ObjectiveHopelessness and depression are strongly associated with suicidality. Given that physical and psychological outcomes can be altered with hope, hope is a therapeutic goal of increasing importance in the treatment of brain tumor patients. Moreover, it is not yet understood which factors affect the perception of hope in brain tumor patients. In addition, it remains uncertain whether lower-grade brain tumor patients suffer less from psycho-oncological distress than higher-grade brain tumor patients.MethodsNeuro-oncological patients were examined perioperatively with the Distress Thermometer and the (...) Herth Hope Index. In addition, psychological comorbidities and an assessment of general psycho-oncological distress were recorded.ResultsSixty-six brain tumor patients were included. No differences between higher- and lower-grade brain tumor patients were observed for general psycho-oncological distress and hope. However, higher-grade brain tumor patients showed a significantly higher level of depression and more negative expectations regarding therapeutic success. The extent of depression correlated negatively with hope.ConclusionUnexpectedly, higher-grade brain tumor patients remained as hopeful as lower-grade brain tumor patients despite the devastating diagnosis, higher levels of depression, and a worse expectation of therapeutic success. Conversely, lower-grade brain tumor patients experience as much psycho-oncological distress as patients with a higher-grade brain tumor, underpinning the imperative need for comprehensive psycho-oncological screening. For all brain tumor patients, considering hope is important to avoid suicides resulting from hopelessness and depression. (shrink)

Sugar relationships can be considered contemporary forms of transactional sex, that is, offering sexual services for material resources or other benefits. Considering the common age differences in these relationships, sugar relationships might be of relevance for older adults as well on the mating market. As a sequel to Birkás et al., in the present study, an attitude scale was developed to assess older women’s and men’s acceptance of sugar relationships. We also explored whether the acceptance of sugar relationships was associated (...) with love styles, sociosexual orientation, sexual motivation, and certain socially aversive personality traits. In two online studies with a total number of 836 participants, the results showed that the Acceptance of Sugar Relationships in Older Men and Women Scale proved to be a reliable and conceptually valid measure of older individuals’ attitude toward sugar relationships. A more accepting attitude toward sugar relationships was found to be associated with more unrestricted sociosexuality, preference to engage in playful love relationships and more self-focused sexual motivation, and with more pronounced Dark Triad and borderline traits. Our findings are discussed in an evolutionary framework. (shrink)

Author: Norbert Waszek. Translated by Pedro Sepúlveda Zambrano.

Elias wrote in both English and German, and in all his work runs to 14 books and around 90 other essays, along with poems and numerous interviews. The 18 volumes of the collected works contain many writings not previously published in English, and a small number never published before. All of the texts have thoroughly checked and revised, by editors who have a deep knowledge of Elia's thinking; they have inserted many clarifications, cross-references and explanatory notes.

Over 90% of the organs transplanted in China before 2010 were procured from prisoners. Although Chinese officials announced in December 2014 that the country would completely cease using organs harvested from prisoners, no regulatory adjustments or changes in China’s organ donation laws followed. As a result, the use of prisoner organs remains legal in China if consent is obtained. We have collected and analysed available evidence on human rights violations in the organ procurement practice in China. We demonstrate that the (...) practice not only violates international ethics standards, it is also associated with a large scale neglect of fundamental human rights. This includes organ procurement without consent from prisoners or their families as well as procurement of organs from incompletely executed, still-living prisoners. The human rights critique of these practices will also address the specific situatedness of prisoners, often conditioned and traumatized by a cascade of human rights abuses in judicial structures. To end the unethical practice and the abuse associated with it, we suggest to inextricably bind the use of human organs procured in the Chinese transplant system to enacting Chinese legislation prohibiting the use of organs from executed prisoners and making explicit rules for law enforcement. Other than that, the international community must cease to abet the continuation of the present system by demanding an authoritative ban on the use of organs from executed Chinese prisoners. (shrink)

