Quine behauptet, dass uns der Holismus (d.h. die Quine/Duhem-These) daran hindert, Synonymie zu definieren. In "Word and Object" weist er einen Synonymiebegriff zurück, der selbst dann gut funktioniert, wenn der Holismus zutrifft. Dieser Begriff lässt sich so definieren: R und S sind synonym, wenn für alle Sätze T die logische Konjunktion aus R und T reizsynonym zur Konjunktion aus S und T ist. Dieser Begriff entgeht Quines bedeutungsskeptischen, holistischen Einwänden. Anders als Quine gemeint hat, ist der Begriff enger als sein (...) Begriff der Reizsynonymie – insbesondere bei Anwendung auf Sätze mit weniger als kritischer semantischer Masse. Fazit: Wir können Synonymie selbst dann sauber definieren, wenn wir Quines Holismus, Naturalismus, Behaviorismus und radikale Übersetzung mitmachen. Quines Bedeutungsskepsis sollte sogar auf Quines eigenem Territorium zurückgewiesen werden. (shrink)

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a complex neonatal disorder with multiple contributing factors. In this paper we have mounted the evidence in support of the proposal that neonatal sepsis meets all requirements for being a cause of ROP (not a condition, mechanism, or even innocent bystander) by means of initiating the early stages of the pathomechanism of ROP occurrence, systemic inflammation. We use the model of etiological explanation, which distinguishes between two overlapping processes in ROP causation. It can be shown (...) that sepsis can initiate the early stages of the pathomechanism via systemic inflammation (causation process) and that systemic inflammation can contribute to growth factor aberrations and the retinal characteristics of ROP (disease process). The combined contribution of these factors with immaturity at birth (as intrinsic risk modifier) and prenatal inflammation (as extrinsic facilitator) seems to provide a cogent functional framework of ROP occurrence. Finally, we apply the Bradford Hill heuristics to the available evidence. Taken together, the above suggests that neonatal sepsis is a causal inducer of ROP. (shrink)

In vielen Debatten werden spezifische Vorstellungen über die Geschichte, Kultur oder Werteordnung ›Europas‹ für die Erklärung oder Legitimierung politischer Verhältnisse und Projekte herangezogen. Die vorliegende Studie prüft die Berechtigung solcher Konstruktionen, indem sie der Frage nachgeht, seit wann und warum überhaupt von ›Europa‹ gesprochen wird. Die Analyse der historischen Semantik des Europabegriffs muss, um identitätspolitisch motivierte Anachronismen zu vermeiden, seine materiellen, kulturellen und diskursiven Konstitutionsbedingungen einbeziehen. ›Europa‹ verliert dadurch seinen transhistorischen Charakter, den es erhält, wenn man ihm im Bestreben, es (...) als politische und kulturelle Entität auszuzeichnen und fungibel zu machen, eine mythische Geschichte und Struktur zuschreibt. Demgegenüber zeigt die kritische Analyse: Als politische und kulturelle ›Idee‹ wie als gelebte und erfahrene ›Wirklichkeit‹ gründet Europa nicht in Antike oder Mittelalter, sondern ist das Produkt der Entstehung der modernen Welt seit der frühen Neuzeit. (shrink)

The troubles of our time have many causes, economic, political, cultural. All are intimately connected. Of the cultural causes, one of the most important has been disillusionment about human nature. The old view which exalted man to something a little lower than the angels has given way in many quarters to the conviction that in essentials he is no higher than the beasts, and that anyhow the very notion that anything can be ethically higher than anything else is illusory. I (...) believe that in each of these attitudes to human nature there is a distorted half-truth, in both a blindness to the half-truth of the other. In this essay I shall try to map out the main contours of human nature, so as to emphasize that, although man is at bottom identical with the beasts, he is also in a limited but all-important manner unique. I shall also argue that one consequence of his uniqueness is moral experience, and that in human nature properly understood, a moral goal is very clearly revealed. (shrink)

In this article the authors focus on the emergence, or disappearance, of notions of responsibility in social dynamic processes. Hence, the starting point in this article is concrete behavior within organisational settings. This article presents a systematic overview of mechanisms related to acting upon a sense of moral responsibility. Some of these mechanisms are based on individual characteristics, others are embedded in the social context wherein responsible behaviour emerges or disappears. In this article, various mechanisms are identified and labelled in (...) order to analyse what types of processes are behind the mechanisms. In this way, the article yields important understandings for the conscious use of these mechanisms to strengthen responsible behavior within organisations. (shrink)

In this paper, we build upon the model of authenticity proposed by Lehman and colleagues, which includes the dimensions consistency, conformity, and connection. We expand this “3C-view” by adding a fourth dimension, continuity, which results in what we have come to call “4C-view of authenticity.” We discuss our proposal from a process perspective and emphasize that congruence might be a reasonable candidate for a concept that unifies the four dimensions of authenticity.

