Recent efforts in a range of scientific fields have emphasised research and methods concerning individual differences and individualisation. This article brings together various scientific disciplines—ecology, evolution, and animal behaviour; medicine and psychiatry; public health and sport/exercise science; sociology; psychology; economics and management science—and presents their research on individualisation. We then clarify the concept of individualisation as it appears in the disciplinary casework by distinguishing three kinds of individualisation studied in and across these disciplines: Individualisation ONE as creating/changing individual differences (the (...) process that generates differences between individuals: intrapopulation or intraspecific variation/heterogeneity); Individualisation TWO as individualising applications (the tailoring or customising of something—information, treatment, a product or service, etc.—for an individual or specific group of individuals); and Individualisation THREE as social changes influencing autonomy, risk, and responsibilities (the process discussed under the rubric of sociological individualisation theory). Moreover, we analyse conceptual links between individualisation and individuality, and characterise different sorts of individuality that the disciplines study. This paper aims to promote interdisciplinary research concerning individualisation by establishing a common conceptual-theoretical basis, while leaving room for disciplinary differences. (shrink)

We study the influence of nonuniform magnetic fields on the magneto conductance of mesoscopic microstructures. We show that the coupling of the electron spin to the inhomogenous field gives rise to effects of the Berry phase on ballistic quantum transport and discuss adiabaticity conditions required to observe such effects. We present numerical results for different ring geometries showing a splitting of Aharonov–Bohm conductance peaks for single rings and corresponding signatures of the geometrical phase in weak localization. The latter features can (...) be qualitatively explained in a semiclassical approach to quantum transport. (shrink)

In the valence contingency learning task (VCT), participants evaluate target words which are preceded by nonwords. Nonwords are predictive for positive/negative evaluations. Previous studies demonstrated that this results in (a) reliable contingency learning effects, reflected in better performance for highly contingent nonword-valence pairings and (b) less reliable evaluative conditioning (EC) effects, reflected in more positive ratings of nonwords that were highly predictive of positive (vs. negative) evaluative responses. In a highly-powered (N = 129) preregistered study, we investigated both effects and (...) assessed whether they are a consequence of episodic retrieval of incidental stimulus-response (SR) episodes and/or propositional learning (indicated by contingency awareness). Participants were either explicitly instructed about contingencies (instructed learning group) or not (incidental learning group). Both groups then worked through the VCT, an explicit rating task, and a contingency awareness test. Both groups showed contingency learning effects and EC effects for nonwords. Multi-level analyses showed that controlling for previous SR co-occurrences fully accounted for contingency learning effects in the incidental learning group. In the instructed learning group, a residual effect of genuine valence contingency learning remained. Nonword-specific contingency awareness in turn fully accounted for EC effects in both learning groups, indicating that genuine contingency learning effects reflect propositional learning. (shrink)

Das neue Versorgungsrecht für Beamte, Richter und Pensionäre Erhebliche Kostensteigerungen der öffentlichen Haushalte, die zunehmende Zahl der Versorgungsempfänger und deren längere Lebensdauer, aber auch die politische Fortentwicklung der Beamtenversorgung im Einklang mit dem Rentenrecht haben zu zahlreichen und gravierenden Änderungen - aus der Sicht der Beamten und Pensionäre meist Verschlechterungen - des für alle Dienstherrn in Bund und Ländern einheitlichen Rechts der Beamtenversorgung geführt. Dieser Praxiskommentar enthält zahlreiche Anwendungshilfen, Beispiele und Modellrechnungen. Bestens geeignet für jeden Beamten, insbesondere für die (...) mit der Beamtenversorgung befassten Personalleiter und Sachbearbeiter sowie Gewerkschaften des öffentlichen Dienstes. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 3 Seiten: 587-588.

One of many writers inspired by Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, the German novelist Jean Paul Richter coined the term 'Shandean humour' in his work of aesthetic theory. The essays in this volume investigate how Sterne's humour functions, the reasons for its enduring appeal, and what role it played in identity-construction and in the representation of melancholy. In tracing its hitherto under-recognised impact both on literary writers, such as Jean Paul and Herman Melville, and on philosophers, including Hegel and Marx, (...) the collection reveals that Shandean humour is a Grenzgänger - a point of commerce not only between Anglophone and German discourses, but also between literature and philosophy.Klaus Vieweg is Professor of Philosophy at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena; James Vigus is postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of English and American Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; Kathleen M. Wheeler is Reader in English Literature at the University of Cambridge. (shrink)

Entscheidungen verweisen in einem begrifflichen Sinne auf Gründe. Entscheidungssysteme bieten eine probabilistische Verlässlichkeit als Rechtfertigung von Empfehlungen an. Doch nicht für alle Situationen mögen Verlässlichkeitsgründe auch angemessene Gründe sein. Damit eröffnet sich die Idee, die Güte von Gründen von ihrer Angemessenheit zu unterscheiden. Der Aufsatz betrachtet an einem Beispiel, einem KI-Lügendetektor, die Frage, ob eine (zumindest aktuell nicht gegebene) hohe Verlässlichkeit den Einsatz rechtfertigen kann. Gleicht er nicht einem Richter, der anhand einer Statistik Urteile fällen würde?

