People’s concept of free will is often assumed to be incompatible with the deterministic, scientific model of the universe. Indeed, many scholars treat the folk concept of free will as assuming a special form of nondeterministic causation, possibly the notion of uncaused causes. However, little work to date has directly probed individuals’ beliefs about what it means to have free will. The present studies sought to reconstruct this folk concept of free will by asking people to define the concept (Study (...) 1) and by confronting them with a neuroscientific claim that free will is an illusion (Study 2), which invited them to either reconcile or contrast free will with determinism. The results suggest that the core of people’s concept of free will is a choice that fulfills one’s desires and is free from internal or external constraints. No evidence was found for metaphysical assumptions about dualism or indeterminism. (shrink)

A woman is found lying dead on the floor of the living room of her house in Leiden, the Netherlands, and because of a swollen and a slightly wounded eyelid, an autopsy is performed on the body the day after it is found. Behind the wound, there is a whole ballpoint pen, which entered the head of the deceased through her right eye causing mortal brain damage. How did it get there? This question was to cause a stir in Dutch (...) society, holding a group of police detectives and several scientists in its grip for several years. In this article, the ballpoint case is analyzed as to the boundary work between credible and noncredible expertise. As it is often assumed that boundary work in continental law is preempted by the structure of these law models, this case study adds a comparative note to the growing literature about science and the law. (shrink)

This article addresses the role of science and science advisory bodies in modeling practices for the support of policy-making procedures in the Netherlands in the field of health care. The authors show, based on a detailed investigation of a prestigious interdisciplinary modeling project in which an economic care model was developed for governmental use, that science advisory bodies are entangled with the policy actors they advise in what we call boundary configurations. Boundary configurations are strongly situated interconnections between science advisory (...) institutes and policy institutions that share a specific approach to problem definitions and methods and that are embedded in specific social, discursive, and material elements. Importantly, as the case study shows, such boundary configurations shape the kind of science, and related, the kind of social and political theories about the world, that is effectuated in modeling practices. In this case study, the boundary configuration in which economic experts and policy makers participated contributed to the articulation of health care in terms of a market-based policy program for the health care sector. (shrink)

Researchers are increasingly expected to deliver “socially robust knowledge” that is not only scientifically reliable but also takes into account demands from societal actors. This article focuses on an empirical example where these additional criteria are explicitly organized into research settings. We investigate how the multiple “accountabilities” are managed in such “responsive research settings.” This article provides an empirical account of such an organizational format: the Dutch Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health. We present a cross-case analysis of four collaborative (...) research projects conducted within this context. We build on Miller’s notion of “hybrid management.” The article shows that the extended concept of hybrid management is useful to study the different accountabilities encountered in such settings. We analyze how the collaboration developed and which conflicts or dilemmas arose. We then focus on the different hybrid management strategies used in the collaboration. The empirical material shows how the different aspects of hybrid management feature in various configurations in the four projects. We highlight that hybrid management strategies may be used by different groups or at different moments, may reinforce or contradict each other, and may be more or less effective at different points in time. (shrink)

Politeness in conversation is a fascinating aspect of human interaction that directly interfaces language use and human social behavior more generally. We show how game theory, as a higher-order theory of behavior, can provide the tools to understand and model polite behavior. The recently proposed responsibility exchange theory :313–344, 2019) describes how the polite communications of thanking and apologizing impact two different types of an agent’s social image: warmth and competence. Here, we extend this approach in several ways, most importantly (...) by adding a cultural-evolutionary dynamics that makes it possible to investigate the evolutionary stability of politeness strategies. Our analysis shows that in a society of agents who value status-related traits over reciprocity-related traits, both the less and the more polite strategies are maintained in cycles of cultural-evolutionary change. (shrink)

