendental positions seem to have priority: we need only think of formal logic, certain basic stances in empiricist epistemology, common sense. Accordingly, the subjective difficulty of philosophers and students of such persuasions can be treated "objectively," as the difficulty of ever establishing arguments for the transcendental turn or for what Kant calls the "Copernican revolution." Transcendental philosophy must provide arguments, so it seems, on the pre-transcendental level to establish the transcendental position. Further, supposing this problem can be overcome, there is the genuine difficulty of understanding what the transcendental theory actually says and in what way it does its job. And lastly, supposing we find that it lives up to its program, there may still be difficulty with certain implications such that philosophers and students take refuge in non-transcendental positions rather than calling for improvements of transcendental philosophy. In this paper we cannot, of course, fully discuss to what extent the transcendental position can take care of its critics. The paper is mainly concerned with the difficulty of access or introductory argument to transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Recent findings suggest impaired motor skill development during infancy in children later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether infants at high familial risk for ASD would benefit from early interventions targeting the motor domain. The current study investigated this issue by providing 3-month-old infants at high familial risk for ASD with training experiences aimed at facilitating independent reaching. A group of 17 high-risk (HR) infants received 2 weeks of scaffolded reaching experiences using “sticky mittens,” and (...) was compared to 72 low-risk (LR) infants experiencing the same or alternative training procedures. Results indicate that HR infants – just like LR infants – show an increase in grasping activity following “sticky mittens” training. In contrast to LR infants, evidence that motor training encouraged a preference for faces in HR infants was inconclusive. (shrink)

I strongly endorse many of the suggestions made by the authors of the extremely useful reviews in this issue. In particular, the need to identify the complex causal mechanisms underlying the major health risk factors requires urgent attention of the research community. I suggest considering the important role of emotional disturbances as contributors to health risks given the empirically established comorbidity between mental and somatic illness. Better knowledge of these mechanisms is an essential prerequisite to develop tailored personalized prevention and (...) intervention programs, including reliable and valid assessment of deficits. (shrink)

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias,1 Abelard distinguishes the form of an expression2 (oratio) from what it says, that is, its content. The content of an expression is its understanding (intellectus). This distinction is surely the most well-known and central idea in Abelard’s commentary. It provides him with the opportunity to distinguish statements (enuntiationes) from other kinds of expressions without implying a diference in their content, since the ability of a statement to signify something true or false (verum vel (...) falsum)3 cannot be found in its content. More precisely, Abelard distinguishes statements both from complete expressions (orationes perfectae) that are not statements but rather questions, requests, commands, etc. and from incomplete expressions, that is, mere word strings (orationes imperfectae), such as homo albus. These kinds of expressions, according to Abelard, do not differ in the understanding they present but in the way they present it. (shrink)

An effort of proponents of relativity theory to find evidence for the so-called gravitational red-shift of spectral lines as one of the experimental consequences of Einstein's generalized theory of relativity is reconsidered with reference to hitherto unpublished documents. It is shown how much interest Albert Einstein in fact took, around 1920, in the data analysis of Leonhard Grebe and Albert Bachem, who tried to explain why most earlier efforts to find the gravitational red-shift had failed. They carefully measured the line (...) profiles of the spectral lines both in the sun's Fraunhofer lines and in pressure-independent laboratory comparison spectra. Then they rejected all lines with strong neighbouring lines which could cause apparent shifts of the line centres; the remaining seven well-isolated lines showed the gravitational red-shift with acceptable accuracy. Nevertheless, their claim to have successfully isolated the relativistic effect never convinced the astrophysicists of their day—the reasons for the scientific community's scepticism, contrasted against the enthusiastic group of Einstein sympathizers, are also discussed. (shrink)

The author introduces a normative conception of coherence, derived from a pragmatic interpretation of the application of norms to concrete cases. A distinction is made between the justification of a norm and its application. In the case of moral norms, justification and application can be analysed as two different discursive procedures which give rise to different aspects of the principle of impartiality. Impartial justification requires a procedure by which all interests concerned are taken into account whereas impartial application requires a (...) procedure where all features of a situation are considered. The complete description of a concrete case makes necessary a coherent interpretation of all the valid norms which are prima facie applicable. This requirement of an ideal coherent system of norms is restricted to interpretive “paradigms” in the case of legal norms, because it is necessary to produce singular judgments under the restrictive conditions of scarce time and incomplete knowledge. (shrink)