Although still young when he wrote this book, Voegelin already demonstrates his singular analytical capacity as well as his ability to put political phenomena into a new perspective.

Goethe's objections to Newton's theory of light and colours are better than often acknowledged. You can accept the most important elements of these objections without disagreeing with Newton about light and colours. As I will argue, Goethe exposed a crucial weakness of Newton's methodological self-assessment. Newton believed that with the help of his prism experiments, he could prove that sunlight was composed of variously coloured rays of light. Goethe showed that this step from observation to theory is more problematic than (...) Newton wanted to admit. By insisting that the step to theory is not forced upon us by the phenomena, Goethe revealed our own free, creative contribution to theory construction. And Goethe's insight is surprisingly significant, because he correctly claimed that all of the results of Newton's prism experiments fit a theoretical alternative equally well. If this is correct, then by suggesting an alternative to a well-established physical theory, Goethe developed the problem of underdete... (shrink)

Organizations routinely make choices when addressing conflicting stakes of their stakeholders. As stakeholder theory continues to mature, scholars continue to seek ways to make it more usable, yet proponents continue to debate its legitimacy. Various scholarly attempts to ground stakeholder theory have not narrowed down this debate. We draw from the work of Juergen Habermas to theoretically advance stakeholder theory, and to provide practical examples to illustrate our approach. Specifically, we apply Habermas’ language-pragmatic approach to extend stakeholder theory by advancing (...) seven sets of normative axioms. We conclude that a deliberative approach, with its focus on the conditions of legitimation and deliberative democracy, has the potential to become a cornerstone of stakeholder theory. The need for global stakeholder discourse and its internalization in corporate structures and institutions is exemplified by a multitude of CSR and stakeholder initiatives that have mushroomed in response to global risk scenarios such as climate change, nuclear warfare, or terrorism. Further research may help to build a functioning global governance system in order to provide guidance for management in the 21st century. (shrink)

Foundations of Dialectical Psychology is a compilation of the writings of Klaus F. Riegel on dialectical psychology. The book presents chapters discussing such topics as the dialectics of human development; history of dialectical psychology; temporal organization of dialogues; and the analysis of the concept of crisis and its underlying philosophical model and ideology. Psychologists and students will find the book invaluable.

„Wenn die utopischen Oasen austrocknen, breitet sich eine Wüste von Banalität und Ratlosigkeit aus“, sagt Jürgen Habermas. Klaus Kufelds Vorträge und Schriften sind allesamt im Ton der denkbaren und erfüllbaren Utopien gehalten. Entstanden im Wirkungskreis des renommierten Ernst-Bloch-Zentrums sind seine breit aufgestellten utopischen Themen zeitlos zu lesen – und repräsentieren eine diagnostische Zeitkritik. Ergänzt wird der Band mit Streitgesprächen zu den Themen Utopie und Heimat mit namhaften Persönlichkeiten aus Wissenschaft und Politik. Mit Beiträgen von Heiner Geißler, Alfred Grosser, Konrad (...) Paul Liessmann, Mark Terkessidis und Sahra Wagenknecht. (shrink)

As an attempt to formulate epistemological boundaries , for which Gustave Flaubert becomes a test-case, L'Idiot de la famille can be seen simultaneously as the exemplification of a method and as a re-assertion and further development of Sartre's theory of subjectivity. This article proposes to approach the issue of Sartre's notion of human subjectivity in L'Idiot from the particular angle of the idea of “destiny.” It will be argued that the term “ destin ” provides a focal point for multiple (...) visions of subjectivity as it contains at least three layers of meaning: firstly, Sartre's representation of Flaubert's idea of his life as predetermined destiny; secondly, Sartre's analysis of destiny as a situation created by others; and finally, an understanding of destiny which is close to the notion of the project. It will be argued that precisely the mutual interdependence of these terms is an expression of Sartre's conception of alienation and the possibility of freedom. (shrink)

In social cognition, knowledge-based validation of information is usually regarded as relying on strategic and resource-demanding processes. Research on language comprehension, in contrast, suggests that validation processes are involved in the construction of a referential representation of the communicated information. This view implies that individuals can use their knowledge to validate incoming information in a routine and efficient manner. Consistent with this idea, Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that individuals are able to reject false assertions efficiently when they have validity-relevant (...) beliefs. Validation processes were carried out routinely even when individuals were put under additional cognitive load during comprehension. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the rejection of false information occurs automatically and interferes with affirmative responses in a nonsemantic task. Experiment 4 also revealed complementary interference effects of true information with negative responses in a nonsemantic task. These results suggest the existence of fast and efficient validation processes that protect mental representations from being contaminated by false and inaccurate information. (shrink)