Die Erforschung Kants ist langst zu einem weltumspannenden Unternehmen geworden. Welch reiche Frucht der Wissenschaft dadurch zufallt, zeigen die Beitrage dieser Festschrift, die dem Nestor der deutschen Kantforschung, Norbert Hinske, gewidmet ist. Bekannte Vertreter der italienischen, japanischen, russischen und deutschen Kantforschung kommen zu Wort. Von besonderer Bedeutung fur die - in diesem Punkt ganzlich neu zu schreibende - Lebens- und Entwicklungsgeschichte Kants ist ein neu entdeckter, erstmals im Faksimile abgedruckter Brief von J. E. Biester an J. N. Tetens, der (...) belegt, dass der preussische Kultusminister v. Zedlitz zunachst nicht etwa Kant, sondern Tetens nach Halle berufen hat. Hinskes vollstandige Bibliographie rundet den Band ab - und zeigt eindrucksvoll, wie viel die Kantforschung weltweit gerade ihm zu verdanken hat. The study of Kant has long been a global undertaking. The articles in this Festschrift for the leading German expert on Kant, Norbert Hinske, show how richly productive this has been for scholars. Leading Italian, Japanese, Russian and German representatives of research on Kant have provided contributions to it. What is particular significant for the history of Kant's life and development, which has to be completely rewritten in this regard, is a newly discovered letter, reprinted in facsimile for the first time, from J. E. Biester to J. N. Tetens, which proves that Prussian Minister of Culture v. Zedlitz initially did not appoint Kant but rather Tetens to the position in Halle. Hinske's complete bibliography is included in the volume and is impressive evidence of how much Kant research worldwide owes to him. (shrink)

In this book, Norbert Wiley offers a new interpretation of the nature of the self in society.

As this book reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting. He hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery in order to achieve more creative pursuits.

Anwander questions "the role that Pogge assigns to benefiting from injustice in the determination of our duties toward the victims of injustice... challenging his claim that there is a negative duty not to benefit from injustice.".

What is Sociology? presents in concise and provocative form the major ideas of a seminal thinker whose work--spanning more than four decades--is only now gaining the recognition here it has long had in Germany and France. Unlike other post-war sociologists, Norbert Elias has always held the concept of historical development among his central concerns; his dynamic theories of the evolution of modern man have remedied the historical and epistemological shortcomings of structualism and ethno-methodology. What is Sociology? refines the arguments (...) that were first found in Elias' massive work on the civilizing process, in which he formulated his major assertions about the interdependence of the making of modern man and modern society. It is Elias' contention that changes in personality structure--embodied in phenomena ranging from table manners and hygiene habits to rites of punishment and courtly love--inevitably reflect and mould patterns of control generated by new political and social instututions. Elias' rejection of a dichotomy between individual and society, and his use of psychoanalysis, political theory, and social history, help restore a fullness of resource to sociology. (shrink)

Carey's book on conceptual change and the accompanying argument that children's biology initially is organized in terms of naïve psychology has sparked a great detail of research and debate. This body of research on children's biology has, however, been almost exclusively been based on urban, majority culture children in the US or in other industrialized nations. The development of folkbiological knowledge may depend on cultural and experiential background. If this is the case, then urban majority culture children may prove to (...) be the exception rather than the rule, because plants and animals do not play a significant role in their everyday life. Urban majority culture children, rural majority culture children, and rural Native American children were given a property projection task based on Carey's original paradigm. Each group produced a unique profile of development. Only urban children showed evidence for early anthropocentrism, suggesting that the co-mingling of psychology and biology may be a product of an impoverished experience with nature. In comparison to urban majority culture children even the youngest rural children generalized in terms of biological affinity. In addition, all ages of Native American children and the older rural majority culture children gave clear evidence of ecological reasoning. These results show that both culture and expertise play a role in the development of folkbiological thought. (shrink)

This paper explores the relevance of the debate about ethical expertise for the practice of clinical ethics. We present definitions, explain three theories of ethical expertise, and identify arguments that have been brought up to either support the concept of ethical expertise or call it into question. Finally, we discuss four theses: the debate is relevant for the practice of clinical ethics in that it (1) improves and specifies clinical ethicists' perception of their expertise; (2) contributes to improving the perception (...) of moral competence of non-ethicists; (3) gives insight into complementary styles of argumentation of ethicists and non-ethicists; and (4) contributes to the awareness of the problem of profession-building of (clinical) ethicists. (shrink)