Set in the immediate context of the recent UN conference on climate change in Glasgow and the sudden emergence of the variant, Omicron, this paper involves discussion of the present state of discourse concerning globalization in the broadest sense. It begins by contrasting the approaches and substance of two specific books: Globalization Matters by Manfred Steger and Paul James and Grave New World by Stephen King. The difference between the two books is brought into sharp relief by the economism of (...) the book by King and the multidimensionality of the volume by Steger and James. More generally, these recent books are chosen because they are almost complete opposites, the central difference being the adamant optimism about globalization in Globalization Matters and the extreme pessimism and negativity in Grave New World. It is also very important to emphasize the wide ranging and penetrative character of Globalization Matters compared with the latter. Also invoked is recent and very significant work by Dipesh Chakrabarty. Two themes are claimed here to be neglected, namely global history and the concept of glocalization. Attention is also drawn to the crucial omission of the fact that much of globalization talk began in the fields of religious study and theology. The disparity between these two latter fields of study and mainstream social science and conventional history is given attention. The contributions of other crucial commentators to the overall debate, Lovelock and Latour, are also invoked. The focus by Steger and James, on the one hand, and Chakrabarty on the other, on the Anthropocene is given attention. Overall, the article concludes by placing the global-local problematic at the centre of what is called here globalization discourse. (shrink)

Folter gilt weithin als paradigmatisches Beispiel einer Verletzung der Menschenwürde. Doch was macht Folter zu einem so eindeutigen Fall einer Menschenwürdeverletzung? Das ist die Leitfrage dieses Beitrags. Dazu werden zwei Menschenwürdetheorien herangezogen und auf ihr Potential hin untersucht, die Folter als paradigmatische Menschenwürdeverletzung verständlich zu machen: zum einen Ralf Stoeckers Theorie, die die individuelle Identität und die darauf aufbauende kontingente Würde in den Mittelpunkt stellt; zum anderen meine Theorie, die die menschliche Orientierung an einem sinnvollen Leben ins Zentrum rückt.

ZusammenfassungTiere erlauben einen ertragreichen Zugriff auf Büchners literarisches Werk. Exemplarisch zeigt sich dies an der »Hühnerlaus« aus dem Woyzeck. Ein Animal Reading dieses Tieres entfaltet zunächst vor dem wissensgeschichtlichen Hintergrund der Parasitenforschung die Rätselhaftigkeit von Büchners literarischer Hühnerlaus und schlägt dann vier mögliche Perspektiven vor, wie diese Rätselhaftigkeit für eine Interpretation fruchtbar gemacht werden kann: einen editionsphilologischen Lesartenstreit, die Debatten um den Wissenshorizont des Autors und seiner Figuren, eine Verortung in der Geschichte der Biotheorie sowie die Frage nach einer Tier-Ästhetik (...) der Groteske.Animals provide a fruitful approach to Büchner’s literary work. This can be demonstrated with regard to the »Hühnerlaus« in Woyzeck. An Animal Reading of the »Hühnerlaus« starts by showing how enigmatic this literary animal seems, when compared with the history of parasitology. Four perspectives, leading to four interpretations of this enigma, are proposed: 1) a discussion in edition philology whether Büchner actually wrote »Hühnerlaus« or not, 2) a look at the knowledge of the author and his figures, 3) some considerations on the history of biological theory, and 4) the question of animal aesthetics, especially of the grotesque. (shrink)

Walter Biemel designated Time as the real protagonist of Proust's In Search of Time Lost. This article wants to analyse in detail the complex inner structure of that "Proustian time" by focusing on the existence of a double tension. Indeed, the awareness of time of the novel's protagonist "Marcel" seems to be determined by surprising "paradoxes". The first one betrays a strange opposition between, on the one hand, a very lucid description of temporality as a devastating power, but on the (...) other hand, a complete blindness to one's own ageing. The second tension consists in the fact that, although in one respect everything changed and all characters in the novel grew older, still at the end of his "search", and on the occasion of his long meditation about the meaning of the "souvenirs involontaires" and the works of art, Marcel affirms that he "remained the same". What is the meaning of this "sameness" in connection with time, and more precisely, in relating with the fact that everything vanishes, changes and dies? What have both tensions to do with each other? (shrink)

