Die im Reader versammelten Beiträge verstehen sich als Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Visuellen. Sie untersuchen am Beispiel des Mediums Stadtfilm, welche Rolle die dorterzeugten Bilder großer Städte bei der Produktion urbanistischer Repräsentanten spielen. Aus diesem Grund werden insbesondere Übergänge analysiert, die Spielfilme einerseits und urbanistische Diskurse andererseits miteinander verknüpfen. Gemeinsamer Ausgangspunkt ist die These, daß es vor allem Bilder sind, die solche Verknüpfungen gewährleisten. Es wird unterstellt, daß es das Medium Film erlaubt, gerade über den Einsatz von Bildern "näher" (...) an soziale Wirklichkeiten heranzukommen, als dies textzentrierter Praxis empirischer Sozialforschung möglich ist. Stadtfilme erzeugen wirkmächtige Bilder, auf die dann unter bestimmten Bedingungen in urbanistischen Kontexten zurückgegriffen wird. Die Autoren präsentieren konzeptionelle Überlegungen und Filminterpretationen zu Moebius (1991, Regie: Matti Geschonneck), Der Himmel über Berlin (1987, Regie: Wim Wenders), In weiter Ferne, so nah! (1993, Regie: Wim Wenders), Der Bauch des Architekten (1987, Regie: Peter Greenaway) und Hass (1995, Regie: Mathieu Kassovitz). Sie bedienen sich dabei sehr unterschiedlicher Verfahren. Gemeinsam sind ihnen allerdings die Anliegen, die größere Nähe der Filme zu sozialen Welten hervorzuheben und die Übergänge zwischen Stadtfilmen und Urbanistik herauszuarbeiten. -/- City and Film. Attempts at a 'Visual Sociology' Summary The contributions collected in this reader present attempts at a Visual sociology'. Based on a study on the medium 'city film' the author s determine which role the images of big cities evoked in such films can play for urbanistic representations. Therefore the analysis is, in particular, focussed on points of transition marking a connection of movies, on the one hand, and urbanistic discourse, on the othe r. The common point of departure is the hypothesis that images, more than anything else, do guarantee such connections. The authors assume that the medium film may lead 'closer' to social realities than the text- centered practices of empirical social research. City films produce powerful images which, under certain cond itions, can be utilized in urbanistic contexts. The authors present conceptual considerations and interpretations of the following films: Moebius (1991, director: Matti Geschonneck); Der Himmel über Berlin (1987, director: Wim Wenders); In weiter Ferne, so nah! (1993, director: Wim Wenders); The Belly of the Architect (1987, director: Peter Greenaway); and quite different methods they aim at the same goals: emphasizing the greater closeness of films to social worlds and bringing out the points of transition between city films and urbanistics. (shrink)

We show that the non-existence of mad families is equiconsistent with \, answering an old question of Mathias. We also consider the above result in the general context of maximal independent sets in Borel graphs, and we construct a Borel graph G such that \ “there is no maximal independent set in G” is equiconsistent with \ “there exists an inaccessible cardinal”.

When do probability distribution functions (PDFs) about future climate misrepresent uncertainty? How can we recognise when such misrepresentation occurs and thus avoid it in reasoning about or communicating our uncertainty? And when we should not use a PDF, what should we do instead? In this paper we address these three questions. We start by providing a classification of types of uncertainty and using this classification to illustrate when PDFs misrepresent our uncertainty in a way that may adversely affect decisions. We (...) then discuss when it is reasonable and appropriate to use a PDF to reason about or communicate uncertainty about climate. We consider two perspectives on this issue. On one, which we argue is preferable, available theory and evidence in climate science basically excludes using PDFs to represent our uncertainty. On the other, PDFs can legitimately be provided when resting on appropriate expert judgement and recognition of associated risks. Once we have specified the border between appropriate and inappropriate uses of PDFs, we explore alternatives to their use. We briefly describe two formal alternatives, namely imprecise probabilities and possibilistic distribution functions, as well as informal possibilistic alternatives. We suggest that the possibilistic alternatives are preferable. -/- . (shrink)