Theory of illness causation is an important issue in all biomedical sciences, and solid etiological explanations are needed in order to develop therapeutic approaches in medicine and preventive interventions in public health. Until now, the literature about the theoretical underpinnings of illness causation research has been scarce and fragmented, and lacking a convenient summary. This interdisciplinary book provides a convenient and accessible distillation of the current status of research into this developing field, and adds a personal flavor to the discussion (...) by proposing the etiological stance as a comprehensive approach to identify modifiable causes of illness. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconcile the two modes of description of macrosystems, i.e., to remove certain inconsistencies between the classical phenomenological and the quantum-theoretical descriptions of a macrosystem. Starting from Ludwig's formulation of a general framework for classical theories and his ansatz for a compatibility condition between the quantum theoretical and the classical mode of description for a macrosystem, we try to make clear what the “classical content” of many-body quantum theory really is. It is shown that (...) this classical content may be described by a certain “observable,” i.e., an operator-valued measure over the Borel sets of the classical trajectory space. There exists a reduced time evolution within this classical content which has the structure of a true semigroup in case of an irreversible classical time evolution. (shrink)

Microphotography was one of the earliest applications of photography in science: The first monograph on tissue organization illustrated with microphotographs was published in 1845. In the 1860s, a large number of introductions to scientific microphotography were published by anatomists. They argued that microphotography was a means of documenting the results of microscopic analysis, uncontaminated by the subjectivity of the observer. In the early decades of the 19th century, before the general acceptance of cell theory, such a technique was of special (...) importance, as no criteria were available to distinguish between important and superficial characters in the description of tissue microstructures. Microphotography was praised as the method of choice for documenting the scientific observations of microscopic material. Some of the microphotographic practices described in these early manuals, however, did not conform with the idea of a purely mechanical process of documentation. The authors of these manuals saw photography not as a technique which produced artifacts, but as a complete and reliable substitute for the original preparations. Thus, according to these authors, the artificial world of photography was seen as the actual representation of the microworld. Consequently, they tried to understand the microcosm by analyzing photographs instead of the microscopic preparation themselves. Such attitudes discredited the use of microphotography in the sciences. Consequently, the definitive breakthrough of scientific microphotography was delayed until the 1880s and was largely due to the efforts of Robert Koch, who made microphotography a central tool of bacteriology. (shrink)

Thinking about illness causation has a long and rich history in medicine. After a hiatus in the 1990s, the last one-and-a-half decades have seen a surge of publications on causality in the biomedical sciences. Interestingly, this surge is visible not only in the medical, epidemiological, bioinformatics, and public health literatures, but also among philosophical publications. In this essay, I review and discuss one most recent addition to the literature, "Causality: Philosophical Theory Meets Scientific Practice" written by philosophers Phyllis Illari and (...) Federica Russo about causality in the sciences, and particularly about the health sciences. (shrink)

The physical implications of the embedding method recently proposed as the basic concept for a formulation of the general relationship between classical and quantum mechanical modes of description of macroscopic systems are further examined. A conceptual analysis of the idea of a macroobservable is given. A very general assumption on the macroobservables, called the thermodynamic uncertainty principle, leads then to a proposal for a formal reconstruction prescription for the macroobservables. The implications of this reconstruction method for the formal structure of (...) quantum statistical mechanics are discussed. (shrink)

Randolph Bourne was only thirty-two when he died in 1918, but he left a legacy of astonishingly mature and incisive writings on politics, literature, and culture, which were of enormous influence in shaping the American intellectual climate of the 1920s and 1930s. This definitive collection, back in print at last, includes such noted essays as "The War and the Intellectuals," "The Fragment of the State," "The Development of Public Opinion," and "John Dewey's Philosophy." Bourne's critique of militarism and advocacy of (...) cultural pluralism are enduring contributions to social and political thought, sure to have an equally strong impact in our own time. In their introduction and preface, Olaf Hansen and Christopher Lasch provide biographical and historical context for Bourne's work. (shrink)

Wie sind Friedens- und Rechtsverhältnisse innerhalb und zwischen den Staaten zu etablieren? Lange vor Kants Schrift "Zum ewigen Frieden" (1795) wurde in der französischen Aufklärung versucht, sowohl die im Inneren der modernen Nationalstaaten als auch die in der Struktur der internationalen Beziehungen liegenden Gründe für die Dynamik des Krieges und der Herrschaft des Rechts des Stärkeren aufzudecken. Die vorliegende Untersuchung zeigt, dass Abbé Saint-Pierre und Jean-Jacques Rousseau die historische und systematische Analyse und Kritik der modernen Staatenwelt erstmals auf der Ebene (...) des neuzeitlichen politischen Denkens durchgeführt haben. (shrink)

It is shown that the traditional formalism of equilibrium quantum statistical mechanics may fully be incorporated into a general macro-observable approach to quantum statistical mechanics recently proposed by the same author. (1,2) In particular, the partition functions which in the traditional approach are assumed to connect nonnormalized density operators with thermodynamic functions are reinterpreted as functions connecting so-called quantum mechanical effect operators with state parameters. It is argued that these functions although only part of a much richer internal structure of (...) the macro-observable are sufficient to cope with all problems one usually encounters in equilibrium quantum statistical mechanics. p]Denn eigentlich unternehmen wir umsonst, das Wesen eines Dinges auszudrücken. Wirkungen werden wir gewahr, und eine vollständige Geschichte dieser Wirkungen umfaßte wohl allenfalls das Wesen jenes Dinges.Johann W. v. Goethe Farbenlehre. (shrink)