A close analysis of the composition of both versions of the Decalogue in Ex 20 and Dt 5 shows the central place of the two positive commandments: the consecration of the sabbath and the honour due to father and mother. The literary and semantic relation between these two commandments provides the key for understanding the entire text: addressing man, the first text as father and the other as son, they define him as subject of a freedom received from another and (...) recognised in the other. Freedom is also offered to the reader in so far as two texts are given to him, which are similar and different: Presence is revealed in the space left open between them. (shrink)

There has been a tendency in recent literature on personal identity to treat puzzle cases as unfair intrusions upon the discussion, like proposing to play chess without the Queen. Thus Terence Penelhum speaks of ‘imaginary worlds’ where our normal criteria do not hold and Sydney Shoemaker refers approvingly to G. C. Nerlich's dictum that it is a universal truth of our world, and not of ‘all possible worlds', that only by being identical with a witness to past events can one (...) have the knowledge of them we have in memory.I would agree that where puzzle cases involve changing basic features of our physical universe, e.g. in having people's bodies go out of existence in one place and reappear in another, as recently envisaged by J. M. Shorter, there is some point in talking of ‘imaginary’ or ‘possible’ worlds. But where puzzle cases propose no such basic changes but ground the discussion in physiological possibilities, however unfeasible technologically, this seems an arbitrarily harsh description. It would be like Nineteenth Century philosophers saying talk of flying machines and heart transplants belongs, not to another age merely, but to other worlds. (shrink)

Dans cet article, l'auteur propose une étude consacrée à la passion, tout spécialement à partir d'une interrogation sur le rapport entre passion et imagination. Partant du Traité des passions de Descartes, l'auteur commence par examiner en quels termes Descartes décrit la passion comme étant ce qui "fait vouloir". Il montre ensuite que, d'après la conception cartésienne, la passion doit être assez similaire à l'imagination pour autant que l'une et l'autre induisent une modification profonde de notre rapport à la réalité. Les (...) sentiments ne nous donnent pas des objets tels qu'ils sont véritablement, mais à travers des valeurs subjectives qui les "irréalisent". Cette idée n'est rien d'autre que le lien d'étroite similitude entre le sentiment et l'imaginaire que Sartre a redécouvert dans L'Imaginaire. Après avoir discuté en détail les analyses de Sartre, l'auteur conclut en tirant quelques conséquences importantes des conceptions cartésienne et sartrienne de la passion. (shrink)

The Garden of Reality addresses urgent questions around the relativity of religious truth, religious pluralism, transreligious discourse, postmodern cosmology, and interspiritual mysticism in order to argue that relativity and multiplicity are inevitable for the multireligious conviviality and peace of the humanity of the future.

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die Entwicklung der Austauschverhältnisse im Alten China" verfügbar.

Solar Resources takes stock of the resource - sunlight - on which any plan for solar heat conversion technologies must be based. It describes the evolution of theoretical models, algorithms, and equipment for measuring, analyzing, and predicting the quantity and composition of solar radiation, and it reviews and directs readers to insolation databases and other references that have been compiled since 1975. Following an overview of solar energy research by the editor, Raymond J. Bahm presents a comprehensive guide to available (...) insolation databases and other information resources in the United States. Charles M. Randall and Richard Bird discuss the theoretical models and algorithms used to characterize the transference of solar radiation through the earth's atmosphere. Their chapter also addresses the important question of the accuracy of the data sets produced by the various modeling methods and algorithms. The National Weather Service monitoring network and other major monitoring networks in the United States are discussed by Kirby Hanson and Thomas Stoffel. And Eugene Zerlaut covers the instrumentation used to measure total solar irradiance and spectral solar irradiance; he describes types of equipment, their manufacturers, procedures for calibration, and the accuracy of the data produced. Richard Bird and Carol Riordan explain the nature of spectral solar irradiance at the earth's surface, and John Jensenius describes the NWS Operational Solar Insolation Forecast System, which predicts the daily total global-horizontal insolation for two days. In the concluding chapter, Claude Robbins summarizes daylighting models and resources, and details methods for converting insolation date to illuminance data. Solar Resources is volume 2 in the series Solar Heat Technologies: Fundamentals and Applications, edited by Charles A. Bankston. (shrink)