This daily diary study examined the within-person coupling between four emotion regulation strategies and both subjective well-being and perceived stress in daily life of geriatric nurses. Participants ( N = 89) described how they regulated their emotions in terms of cognitive reappraisal and suppression. They also indicated their subjective well-being and level of perceived stress each day over 3 weeks. At the within-person level, cognitive reappraisal intended to increase positive emotions was positively associated with higher subjective well-being and negatively associated (...) with perceived stress. Suppression of the expression of positive emotions was negatively associated with subjective well-being and positively associated with perceived stress. However, cognitive reappraisal intended to down-regulate negative emotions and suppression as a strategy to inhibit the expression of negative emotions were not associated with daily well-being or perceived stress. Off-days were rated as days with higher subjective well-being and lower perceived stress in contrast to working days. At the between-person level, individuals who reported more daily negative affect reported increased suppression of positive emotions, corroborating the within-person findings. Moreover, findings indicated that nurses with more years of experience in the job reported higher subjective well-being and less perceived stress. These results provide insights into important daily emotional processes of geriatric nurses, both at workdays and in their leisure time. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Writing in EIA 22, no. 1, Mathias Risse presented a novel way to think about the problem of immigration in the context of global justice, adopting the standpoint of the common ownership of the earth. The following Exchange is in response to that essay.

Background A biobank is a structure which collects and manages biological samples and their associated data. The collected samples will then be made available for various uses. The sharing of those samples raised ethical questions which have been answered through specific rules. Thus, a Biobank functioning under tight ethical rules would be immensely valuable from a scientific and an economic view point. In 2009, Côte d’Ivoire established a biobank, which has been chosen to house the regional biobank of Economic Community (...) of West African States countries in 2018. To ensure optimal and efficient use of this biobank, the scientific community must be aware of its existence and its role. It was therefore necessary to evaluate the knowledge of laboratories staff on the role and activities of a biobank. Methods This descriptive study was done by questioning staff from laboratories working on human’s health, animals or plants. The laboratories were located in southern Côte d’Ivoire. Results A total of 205 people completed the questionnaire. Of these 205 people, 34.63% were biologists, 7.32% engineers, 48.78% technicians and 9.27% PhD students. The average length of work experience was 10.11 ± 7.83 years. In this study, 43.41% of the participants had never heard of biobanking. Only 48.78% of participants had a good understanding of the role of a biobank. Technicians and PhD students were less educated on the notion of biobank. Conclusion The level of knowledge of laboratory staff about biobanking needs to be improved. Training on the role, activities and interests of the biobank is important. (shrink)

William James famously tells us that there are two main goals for rational believers: believing truth and avoiding error. I argues that epistemic consequentialism—in particular its embodiment in epistemic utility theory—seems to be well positioned to explain how epistemic agents might permissibly weight these goals differently and adopt different credences as a result. After all, practical versions of consequentialism render it permissible for agents with different goals to act differently in the same situation. -/- Nevertheless, I argue that epistemic consequentialism (...) doesn’t allow for this kind of permissivism and goes on to argue that this reveals a deep disanalogy between decision theory and the formally similar epistemic utility theory. This raises the question whether epistemic utility theory is a genuinely consequentialist theory at all. (shrink)

Much has been written on the role of causal notions and causal reasoning in the so-called 'special sciences' and in common sense. But does causal reasoning also play a role in physics? Mathias Frisch argues that, contrary to what influential philosophical arguments purport to show, the answer is yes. Time-asymmetric causal structures are as integral a part of the representational toolkit of physics as a theory's dynamical equations. Frisch develops his argument partly through a critique of anti-causal arguments and (...) partly through a detailed examination of actual examples of causal notions in physics, including causal principles invoked in linear response theory and in representations of radiation phenomena. Offering a new perspective on the nature of scientific theories and causal reasoning, this book will be of interest to professional philosophers, graduate students, and anyone interested in the role of causal thinking in science. (shrink)

What are credences? Where do the numbers come from? Some have argued that they are brute and primitive; others, that they model our dispositions to bet, our comparative confidence judgments, or our all‐out beliefs. This paper explores a new answer to this question: credences model our dispositions to guess. I argue that we can think of credences this way, and then consider: should we?