Many contemporary ethicists use case-based reasoning to reach consistent beliefs about ethical matters. The idea is that particular cases elicit moral intuitions, which provide defeasible reasons to believe in their content. However, most proponents of case-based moral reasoning are not very explicit about how they resolve inconsistencies and how they abstract principles from judgments about particular cases. The aim of this article is to outline a methodology—called Consistency Reasoning Casuistry—for case-based reasoning in ethics. This methodology draws on Richmond Campbell and (...) Victor Kumar’s naturalistic model for the resolution of inconsistencies between the content of intuitions about particular cases. I argue that reasons similar to those that motivate their model also support a more abstract form of moral reasoning that goes beyond mere resolutions of inconsistencies between case judgments and demands the formulation of more abstract moral norms. Consistency Reasoning Casuistry, it is argued, is a good candidate for a methodology for case-based moral reasoning that is in harmony with paradigms of contemporary moral psychology and that can accommodate the methodology implicit in the work of many contemporary ethicists. (shrink)

To question power means also to ask what makes us governable and enables us to govern. This paper addresses this issue by rephrasing the question ‘what is power?’ into the question: ‘to what problem can power be seen as a response?’. This transformation allows us to keep the ‘power of power’ in sight. It then elucidates the ‘how’ of power through some conceptual explorations and theoretical clarifications as well as through an explicitly anthropological problematisation of power, as the way in (...) which power is understood depends always also on the way in which people understand themselves. Reassessing Foucault's rejection of anthropological reflections, the paper sketches a structural matrix of human self‐conceptions through which power and also critique can be reconstructed systematically. (shrink)

This essay has two goals. The first is to define the behavioristic study of natural events and to classify behavior. The second is to stress the importance of the concept of purpose.Given any object, relatively abstracted from its surroundings for study, the behavioristic approach consists in the examination of the output of the object and of the relations of this output to the input. By output is meant any change produced in the surroundings by the object. By input, conversely, is (...) meant any event external to the object that modifies this object in any manner. (shrink)

Moral reasoning proceeds largely through the systematization of intuitions about moral problems or cases. Recent empirical research seems to reaffirm some traditional criticisms of this form of reasoning. The critics hold that intuitions are unreliable: they seem to vary inappropriately with factors such as culture, religion and framing. This chapter investigates the role of this kind of empirical higher-order evidence in the debate concerning the reliance on intuitions in moral epistemology. It distinguishes between higher-order evidence about an intuition in a (...) particular case and such evidence about reliance on intuitions as a moral epistemic practice. The chapter argues that the unreliability objection is better understood in the latter sense and that mere "bracketing" is no appropriate response to cases of higher-order evidence about a practice. The chapter discusses some of the available evidence about the robustness of moral intuitions to morally irrelevant factors. It concludes that we have little reason to trust in our capacity for intuiting, because it seems to go wrong in surprising ways. Higher-order evidence about relying on intuitions as a moral epistemic practice thus suggests that this practice is an instance of wishful thinking. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of the logicality of modal logics from a proof-theoretic perspective. It is argued that if Dos̆en’s analysis of logical constants as punctuation marks is embraced, it is possible to show that all the modalities in the cube of normal modal logics are indeed logical constants. It will be proved that the display calculus for each displayable modality admits a purely structural presentation based on double-line rules which, following Dos̆en’s analysis, allows us to claim that (...) the corresponding modal operators are logical constants. (shrink)

En 1826, Joseph Diez Gergonne, le fondateur des Annales de mathématiques pures et appliquées en 1810 à Nîmes (France), écrit à W.H. Talbot. Dans ses lettres, il évoque les autres journaux mathématiques. Dans cet article, nous étudierons ces « premiers » journaux de mathématiques de la première moitié du XIXe siècle, en Europe. Nous étudions leur dynamique éditoriale, leur public et le rôle des premiers patrons de presse : Gergonne, Garnier et Quetelet, Crelle, Liouville, Robert Leslie Ellis et Thomson, etc. (...) Il s’agit donc d’étudier une Europe mathématique en construction par le biais de ses journaux. (shrink)

