Network analysis is increasingly appreciated as a methodology in the social sciences. In recent years, it is also receiving attention among historians of science. History of economics is no exception in that researchers have begun to use network analysis to study a variety of topics, including collaborations and interactions in scientific communities, the spread of economic theories within and across fields, or the formation of new specialties in the discipline of economics. Against this backdrop, a debate is emerging about how (...) network analysis can help address questions that are pertinent to the history of economics. With this paper, we want to push this debate one step forward by offering and discussing five reasons why network analysis should have a future in the history of economics. (shrink)

Berichte über Schlachten wurden bislang fast immer mit der Absicht betrachtet, aus ihnen das tatsächliche Geschehen zu rekonstruieren. In diesem Aufsatz geht es hingegen um die Frage, wie mittelalterliche Menschen selbst das Kampfgeschehen deuteten und beschrieben, und vor allem darum zu ermitteln, welche Rolle dabei den topographischen Eigenarten des Schlachtfeldes zukam. Es zeigt sich, dass die Verfasser der Quellen keineswegs den Ablauf des Kampfes nüchtern protokollieren wollten, sondern stets ihre spezifische Erzählabsicht verfolgten. Insbesondere versuchten sie, jene Partei, der sie selbst (...) anhingen, möglichst günstig darzustellen. Dieser Erzählabsicht ordneten sie die Erwähnung topographischer Details klar unter. Außerdem flossen in die Schilderung auch scheinbar banaler topographischer Einzelheiten häufig Motive und Erzählmuster ein, die den Autoren und den zeitgenössischen Lesern schon bekannt waren und die daher Wahrnehmung, Erinnerung und Darstellung prägten. Aus dieser Analyse folgt, dass Rückschlüsse auf die örtlichen Gegebenheiten und den tatsächlichen Ablauf des Kampfes den Worten der Chronisten allenfalls mit größter Vorsicht zu entnehmen sind. Zugleich erweist sich, dass die sprachlichen Visualisierungsstrategien aufschlussreiche Erkenntnisse darüber bieten, wie die Autoren kriegerische Handlungen wahrnahmen. (shrink)

A dynamic semantics for epistemically modalized sentences is an attractive alternative to the orthodox view that our best theory of meaning ascribes to such sentences truth-conditions relative to what is known. This essay demonstrates that a dynamic theory about might and must offers elegant explanations of a range of puzzling observations about epistemic modals. The first part of the story offers a unifying treatment of disputes about epistemic modality and disputes about matters of fact while at the same time avoiding (...) the complexities of alternative theories. The second part of the story extends the basic framework to cover some complicated data about retraction and the interaction between epistemic modality and tense. A comparison between the suggestion made in this essay and current versions of the orthodoxy is provided. (shrink)

English summary: As a functioning part of the human body and mind, our internal information technology systems belong to our physical makeup just as much as body parts and substances do to the realm of reproductive medicine, genetic information does to gene technology and brain scans do to neurological technology. Bio-information law concerns itself with the rights of these roving human components. German description: Bio- und Informationstechnologien generieren standig neue, bislang kaum fur moglich gehaltene Verhaltnisse, Verknupfungen und Anschlusse zwischen Technischem (...) und Lebendigem. Im Recht werfen diese technisch-lebendigen Assoziationen grundsatzliche Fragen auf, wenn es beispielsweise darum geht, welche Personlichkeits- oder Eigentumsrechte an extrakorporal gelagerten Korpersubstanzen oder auch an genetischer Information bestehen. Ebenso hat das Recht eine Antwort darauf zu finden, welche Bedeutung neuronalen Daten und Abbildungen von Hirnaktivitaten, etwa fur den Beweis psychischer Schadigungen im Schmerzensgeldprozess, zukommt. Und nicht zuletzt erhebt sich die keineswegs mehr abwegige Rechtsfrage, ob der Eingriff in ein informationstechnisches System als personlichkeitsverletzend gelten darf, weil dieses womoglich wie ein ausgelagerter Teil des Korpers zu behandeln ist. Malte Gruber untersucht, wie sich diese Problemstellungen auf die privatrechtlichen Deutungen von Person, Sache und Rechtsverhaltnis auswirken und dabei ein technologieubergreifendes Recht formieren: Bioinformationsrecht handelt von der engen, untrennbaren Verbindung informationstechnisch-artifizieller und korperlich-lebendiger, gewissermassen kunstlicher und naturlicher Prozesse, von Expansionstechnologien und bioartifiziellen Rechtsverhaltnissen, in denen sich die Personlichkeit des Menschen in technisierter Verfassung entfaltet. (shrink)