Many views rely on the idea that it can never be rational to have high confidence in something like, “P, but my evidence doesn’t support P.” Call this idea the “Non-Akrasia Constraint”. Just as an akratic agent acts in a way she believes she ought not act, an epistemically akratic agent believes something that she believes is unsupported by her evidence. The Non-Akrasia Constraint says that ideally rational agents will never be epistemically akratic. In a number of recent papers, the (...) Non-Akrasia Constraint has been called into question. The goal of this paper is to defend it... for the most part. (shrink)

Mathias Frisch provides the first sustained philosophical discussion of conceptual problems in classical particle-field theories. Part of the book focuses on the problem of a satisfactory equation of motion for charged particles interacting with electromagnetic fields. As Frisch shows, the standard equation of motion results in a mathematically inconsistent theory, yet there is no fully consistent and conceptually unproblematic alternative theory. Frisch describes in detail how the search for a fundamental equation of motion is partly driven by pragmatic considerations (...) (like simplicity and mathematical tractability) that can override the aim for full consistency. The book also offers a comprehensive review and criticism of both the physical and philosophical literature on the temporal asymmetry exhibited by electromagnetic radiation fields, including Einstein's discussion of the asymmetry and Wheeler and Feynman's influential absorber theory of radiation. Frisch argues that attempts to derive the asymmetry from thermodynamic or cosmological considerations fail and proposes that we should understand the asymmetry as due to a fundamental causal constraint. The book's overarching philosophical thesis is that standard philosophical accounts that strictly identify scientific theories with a mathematical formalism and a mapping function specifying the theory's ontology are inadequate, since they permit neither inconsistent yet genuinely successful theories nor thick causal notions to be part of fundamental physics. (shrink)

Speech planning is a sophisticated process. In dialog, it regularly starts in overlap with an incoming turn by a conversation partner. We show that planning spoken responses in overlap with incoming turns is associated with higher processing load than planning in silence. In a dialogic experiment, participants took turns with a confederate describing lists of objects. The confederate’s utterances (to which participants responded) were pre‐recorded and varied in whether they ended in a verb or an object noun and whether this (...) ending was predictable or not. We found that response planning in overlap with sentence‐final verbs evokes larger task‐evoked pupillary responses, while end predictability had no effect. This finding indicates that planning in overlap leads to higher processing load for next speakers in dialog and that next speakers do not proactively modulate the time course of their response planning based on their predictions of turn endings. The turn‐taking system exerts pressure on the language processing system by pushing speakers to plan in overlap despite the ensuing increase in processing load. (shrink)

This essay defends an account of the duties to the global poor that is informed by the empirical question of what makes countries rich or poor, and that tends to be broadly in agreement with John Rawlss account in The Law of Peoples. I begin by introducing the debate about the sources of growth and explore its implications for duties towards the poor. Next I explore whether (and deny that) there are any further-reaching duties towards the poor. Finally, I ask (...) about the moral foundations for the duties to the poor of the sort that earlier parts argue there are. (shrink)

Sequences of numbers representing prior resource size were presented to participants in a common-pool resource dilemma. The numbers were sampled from uniform probability distributions with either a low variance (low resource uncertainty) or a high variance (high resource uncertainty). Presentations were both sequential and simultaneous. Three groups of 16 undergraduates either estimated the size of the resource when it did not represent value to them; requested an amount from the resource, identified with a sum of money, when the outcome of (...) the requests only depended on resource size; or requested from the resource (sum of money) when the outcome of the requests depended on both resource size and how much others in a group requested. In support of an individual outcome-desirability bias due to selective recall of the number sequences, after sequential presentation larger requests were observed when resource uncertainty was high than when it was low. No effects of resource uncertainty or presentation were found on the estimates of resource size. Whether or not the outcome of the requests depended on others' requests made little difference. (shrink)