Mimicry of appearance or of facial, vocal, or gestural expressions emerges frequently among members of different species. When such mimicry directly relates to affective aspects of an interaction, researchers talk about “emotional mimicry”. Emotional mimicry has been amply documented but its functionality is still debated. Why and when do people mimic the expressions of others, who benefits, the mimicker or the mimicked, and how do they benefit? Which processes underlie emotional mimicry? Is it completely automatic and unconscious or can it (...) be deliberate and conscious? The current Theory Section addresses these questions from different theoretical perspectives. The invited article by Hess and Fischer focused on the role of mimicry in social regulation and social bonding. The invited comment by Krets and Akyüz highlights information gathering and prediction in social interaction. The invited comment by Bernhold and Giles emphasizes vocal communication and its role in interpersonal accommodation. In this editorial, I propose the different theoretical perspectives may be integrated by assuming a multilevel appraisal and response generation mechanism. I also suggest that emotional mimicry research may be broadened by including social learning, vocal imitation, interspecies comparisons, and affective computing approaches. (shrink)

Introduction The contributors to this volume were asked to write on some aspect of a problem area which has been the focus of much controversy, ...

Erstmals wird in dieser Studie die These einer präreflexiven Grundstruktur des Bewusstseins konsequent auf Kierkegaards Selbstanalyse angewandt. Damit reiht der Autor Kierkegaard in die Tradition der Idealismus-Kritik der Deutschen Romantik ein und reflektiert die existenziellen und theologischen Konsequenzen. Abgerundet wird diese Skizze durch die Überführung ihrer Ergebnisse in eine vergegenwärtigende Diskussion, die unter Berufung auf Friedrich Schleiermacher und Ludwig Wittgenstein auslotet, inwiefern sich die existenziell wirksame Erfahrung, die ein Mensch am Grund seines eigenen Bewusstseins macht, als „Gott“ identifizieren läss.

Die Korrespondenz der beiden Physiker und Wissenschaftshistoriker Ernst Mach und Pierre Duhem ist weitgehend, vielleicht mit Ausnahme nur eines Briefes, erhalten. Neben der Dokumentation dieser historischen Zeugnisse setzt sich der Autor in diesem Aufsatz zum Ziel, die jeweiligen Motive, die Mach resp. Duhem zur Beschäftigung mit Wissenschaftsgeschichte führten und die damit verbundenen Modelle der Wissenschaftsgeschichtsentwicklung beider gegeneinander abzugrenzen. Dazu wurden insb. die in der bisher vorliegenden Sekundärliteratur zu Mach und Duhem überhaupt nicht berücksichtigte Buchbesprechung der Machschen Mechanik durch Duhem sowie (...) die ergänzenden Bemerkungen zu Duhem in späteren Auflagen der Werke und in der Korrespondenz Machs herangezogen, die eine recht detaillierte wechselseitige Kritik ihrer Methodik beinhalten. Den Abschluß meiner Betrachtungen bildet der Versuch einer Sondierung dessen, was in Duhems resp. Machs historischen Betrachtungsweisen über die nicht in Frage stehende Bedeutung als Meilensteine der Wissenschaftsgeschichtsschreibung hinaus noch heute von Relevanz ist.The preserved part of the hitherto unpublished Duhem-Mach correspondence, kept in the Archives de l'Académie des Sciences, Paris, and in the Ernst Mach Institut of the Fraunhofer Society, Freiburg im Breisgau, is documented and commented upon. Biographical, methodological, and philosophical analogies and differences between the points of view of Pierre Duhem and Ernst Mach are discussed, and a critical evaluation is given of their impact as historians of science. (shrink)

In this paper the author criticizes the way Robert Alexy reconstructs the relationship between legal and practical reasoning. The core of Alexy's argumentation (Alexy 1978) is considered the claim that legal argumentation is a “special case” of general practical discourse. In order to question this claim, the author analyzes three different types of argument: (1) that legal reasoning is needed by general practical discourse itself, (2) that there are similarities between legal argumentation and general practical discourse, (3) that there is (...) a correspondence between certain types of argument in general practical discourse and in legal argumentation.**. (shrink)

The theory of resistance here elaborated is based on considerations current since the 18th century and concern the proof of reality of the external world. However, what is ignored in the course of these proofs are the social, psychological, and in particular the logical aspects of resistance. The idea of a theory of resistance is inspired by tendencies in the philosophy of technology, as well as other current philosophical and scientific lines of thought that obscure their metaphysical underpinnings, advocating a (...) position of complete achievability of human and natural relations. The theory of resistance seeks to show that resistance is a reflexive term that concerns relations, not objects or those relations that can be expressed in qualities and quantities. Furthermore, this concept has a positioning role, important in epistemological, as well as ethical and anthropological sense. Resistance is a central, although not the sole characteristic of reality. As an ethical category, it is articulated, for example, in the idea of dignity if understood as hostility to mere typologization and subjection to calcu?lation. The theory of resistance does not advocate some existing reality, but limits the domain of validity of constructivist and narrativist theories. (shrink)