The essay explores the connections between the abolition of legalized prostitution and the processes of democratization in Germany and Italy, starting from the history of human rights and its interaction with the political system. The main sources are the parliamentary debates and the laws that brought about the closedown of brothels and the abolition of the surveillance system in Germany in 1927 and in Italy in 1958. The debates on prostitution also pose a question of equality and gender justice. In (...) particular, the problem of the regulation of prostitution, whose efficiency has been verified by an ever growing number of researchers during the XX century, deploys factors of sanitary policy, human rights and morals, aspects of social policy and security, questioning not only the gender hierarchy, but also the social one. (shrink)

Prior research has shown a pronounced self-orientation in students of business and economics. This article examines if self-orientation can be alleviated by a focus on prosocial values in business education. In a cross-sectional design, we test the prosocial behavior and values of bachelor students at the beginning and the end of a traditional 3-year business administration program. We compare their behavior with the behavior of two different groups: students from an ethically-oriented international management school and students from a social work (...) program of equal length. The results showed that students of business administration show less prosocial behavior in a dictator game than students in the other two groups. This difference is larger between final-year students than between first-year students. According to the results of the Schwartz Value Survey, the Inglehart Index, and a scale for preferences for distributive justice, students in the three disciplines differ substantially in prosocial values, but there is no significant difference between first and last semester students of the same discipline. We conclude that there is no transmission of self-oriented behavior through self-oriented values emended in traditional business education curricula. Instead, students seem to select academic programs according to their personal and preexisting social orientations. (shrink)

Mindfulness meditation describes a set of different mental techniques to train attention and awareness. Trait mindfulness and extended mindfulness interventions can benefit self-control. The present study investigated the short-term consequences of mindfulness meditation under conditions of limited self-control resources. Specifically, we hypothesized that a brief period of mindfulness meditation would counteract the deleterious effect that the exertion of self-control has on subsequent self-control performance. Participants who had been depleted of self-control resources by an emotion suppression task showed decrements in self-control (...) performance as compared to participants who had not suppressed emotions. However, participants who had meditated after emotion suppression performed equally well on the subsequent self-control task as participants who had not exerted self-control previously. This finding suggests that a brief period of mindfulness meditation may serve as a quick and efficient strategy to foster self-control under conditions of low resources. (shrink)

In contemporary discussions of the Ramsey Test for conditionals, it is commonly held that (i) supposing the antecedent of a conditional is adopting a potential state of full belief, and (ii) Modus Ponens is a valid rule of inference. I argue on the basis of Thomason Conditionals (such as ' If Sally is deceiving, I do not believe it') and Moore's Paradox that both claims are wrong. I then develop a double-indexed Update Semantics for conditionals which takes these two results (...) into account while doing justice to the key intuitions underlying the Ramsey Test. The semantics is extended to cover some further phenomena, including the recent observation that epistemic modal operators give rise to something very like, but also very unlike, Moore's Paradox. (shrink)

The study of word meanings promises important insights into the nature of the human mind by revealing what people find to be most cognitively significant in their experience. However, as we learn more about the semantics of various languages, we are faced with an interesting problem. Different languages seem to be telling us different stories about the mind. For example, important distinctions made in one language are not necessarily made in others. What are we to make of these cross-linguistic differences? (...) How do they arise? Are they created by purely linguistic processes operating over the course of language evolution? Or do they reflect fundamental differences in thought? In this sea of differences, are there any semantic universals? Which categories might be given by the genes, which by culture, and which by language? And what might the cross-linguistic similarities and differences contribute to our understanding of conceptual and linguistic development? The kinds of mapping principles, structures, and processes that link language and non-linguistic knowledge must accommodate not just one language but the rich diversity that has been uncovered. The integration of knowledge and methodologies necessary for real progress in answering these questions has happened only recently, as experimental approaches have been applied to the cross-linguistic study of word meaning. In Words and the Mind, Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff present evidence from the leading researchers who are carrying out this empirical work on topics as diverse as spatial relations, events, emotion terms, motion events, objects, body-part terms, causation, color categories, and relational categories. By bringing them together, Malt and Wolff highlight some of the most exciting cross-linguistic and cross-cultural work on the language-thought interface, from a broad array of fields including linguistics, anthropology, cognitive and developmental psychology, and cognitive neuropsychology. Their results provide some answers to these questions and new perspectives on the issues surrounding them. (shrink)