The grounds of justice -- "Un pouvoir ordinaire": shared membership in a state as a ground of -- Justice -- Internationalism versus statism and globalism: contemporary debates -- What follows from our common humanity? : the institutional stance, human rights, and nonrelationism -- Hugo Grotius revisited : collective ownership of the Earth and global public reason -- "Our sole habitation" : a contemporary approach to collective ownership of the earth -- Toward a contingent derivation of human rights -- Proportionate use (...) : immigration and original ownership of the Earth -- "But the earth abideth for ever" : obligations to future generations -- Climate change and ownership of the atmosphere -- Human rights as membership rights in the global order -- Arguing for human rights : essential pharmaceuticals -- Arguing for human rights : labor rights as human rights -- Justice and trade -- The way we live now -- "Imagine there's no countries" : a reply to John Lennon -- Justice and accountability : the state -- Justice and accountability : the World Trade Organization. (shrink)

Standard accuracy-based approaches to imprecise credences have the consequence that it is rational to move between precise and imprecise credences arbitrarily, without gaining any new evidence. Building on the Educated Guessing Framework of Horowitz (2019), we develop an alternative accuracy-based approach to imprecise credences that does not have this shortcoming. We argue that it is always irrational to move from a precise state to an imprecise state arbitrarily, however it can be rational to move from an imprecise state to (...) a precise state arbitrarily. (shrink)

Priority setting in health care is ubiquitous and health authorities are increasingly recognising the need for priority setting guidelines to ensure efficient, fair, and equitable resource allocation. While cost-effectiveness concerns seem to dominate many policies, the tension between utilitarian and deontological concerns is salient to many, and various severity criteria appear to fill this gap. Severity, then, must be subjected to rigorous ethical and philosophical analysis. Here we first give a brief history of the path to today’s severity criteria in (...) Norway and Sweden. The Scandinavian perspective on severity might be conducive to the international discussion, given its long-standing use as a priority setting criterion, despite having reached rather different conclusions so far. We then argue that severity can be viewed as a multidimensional concept, drawing on accounts of need, urgency, fairness, duty to save lives, and human dignity. Such concerns will often be relative to local mores, and the weighting placed on the various dimensions cannot be expected to be fixed. Thirdly, we present what we think are the most pertinent questions to answer about severity in order to facilitate decision making in the coming years of increased scarcity, and to further the understanding of underlying assumptions and values that go into these decisions. We conclude that severity is poorly understood, and that the topic needs substantial further inquiry; thus we hope this article may set a challenging and important research agenda. (shrink)

Despite their centrality and importance to both science and philosophy, relatively little has been written about thought experiments. This volume brings together a series of extremely interesting studies of the history, mechanics, and applications of this important intellectual resource. A distinguished list of philosophers and scientists consider the role of thought experiments in their various disciplines, and argue that an examination of thought experimentation goes to the heart of both science and philosophy.

