Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 1 Seiten: 14-37.

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

Although Lorenz Oken is a classic example of Naturphilosophie as applied to biology, his views have been imperfectly understood. He is best viewed as a follower of Schelling who consistently attempted to apply Schelling's ideas to biological data. His version of Naturphilosophie, however, was strongly influenced by older pseudoscience traditions, especially alchemy and numerology as they had been presented by Robert Fludd, whose works were current in Jena and available to him. According to those influences, parts of Oken's philosophical conception (...) were communicable even in a non-idealistic scientific culture, for example in Paris, where Oken met Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Geoffroy however was embedded in a French intellectual tradition, and the correspondence between his views and those of Oken was only superficial. The English anatomist Richard Owen attempted to incorporate the views of Oken and Geoffroy within his own, idiosyncratic system. Although Darwin knew of Oken's ideas, it was Geoffroy who really affected his evolutionary biology, and any influence of Oken must have been attenuated to the point of triviality. (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)