The received wisdom on ability modals is that they differ from their epistemic and deontic cousins in what inferences they license and better receive a universal or conditional analysis instead of an existential one. The goal of this paper is to sharpen the empirical picture about the semantics of ability modals, and to propose an analysis that explains what makes the can of ability so special but that also preserves the crucial idea that all uses of can share a common (...) lexical semantics. The resulting framework combines tools and techniques from dynamic and inquisitive semantics with insights from the literature of the role of agency in deontic logic. It explains not only why the can of ability, while essentially being an existential modal operator, sometimes resists distribution over disjunction and interacts with its duals in particular and hitherto unnoticed ways, but also has a tendency to license free choice inferences. (shrink)

What should be the ‘informational base’ of welfare economics if one takes the insights from behavioral economics seriously? Sugden proposes individuals’ sets of opportunities. This paper discusses...

Algorithms have developed into somewhat of a modern myth. On the one hand, they have been depicted as powerful entities that rule, sort, govern, shape, or otherwise control our lives. On the other hand, their alleged obscurity and inscrutability make it difficult to understand what exactly is at stake. What sustains their image as powerful yet inscrutable entities? And how to think about the politics and governance of something that is so difficult to grasp? This editorial essay provides a critical (...) backdrop for the special issue, treating algorithms not only as computational artifacts but also as sensitizing devices that can help us rethink some entrenched assumptions about agency, transparency, and normativity. (shrink)

High‐throughput genomic technologies are revolutionizing human genetics. So far the focus has been on the 1.5% of the genome, which is coding, in spite of the fact that the great majority of genomic variants fall outside the coding regions. Recent efforts to annotate the non‐coding sequence show that over 80% of the genome is biochemically active. The genome is divided into regulatory domains consisting of sequence regions that enhance and/or silence the expression of nearby genes and are, in some cases, (...) separated by boundaries with insulator activity. In this paper, we review the recent advances in the identification of variations that influence gene regulation and their consequences for human disease. We hypothesize that structural variations outside of the coding genome can interfere with normal gene regulation by disrupting the regulatory landscape. Therefore, the regulatory landscape of the genome has also to be taken into consideration when investigating the pathology of human disease. (shrink)

This paper offers a unified semantic explanation of two observations that prove to be problematic for classical analyses of modals, conditionals, and disjunctions: the fact that disjunctions scoping under possibility modals give rise to the free choice effect and the fact that counterfactuals license simplification of disjunctive antecedents. It shows that the data are well explained by a dynamic semantic analysis of modals and conditionals that uses ideas from the inquisitive semantic tradition in its treatment of disjunction. The analysis explains (...) why embedding a disjunctive possibility under negation reverts disjunction to its classical behavior, is general enough to predict less studied simplification patterns, and also makes progress toward a unified perspective on the distinction between informative, inquisitive, and attentive content. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of ‘ignorance’ in philosophy and science, particularly with respect to the conceptualization, study and solution of environmental problems. We begin by distinguishing between ‘risk’, ‘uncertainty’ and ‘ignorance’. We then offer a categorization of ignorance, and use these categories to assess the role of science as a means of reducing ignorance. We note that to proceed with science, several 'acts of faith' are necessary. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of an attitude of openness (...) in science and philosophy, especially regarding environmental problems. Throughout, we illustrate our discussion of ignorance, and the problems involved in its reduction, by reference to environmental issues. (shrink)

Every adequate semantics for conditionals and deontic ought must offer a solution to the miners paradox about conditional obligations. Kolodny and MacFarlane have recently argued that such a semantics must reject the validity of modus ponens. I demonstrate that rejecting the validity of modus ponens is inessential for an adequate solution to the paradox.