Wie kann man einen historischen Blick auf das eigene Fach werfen? Diese Frage ist nicht einfach zu beantworten – will man einerseits nicht in einer Nabelschau und Hagiographie enden, andererseits aber auch keinen umfassenden Entwurf einer zukünftigen Historiographie vorlegen. Die hier als Bausteine zu einer Oral History der Wissenschaftsgeschichte in loser Folge publizierten Interviews mit bekannten Protagonisten der Berliner Wissenschaftsgeschichte von ca. 1970–1990 in West und Ost rücken die Geschichte des Faches deshalb in einem bestimmten Milieu in den Fokus und (...) versuchen, die Historiographie jenseits einer Institutionen‐ oder Theoriegeschichte voranzutreiben. Welche Motivationen oder Probleme bewegten einzelne Wissenschaftler:innen, sich der Geschichte ihres Faches zu widmen oder sich etwa aus der Soziologie oder Philosophie in die Wissenschaftsgeschichte zu bewegen? Welche Ausbildungspraxen existierten in diesem heterogenen, zwischen den Disziplinen angesiedelten Feld, welche Anregungen bezog man aus welchen Kontexten? Wie war Lehre strukturiert und welche Netzwerke bildeten sich mit der Zeit? Kurz: Mit welchem Interesse kam man zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte und was wurde daraus? Die Auswahl der Interviewees erfolgt ohne Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit oder Proporz; der Fragenkatalog der Interviews richtet sich individuell nach den Biographien und dem Werk und entfaltet sich oft spontan im Gespräch. Die Interviews wurden digital aufgezeichnet, transkribiert, der Schriftsprache angepasst, gegebenenfalls gekürzt, annotiert und von den Interviewees authentifiziert. Wir beabsichtigen mit dieser Serie von Interviews zunächst die Dokumentation rezenter Geschichte durch eine Oral History, die subjektive Wahrnehmungen und persönliche Erlebnisse einschließt. Auf diese Weise werden Segmente einer größtenteils ungeschriebenen Geschichte anhand von Biographien erfahrbar und damit auch einer weiteren kritischen Bearbeitung und Integration in ein Gesamtbild zugänglich. Da uns im Zuge der jeweiligen Vorbereitung und Durchführung, Transkription und Abstimmung der Interviews daran gelegen war, aus Sicht der Akteure wichtige Sammelbände und Aufsätze, Graue Literatur oder Monographien zu erfassen, wird nebenbei eine kommentierte Bibliographie zur Geschichte der Wissenschaftsgeschichte entstehen. Unsere Hoffnung besteht darin, mittels dieser Sammlung mit Berlin einen fruchtbaren Raum und mit den 1970er und 1980er Jahren eine produktive Zeit des Faches jenseits von Reminiszenz oder Nostalgie zu erkunden nicht zuletzt auch, um den Blick für gegenwärtige Herausforderungen des Faches zu schärfen.Mathias Grote, Anke te Heesen. (shrink)

The two traditional ways of thinking about justice at the global level either limit the applicability of justice to states—the only distributions that can be just or unjust, strictly speaking, are within the state—or else extend it to all human beings. The view I defend in On Global Justice rejects both of these approaches. Instead, my view, and thus my attempt at meeting the aforementioned challenge, acknowledges the existence of multiple grounds of justice. My purpose here is to explain what (...) my view has to say about responsibility. First of all, I explain what my view implies about the responsibilities of the state for the realization of justice. Then I explain that in addition to obligations of justice, my view also gives rise to obligations of account-giving. I end by sketching what all this implies for institutional reform at the global level. (shrink)

Biographical note: Mathias Denecke is a PhD student at the University of Konstanz, Germany.Anne Ganzert is a PhD student at the University of Konstanz, Germany.Isabell Otto (PhD) is junior professor for Media Studies at the University of Konstanz, Germany.Robert Stock (MA) coordinates the research initiative ”Media and Participation“ at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

I show that the standard approach to modeling phenomena involving microscopic classical electrodynamics is mathematically inconsistent. I argue that there is no conceptually unproblematic and consistent theory covering the same phenomena to which this inconsistent theory can be thought of as an approximation; and I propose a set of conditions for the acceptability of inconsistent theories.

The concept of form belongs—apparently—to an older stage of biological concept formation. Paradoxically, it is even the insistence on the reference to form that shows its very disappearance.1 The more the functionalization2, systematization, and finally algorithmization of modern biology3 advances, in the sense of systems biology, synthetic biology and bioinformatics, the less audible the call for a rehabilitation of the concept of form becomes.This technomorphic tendency, to deal with living entities in terms of artifacts, increasingly brought the concept of transformation (...) into the forefront—articulated, e.g., in the formal sense by differential equations and their combination on all “levels” of the biological... (shrink)

During the last decade, in 1958 to be precise, an organizational confrontation took place: the essential issue before its membership was this: should the American Sociological Society be rechristened the American Sociological Association. The results of the vote conclusively demonstrated that for a majority of the participants, it was preferable to be known as a group of ASA's rather than a bunch of ASS's.