This chapter offers a close reading of a passage from the literary and philosophical work Minima Moralia that enacts Theodor W. Adorno's radical concept of nonpropositional truth content in philosophical aesthetics after Auschwitz. Readers of Adorno's texts, especially those devoted to philosophical aesthetics, can hardly fail to be struck by their chiastic structure. The aesthetic theory that Adorno develops constitutes not only a theory of the aesthetic but also a theory that is itself aesthetic, hence a theory of literature that (...) exhibits qualities associated with literary texts, and a theory of music that harbors within itself traces of musical composition. The rhetorically self-conscious tropes of his posthumous Aesthetic Theory, the stylized literary studies of his Notes to Literature, his musically inflected meditations on musicological questions from Ludwig van Beethoven to Arnold Schönberg, and so many of his other texts perform this provocative inversion in a variety of registers and conceptual modulations. (shrink)

It is assumed that content analysis is as important an instrument for the investigation of social reality as other instruments· for this purpose (observation, interview). First a number of assumptions of Berelson’s classic definition of content analysis is examined from this perspective and their problematical nature shown by referring to findings of the theory of communication and semiotics. The result of this analysis demands the understanding of content analysis as a method of investigation of social reality rather than as a (...) model; the aim not being the description of a social object (of a text) but the inference from internal characteristics of a text. to external characteristics of social reality. At the same time it is revealed that content analysis just as the customary instruments for the investigation of social reality is to be understood as a reciprocally interfering selective social process the achievement of which, namely the investigation of social reality, is only possible in actual fact at the cost of the reactivity of the instrument. (shrink)

Evidence accumulates that pre- and postnatally circulating estrogens play an active role in the differentiation of the female brain: the susceptible period for feminization of the brain seems to extend far beyond the period during which masculinization of the brain occurs. Thus, there is a need to reevaluate the widely accepted “concept of basic femaleness” in sexual brain differentiation.

In spite of their growing specialization, modern natural sciences intend to reduce their theories to some fundamental structures: Physics tries to unify the different physical forces in one fundamental force. Chemistry tries to explain the structure of chemical substances by the quantum mechanics of molecules. Biology tries to reduce the processes of life to biochemical and biophysical laws. Mathematically, the unification of natural science can be described by structures of symmetry, the specialization of science, the variety, and emergence of new (...) phenomena by symmetry breaking. In the following, the successes and lacks of the reductionistic program are shown in recent developments of physics, chemistry, and biology. Philosophical discussions on holism, reductionism, and unification of science can be clarified by structures of symmetry and symmetry breaking. Alternative non-reductionistic view-points are not only possible, but desirable for the lacks in the reductionistic program. Nevertheless, the categorical framework of symmetry and symmetry breaking supports interdisciplinary work and gives new insight in a common structure and theory of natural science. (shrink)

Theory Reduction in the Social Sciences. The example of balance theories. A central topic both in philosophy of science as well as in the empirical sciences is the reconstruction of the relations between theories. In the past comparisons of theories by means of traditional linguistic methods have proved to be extremely difficult and complicated. In this article the reconstruction of intertheoretical relations based on model-theoretical terms is propagated, as formulated within the structuralist view of theories. The efficiency of a model (...) theoretical based comparison of theories is demonstrated by two theory elements from the social science research program of balance theories: The basic element by Heider and the transitivity theory by Holland and Leinhardt. First of all both theory elements are introduced informally and reconstructed in the structuralist format. On the basis of these reconstructions can be shown, that the Heider theory can be formally reduced to the Holland-Leinhardt theory and that the theory younger in history means an improvement. However, an integration of all balance theoretical elements into a theory net is not possible. (shrink)

In this article, I would like to clarify Austin's thesis that illocutionary acts are essentially conventional and to show, how this idea is connected with his concept of securing uptake. Contrary to what most critics believe, I will show that Austin provides a criterion characterising the nature of all illocutionary acts and allowing to distinguish them from perlocutionary acts.

The fictitious controversy turns around the question of how to know what Jesus meant by 'Kingdom of God'. Nietzsche pretended this kingdom to be merely interior and to be found only there, whereas elsewhere he declared God to be "dead". For Luther, the Kingdom of God is located in faith and the pure grace of God. On the other hand, Luther, due to his bible literalism, justifies the persecution of Jews and insurgent peasants, and this in flagrant contradiction to Jesus' (...) commandment of Love. The idea of 'Kingdom of God' has been of considerable impact and significance in the history of mind-. (shrink)

Summary This study continues in calculating formulas of the first order logic. Whereas the preceding part delt with monadic predicates, the present part treats polyadic predicates. The presumptions were supplied analogously.

ZusammenfassungEthische Aspekte von Biobanken-basierter Forschung werden zunehmend kontrovers diskutiert. In diesem Artikel wird die Debatte um ethisch angemessene Formen der Einwilligung in Biobanken-basierte Forschung nachgezeichnet. Nach einer Einführung in etablierte Einwilligungsmodelle skizziert der Beitrag kurz die Entwicklung alternativer Ansätze und diskutiert die damit verbundenen ethischen und regulatorischen Herausforderungen. Dabei wird dargestellt, welche ethischen Prinzipien in diesen Diskussionen eine Rolle spielen. Der Beitrag schließt mit einem Ausblick für Deutschland.