A dynamic semantics for iffy oughts offers an attractive alternative to the folklore that Chisholm's paradox enforces an unhappy choice between the intuitive inference rules of factual and deontic detachment. The first part of the story told here shows how a dynamic theory about ifs and oughts gives rise to a nonmonotonic perspective on deontic discourse and reasoning that elegantly removes the air of paradox from Chisholm's puzzle without sacrificing any of the two detachment principles. The second part of the (...) story showcases two bonus applications of the framework suggested here: it offers a response to Forrester's gentle murder paradox and avoids Kolodny and MacFarlane's miners paradox about deontic reasoning under epistemic uncertainty. A comparison between the dynamic semantic proposal made in this paper and a more conservative approach combining a static semantics with a dynamic pragmatics is provided. (shrink)

Biogeography is a multidisciplinary field with multiple origins in 19th century taxonomic practice. The Origins of Biogeography presents a revised history of early biogeography and investigates the split in taxonomic practice, between the classification of taxa and the classification of vegetation. This book moves beyond the traditional belief that biogeography is born from a synthesis of Darwin and Wallace and focuses on the important pioneering work of earlier practitioners such as Zimmermann, Stromeyer, de Candolle and Humboldt. Tracing the academic history (...) of biogeography over the decades and centuries, this book recounts the early schisms in phyto and zoogeography, the shedding of its bonds to taxonomy, its adoption of an ecological framework, and its beginnings at the dawn of the 20th century. This book assesses the contributions of key figures such as Zimmermann, Humboldt and Wallace, and reminds us of the forgotten influence of plant and animal geographers including Stromeyer, Prichard and de Candolle, whose early attempts at classifying animal and plant geography would inform later progress. The Origins of Biogeography is a science historiography aimed at biogeographers, who have little access to a detailed history of the practices of early plant and animal geographers. This book will also reveal how biological classification has shaped 18th and 19th century plant and animal geography and why it is relevant to the 21st biogeographer. (shrink)

This article presents a study that investigates how anonymity influences user participation in an online question-and-answer platform [Quora ]. The study is one step in identifying hypotheses that can be used to address a research and design issue concerning the role of anonymity in online participation, particularly in sensitive situations where people are seeking social support. Based on the literature, we present a model that describes the factors that influence participation. These factors were used when analyzing the answers to questions (...) in the health category on Quora. The results of this study were completed by a survey asking Quora users about their use of the anonymity feature. The main result is that the only significant difference between anonymous and non-anonymous answers is that: with anonymous answers, social appreciation correlated with the answer’s length. (shrink)

Folklore has it that Sobel sequences favor a variably strict analysis of conditionals over its plainly strict alternative. While recent discussions for or against the lore have focussed on Sobel sequences involving counterfactuals, this paper draws attention to the fact that indicative Sobel sequences are just as felicitous as are their counterfactual cousins. The fact, or so I shall argue here, disrupts the folklore: given minimal assumptions about the semantics and pragmatics of indicative conditionals, a textbook variably strict analysis fails (...) to predict that indicative Sobel sequences are felicitous. The correct lesson to draw from Sobel sequences is that their felicity challenges classical implementations of the variably strict and of the plainly strict analysis alike. In response to this challenge I develop a dynamic strict analysis of conditionals that handles indicative Sobel sequences with grace while preserving intuitive constraints on the semantics and pragmatics of their members. A discussion of how such an analysis may handle the challenge from reverse Sobel sequences is provided. (shrink)