How Do People Resolve Conflict Between Implicit and Explicit Attitudes? How do implicit attitudes influence behavior when they are in conflict with explicit attitudes? In Study 1, smokers' negative implicit attitudes and positive explicit attitudes towards smoking were activated. Then emotions were measured. The stronger the negative implicit attitudes that the smokers held, the stronger the conflict experienced. Study 2 showed that cognitive capacity allows for this conflict, as positive explicit and negative implicit attitudes may be applied simultaneously. The stronger (...) the negative implicit attitudes the smokers held, the stronger the conflict experienced. Smokers resolved the conflict through the inhibition of implicit attitudes. Without cognitive capacity, only implicit attitudes were applied, and thus no conflict was aroused. Study 3 confirmed that smoking cigarettes inhibited negative implicit attitudes. (shrink)

The moral psychologist Joshua Greene has proposed a number of arguments for the normative significance of empirical research and for the unreliability of deontological intuitions. For these arguments, much hinges on the combination of various components of Greene's research – namely the dual-process theory of moral judgement, ‘personalness’ as a factor in moral decision-making, and his functional understanding of deontology and consequentialism. Incorporating these components, I reconstruct three distinct arguments and show that the Personalness Argument for the claim that empirical (...) research can advance normative ethics and the Combined Argument against deontology are both sound and interesting in themselves. They do not, however, cast doubt on traditional deontology or reserve a specific role for neuroscience. The Indirect Route argument overcomes some of the other arguments’ limitations. It is, however, invalid. I conclude by pointing out the broader philosophical relevance of Greene's arguments as shedding light on second-order morality. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to analyse and compare four methods of ethical case deliberation. These include Clinical Pragmatism, The Nijmegen Method of ethical case deliberation, Hermeneutic dialogue, and Socratic dialogue. The origin of each method will be briefly sketched. Furthermore, the methods as well as the related protocols will be presented. Each method will then be evaluated against the background of those situations in which it is being used. The article aims to show that there is not one (...) ideal method of ethical case deliberation, which fits to all possible kinds of moral problems. Rather, as each of the methods highlights a limited number of morally relevant aspects, each method has its strengths and weaknesses as well. These strengths and weaknesses should be evaluated in relation to different types of situations, for instance moral problems in treatment decisions, moral uneasiness and residue, and the like. The suggestion arrived at on the basis of the findings of this paper is a reasonable methodological plurality. This means that a method can be chosen depending on the type of moral problem to be deliberated upon. At the same time it means, that by means of a method, deliberation should be facilitated. (shrink)

Reflective equilibrium has been criticized for various reasons ever since the publication of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Recent empirical research into moral decision-making poses new challenges to RE because it questions the reliability of moral intuitions. This research might discredit moral intuitionism in general and RE in particular insofar as it ascribes epistemic value to moral intuitions. These findings suggest, for instance, that moral intuitions vary with cultural background, gender or framing. If it could be shown that all or (...) certain kinds of moral intuitions are unreliable, this would diminish the plausibility of the claim that they provide good reasons to believe in the truth of their content, especially given the growing evidence that professional philosophers are just as biased and susceptible to distorting factors as lay people. In this paper I critically discuss three recent defenses of RE against this unreliable intuitions objection. Two of these defenses argue that the UIO misses its target, because RE does not depend on intuitions, or because the relevant considered judgments in RE are not intuitions. The third defense grants that RE depends on intuitions and that some Rawlsian considered judgments are intuitions. But it argues that the notion of considered judgments can be revised, and that wide reflective equilibrium has the means to adopt the criticism because it can use information about unreliable intuitions and exclude those from further consideration. I argue that the first two defenses do not succeed. The third defense is the most promising one. However, I argue that this defense also fails. In this defense, RE is not a distinctive moral epistemic theory: different versions of RE would be conceivable, all of which are deeply problematic. I conclude with a discussion of the broader philosophical implications of the UIO, specifically whether or not accepting the UIO would warrant skepticism regarding moral knowledge. (shrink)

Michel Foucault entwickelt sich gegenwartig zweifellos zu einer der neuen Bezugsgrossen des padagogischen Diskurses: Nach einer langen Phase grosser Widerstande innerhalb der deutschsprachigen Erziehungswissenschaft werden jetzt die ...

The verbal and musical arts across languages and cultures -- The cognition of stories and poems -- In the beginning -- Poetry across languages and cultures -- First music and second music acquisition -- The origin of music in art and science -- Creationist pseudoscience in the American university -- New opportunities for narrative inquiry -- Theory and creativity in literary and musical education.