In recent years we have seen the rise of a new framework within the study of the mind, namely Predictive Processing. This framework essentially holds that the brain is a prediction machine constantly postulating perceptual models which are tested against incoming information. At the same time, the notion of the minimal or core self has become very influential as a way of explaining, or explaining away, pre-reflective self-awareness. The four most widely discussed alternatives for thinking through the metaphysical implications the (...) pre-reflective sense of self are the standard phenomenological view, the substance view, the no-self view and by now the relational view. In this paper, it is our objective to rethink the notion of the sense of self in the context of PP. Now, PP is often held to be a unifying framework that offers a new integrated account of perception, cognition, imagination, and indeed the pre-reflective sense of self. We will show, however, that PP has been taken to endorse rather too many different metaphysical accounts of self: that is, views about how we should regard the ultimate nature of self. What we need to do, if possible, is to use PP to constrain the theories on offer. Here we focus upon two central constraints that we think PP implies. These are, the mutability constraint and the multi-layereredness constraint. We argue that self-views laid out in terms of the PP framework are usually – to some degree – located within the four standard metaphysical accounts of self. However, we think that realist versions of self-accounts seem to have more trouble in respecting the PP constraints or requirements. The reason, or so we believe, is PP’s mutability constraint. This does not have to be the case and we, therefore, propose an alternative realist view – namely the pre-reflective situational self view – which is more adequate to fit the PP framework. (shrink)

The chapter presents the basic ideas operative in the ancient conceptualization of faculties of the soul. Starting with a brief discussion of the Hippocratic methodology for individuating powers of bodies, it soon moves on to describe Plato’s division of the soul into three faculties as an adaption of that methodology. Aristotle’s version of faculty psychology, though in many respects continuing Plato’s project, is presented as different from Plato’s in crucial respects: whereas Plato made the soul the bearer and underlying subject (...) of its faculties, in Aristotle this underlying subject is not the soul, but the living body. After a presentation of some of the basic features of psychic faculties in Stoic and Epicurean thought, the chapter ends with a brief glance on Galen’s critical discussion of faculties. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die Marxsche Theorie" verfügbar.

O ARTIGO INVESTIGA A PASSAGEM DO CAPÍTULO DA RELIGIÃO PARA O DO SABER ABSOLUTO NA FENOMENOLOGIA DO ESPÍRITO DE HEGEL. TRATA-SE DE LOCALIZAR A RELIGIÃO COMO TRADUÇÃO DA FORMA OU DA LINGUAGEM DA REPRESENTAÇÃO PARA A FORMA OU A LINGUAGEM DO CONCEITO E AS IMPLICAÇÕES QUE ESSA DETERMINAÇÃO FORMAL TRAZ PARA UMA POSSÍVEL COMPREENSÃO DO LUGAR ESPECÍFICO DO DISCURSO RELIGIOSO, QUE SE MOVE ENTRE O UNIVERSAL E O PARTICULAR.

The perhaps most challenging problem for a panentheistic paradigm in Christian god-talk consists in integrating the trait of personhood in the monistic horizon of this approach. A very helpful way to this goal seems to be the concept of imagination. Its logic of an “as if” represents a modified variation of Kant`s idea of the postulates of reason. Reflections of Jürgen Werbick, Douglas Headley, and Volker Gerhardt substantiate the philosophical and theological capabilities of this solution which also include a sensibility (...) for the ontological commitments included in the panentheistic approach. (shrink)

The concept of the self is embedded in a web of relationships of other concepts and phenomena such as consciousness, self-consciousness, personal identity and the mind–body problem. The article follows the ontological and epistemological roles of the concept of selfconsciousness and the structural co-implication of consciousness and self-consciousness from Descartes and Locke to Kant and Sartre while delineating its subject matter from related inquiries into the relationship between the mind and the body, personal identity, and the question whether consciousness is (...) an irreducible reality sui generis or essentially a neurobiological entity. Over the course of its history, the modern self turns out to become an ever more elusive phenomenon, while its roles as a bearer of individual responsibility and as a subject of reflective endorsement of the truth become ever more pronounced. (shrink)