"Das Rechtssystem geht davon aus, dass der Mensch – und nur der Mensch – eine natürliche Person ist. Das sei ein Irrtum, argumentiert Malte-Christian Gruber, denn die Rechtssubjektivität wird keineswegs alleine mit dem bloßen Menschsein begründet. Es ist die sittliche Autonomie, die den Menschen zu einem »Subjekt, dessen Handlungen einer Zurechnung fähig sind« (Kant) und mithin zur Person macht. Personen werden nicht mit dem Menschsein als solchem identifiziert, sondern durch die Zuschreibung von Handlungs- und Rechtsträgerschaft. Eine solche funktionale Vorstellung (...) von Rechtssubjektivität ist prinzipiell auch dazu imstande, neben Menschen noch weitere autonome Agenten als Träger von Rechten und Pflichten ein- zusetzen, z.B. technische Artefakte und andere nicht-menschliche Agenten. Christoph Menke macht dagegen darauf aufmerksam, dass die Erfindung neuer Rechte das eigentliche Bewegungsgesetz der politischen Emanzipation in der Moderne war. Das begann mit den bürgerlichen Revolutionen und ist immer noch das generelle Modell, mit dem Politik und Theorie operieren, die neue Rechte für nicht-menschliche Lebewesen und Artefakte einfordern. So wie im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert die rechtliche Emanzipation zunächst über die Grenzen bürgerlicher Subjektivität hinausgeführt hat und soziale und kulturelle Rechte erfand, so sollen wir nun den weiteren, konsequenten Schritt tun und auch noch die Bindung der juridischen Anerkennung an die Kategorie menschlicher Subjektivität aufbrechen. Auch Bio- und Artefakte sollen als eigenständige Rechtssubjekte rekonstruiert werden. Es fehlt ihnen allerdings etwas, das in den emanzipatorischen Kämpfen der Vergangenheit schlechthin grundlegend war: Ein Träger von Rechten zu sein, hieß, ein Fordernder von Rechten, ja, ein Kämpfer für Rechte gewesen zu sein. Man konnte keine rechtliche Person als Träger von Rechten sein, ohne ein politisches Subjekt als Kämpfer und Denker von Rechten gewesen zu sein. Wenn die Bindung der rechtlichen Personalität an die menschliche Subjektivität aufgelöst wird, damit es Bio- und Artefakt-Rechte geben kann, löst sich zugleich auch diese Einheit von rechtlicher Personalität und politischer Subjektivität auf, die die moderne Idee der Rechte definiert hatte. The legal system assumes that human beings – and only human beings – are natural persons. That is erroneous, argues Malte-Christian Gruber, because legal subjectivity isn’t founded in humanity alone. It is moral autonomy that makes man into a “subject whose actions are capable of attribution” (Kant) and thus into a person. Personhood is not identified with being human as such, but by the attribution of actions and legal ownership. Besides human beings, such a functional concept of legal subjectivity can in principle also be applied to other autonomous agents as holder of rights and obligations, e.g. techno- logical artifacts and other non-human agents. Christoph Menke in turn points out that the invention of new rights was the actual law of motion of political emancipation in modern times. This began with the bourgeois revolutions and is still the general model with which politics and theory operate to claim new rights for non-human creatures and artifacts. Just as in the 19th and 20th centuries, the legal emancipation initially led beyond the limits of bourgeois subjectivity and in- vented social and cultural rights, so should we make a further consequent step and break with the dependence of juridical recognition on the category of human subjectivity. Also bio- and artifacts are to be reconstructed as independent legal entities. However, they lack something that was absolutely fundamental in the emancipatory struggles of the past: to be a subject of rights meant to have demanded rights, indeed, to have been a fighter for rights. One could not be a legal person and holder of rights without having been a political subject as fighter and thinker of rights. To suspend the dependence of legal personhood on human subjectivity so that there may be bio- and artifact-rights also means to dissolve the unity between legal personality and political subjectivity that once defined the modern idea of rights. ". (shrink)

Mere capacity views hold that agents who can intervene in an unfolding movement are performing an agentially controlled action, regardless of whether they do intervene. I introduce a simple argument to show that the noncausal explanation offered by mere capacity views fails to explain both control and action. In cases where bodily subsystems, rather than the agent, generate control over a movement, agents can often intervene to override non-agential control. Yet, contrary to what capacity views suggest, in these cases, this (...) capacity to intervene does not amount to agential control or action. I illustrate this with a case study of how passive breathing, a mere behavior, is misclassified by mere capacity views. I end by revisiting the central alternative to mere capacity views: causal control views. Advances in our understanding of how agents exert control over unfolding movements indicate that the nature of control is characterized by ubiquitous, small-scale causal interventions. (shrink)

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are a major success story, promising to improve science and policy. Despite some controversy, RCTs have spread toward Northern and Southern countries since the early 2000s. How so? Synthesizing previous research on this question, this article argues that favorable institutional conditions turned RCTs into “hinges” between the fields of science, politics, and business. Shifts toward behavioral economics, New Public Management, and evidence-based philanthropic giving led to a cross-fertilization among efforts in rich and poor countries, involving states, (...) international organizations, NGOs, researchers, and philanthropic foundations. This confluence of favorable institutional conditions and savvy social actors established a “global interstitial field” inside which support for RCTs has developed an unprecedented scope, influence, operational capacity, and professional payoff. However, the article further argues that the hinges holding together this global interstitial field are “squeaky” at best. Because actors inherit the illusio of their respective fields of origin—their central incentives and stakes—the interstitial field produces constant goal conflicts. Cooperation between academics and practitioners turns out to be plagued by tensions and contradictions. Based on this analysis, the article concludes that the global field of RCT support will probably differentiate into its constituent parts. As a result, RCTs may lose the special status they have gained among social science and policy evaluation methods, turning into one good technique among others. (shrink)

Algorithms have become a widespread trope for making sense of social life. Science, finance, journalism, warfare, and policing—there is hardly anything these days that has not been specified as “algorithmic.” Yet, although the trope has brought together a variety of audiences, it is not quite clear what kind of work it does. Often portrayed as powerful yet inscrutable entities, algorithms maintain an air of mystery that makes them both interesting and difficult to understand. This article takes on this problem and (...) examines the role of algorithms not as techno-scientific objects to be known, but as a figure that is used for making sense of observations. Following in the footsteps of Harold Garfinkel’s tutorial cases, I shall illustrate the implications of this view through an experiment with algorithmic navigation. Challenging participants to go on a walk, guided not by maps or GPS but by an algorithm developed on the spot, I highlight a number of dynamics typical of reasoning with running code, including the ongoing respecification of rules and observations, the stickiness of the procedure, and the selective invocation of the algorithm as an intelligible object. The materials thus provide an opportunity to rethink key issues at the intersection of the social sciences and the computational, including popular concerns with transparency, accountability, and ethics. (shrink)

Despite its lack of content, the concept of dignity plays a central role in the German bio-ethical discussion because it appears in Article 1 in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. The architects of the constitution, like those of the other laws in which the concept appears, thereby pursued the aim of anchoring human rights in the nature of human beings. It has been suggested that the vacuity of the concept be filled by interpreting it with Kant. This (...) saddles one with the insoluble problems of the Kantian prescriptive ethic. It therefore makes more sense to interpret human dignity in terms of a volitional ethics and to situate it in the possession of human rights, which in turn is deduced from the goal orientedness of human activity, thus avoiding circularity. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungMit Schellings Spätphilosophie verabschiedet sich im Deutschen Idealismus die Vernunft vom Versuch ihrer Letztbegründung. Die Vernunft kann sich nicht in der Wirklichkeit eines absoluten Grundes ihrer eigenen Wirklichkeit versichern. Zwar realisiert die Vernunft, auf ein Absolutes bezogen zu sein, aber dessen Wirklichkeit als schöpferische Freiheit entzieht sich dem konzipierenden Ausgriff der Vernunft . Allerdings befreit die von der Vernunft eingesehene Möglichkeit dieser rational uneinholbaren Wirklichkeit zu einem – theoretisch nicht erzwingbaren, aber auch nicht als irrational denunzierbaren – Perspektivenwechsel . Danach (...) ist der »entsicherten« Vernunft eine Diagnose der Welt im Horizont der schöpferischen Freiheit des Absoluten möglich .So zeigt Schellings Spätphilosophie: Gerade eine Theorie des Absoluten kann der Unbestimmtheit, die sich in Phänomenen wie Ambivalenz, Zufall und Unausdeutbarkeit ausdrückt, Raum verschaffen. Damit nimmt Schelling vorweg, was die Moderne in ihrer Selbstcharakterisierung, und zwar gegen die theologischen und absolutheitstheoretischen Überlegungen des Deutschen Idealismus, gerne für sich beansprucht. Anders jedoch als manche Vertreter des Postidealismus loziert Schelling das Andere der Vernunft nicht strikt jenseits der Vernunft , sondern verbindet die Einsicht in das Andere der Vernunft mit der Selbstaufklärung der Vernunft. Das Andere der Vernunft ist ihr absoluter Grund. Und dieser Grund ist ursprüngliche Kreativität, schöpferische Freiheit: die Freiheit, aus der und durch die alles ist.SummaryWith Schelling's later philosophy, the rationality in German idealism bids a farewell to the attempt of its last justification. In the reality of an absolute reason, rationality cannot affirm its own reality. Rationality indeed achieves the aim of being linked to an absolute, but whose reality as a creative freedom eludes the conceptualising reaching out of the rationality . However, the possibility of this rationally ungraspable reality, as understood by rationality, liberates to create a theoretically non-enforceable change of perspective , which is nonetheless not to be denounced as irrational. Afterwards, the “unlocked” rationality is able to diagnose the world in the view of the creative freedom of the absolute .This is what Schelling's later philosophy demonstrates: a theory of the absolute can create scope for uncertainty, which is expressed in phenomena such as ambivalence, coincidence and indecipherability. In so doing, Schelling anticipates what the ‘modern’ likes to lay claim to in its self-characterisation, which is, indeed, contrary to the theological and absolutist theoretical considerations of German idealism. Different, however, from other representatives of post-idealism, Schelling locates ‘the other’ of rationality not strictly as being on the other side of rationality but links the insight into the other of rationality with the self-enlightenment of rationality. The other of rationality is its absolute reason. This reason is original creativity and creative freedom: the freedom from and through which everything is. (shrink)

Language comprehension of action verbs recruits embodied representations in the brain that are assumed to invoke a mental simulation. This extends to abstract concepts, as well. We, therefore, argue that mental simulation works across levels of abstractness and involves higher-level schematic structures that subsume a generic structure of actions and events.

Epistemic modals are a prominent topic in the literature on natural language semantics, with wide-ranging implications for issues in philosophy of language and philosophical logic. Considerations about the role that epistemic "might" and "must" play in discourse and reasoning have led to the development of several important alternatives to classical possible worlds semantics for natural language modal expressions. This is an opinionated overview of what I take to be some of the most exciting issues and developments in the field.

In dem Band werden erstmals Grundlagentexte zur Phänomenologischen Erziehungswissenschaft von ihren Anfängen bis in die Gegenwart zusammengestellt. Die Sammlung gibt einen Überblick über Struktur, Entwicklung und Ausdifferenzierung der phänomenologischen Bewegung in der deutschsprachigen Pädagogik in den Feldern systematische Pädagogik, Bildungs-, Lern- und Erziehungstheorie, Pädagogik der frühen Kindheit, Schul- und Sonderpädagogik und der Erwachsenenbildung. Der Inhalt • Anfänge Phänomenologischer Erziehungswissenschaft • Anthropologie und Phänomenologische Erfahrungstheorie des Lernens und Erziehens • Koexistentiale Phänomenologie der Erziehung und Strukturpädagogik • Fremdheit und Andersheit im Lernen (...) und Umlernen • Aktuelle Ansätze Phänomenologischer Erziehungswissenschaft Die Zielgruppen Erziehungs- und Sozialwissenschaften, Erziehungs- und Bildungstheorie, Philosophy of Education, Historische Erziehungswissenschaft, Anthropologie, Frühpädagogik, Rehabilitationspädagogik, Schulpädagogik Der Herausgeber Dr. Malte Brinkmann ist Professor für Allgemeine Erziehungswissenschaft an der Humboldt-Universität Berlin. (shrink)

Robert Sugden (2018. The Community of Advantage: A Behavioural Economist’s Defence of the Market. Oxford University Press) offers an alternative account for normative economics grounded in the view that it is in each individual’s interest to have more opportunity rather than less, irrespective of whether their decisions reveal well-ordered preferences. Our paper characterizes Sugden’s proposal as a step in the right direction, but as insufficient. His opportunity criterion does not go far enough in taking insights from psychology seriously. Sugden defends (...) an idea of agency understood as a person’s subjective sense of being in control of her actions. To realize this sense of being in control, we argue that a focus on opportunity-only is problematic; people also need agentic capabilities. We use self-determination theory (SDT) to develop a subjective account of agency that is grounded in psychological science. (shrink)

To what extent, if at all, should a just society adopt public policies that regulate and limit the amount of time people work? Attempts to answer this question face a dilemma: Either, we can adopt a laissez-faire view, according to which governments must refrain from imposing working time policies on the labour market. But this view generates a situation in which many citizens experience deep regret about the balance between work and leisure in their lives. Or, we can endorse an (...) interventionist view that advocates government imposition of working time policies. However, such a view appears to be objectionably perfectionist insofar as it imposes on citizens a particular conception of the ideal balance between work and leisure. This article proposes a way out of this dilemma. It shows that the interventionist view can be defended on the anti-perfectionist grounds that this helps address a collective action problem in the labour market – the working time rat race. Employers often use working time as a proxy for their employees’ productivity and commitment. Those who work particularly long hours are often awarded benefits such as raises or promotions or are spared from dismissals. This makes it individually rational for each worker to work extra hours in an attempt to outcompete colleagues. However, if many workers pursue this strategy, it loses its effectiveness. Workers with preferences for more leisure have a claim to state intervention to remove the rat race when this doesn’t impose disproportionate harm on third parties. (shrink)