Seit Jahrzehnten wird das Thema Sterbehilfe (wobei dieser Ausdruck im folgenden synonym mit `Euthanasie' verwendet wird) kontroversiell diskutiert, speziell soweit die Tötung unheilbar Leidender betronen ist. Ethische und rechtliche Fragen überschneiden sich dabei in komplexer Weise, und so wie es für den Juristen schwierig ist, mit der philosophischen Analyse dieser Thematik Schritt zu halten, ist es für den Philosophen schwierig, die aktuellen und in mancherlei Hinsicht stark divergierenden rechtlichen Regelungen zur Sterbehilfe innerhalb verschiedener Staaten und Gemeinschaften noch zu überblicken. Das (...) Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, einen hoentlich für alle Seiten nützlichen Beitrag zur Entwirrung der rechtlichen Aspekte dieses Themas zu leisten, allerdings bereits aus rechtsethischer Sicht kommentiert und auf die philosophisch relevanten Belange hin konzentriert. So werde ich inbesondere die für Österreich und Deutschland geltende Rechtslage hiezu darzustellen, diese mit der liberaleren Ausassung zur Euthanasie in den Benelux-Ländern sowie mit der Rechtsmeinung des Europäischen Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte (EGMR.) vergleichen, und einige Vorschläge zur Verbesserung der österreichischen Rechtssituation aus rechtsethischer Perspektive vorbringen. (shrink)

This article notes differences in legislation in Germany and Great Britain regarding human embryo research and looks for an explanation in their divergent intellectual traditions. Whereas the German Stem Cell Act invokes an anthropological concept of human dignity to ground its ban on using embryos for research, there is no definition of what it means to be human in either the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act or in the advisory Warnock-Report. After studying the differences and providing some philosophical background, (...) the essay distinguishes two notions that are significant for understanding human dignity. It then proposes from a theological point of view a basic understanding within a relational anthropology, and comes to the conclusion that because of continuity in development and their relational constitution, humans embryos should be accepted as human from the moment of conception. (shrink)

The study investigates the »Four Principles of Biomedical Ethics« published by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress with a particular concern for the principle of respect for autonomy. The leading question is in which philosophical background autonomy is dealt with by Beauchamp/childress and by the enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, while the more emipirical theoretical framework of Beauchamp/childress and the rationalistic framework of Kant are being analyzed. After having considered the foundation of autonomy both in Beauchamp/childress and Kant, the study turns to (...) the relationship of autonomy and human dignity by exploring the implicit extension of autonomy, human dignity and being human, and asks which consequences have to be drawn from a theological point of view. (shrink)

Based on the premise that what is relevant, consistent, or true may change from context to context, a formal framework of relevance and context is proposed in which • contexts are mathematical entities • each context has its own language with relevant implication • the languages of distinct contexts are connected by embeddings • inter-context deduction is supported by bridge rules • databases are sets of formulae tagged with deductive histories and the contexts they belong to • abduction and revision (...) are supported by a notion of consistency of formulae and sets of formulae which are relative to a context, and which can, in turn, be seen as constituents of agendas. (shrink)

Schule und Hochschule sind als als dispositive Ordnung in diversen Texten thematisiert worden, etwa bei Michel Foucault und Michel Serres zum Spannungsfeld von Unterwerfung und Selbstbestimmung. Die performative Beschreibung der Schulsituation durch Elise v. Bernstorff ermöglicht dabei eine neue Perspektive auf das Dispositiv von Klang und Zeit, der hier nachgegangen wird.

Research seeking a scientific foundation for the theory of art appreciation has raised controversies at the intersection of the social and cognitive sciences. Though equally relevant to a scientific inquiry into art appreciation, psychological and historical approaches to art developed independently and lack a common core of theoretical principles. Historicists argue that psychological and brain sciences ignore the fact that artworks are artifacts produced and appreciated in the context of unique historical situations and artistic intentions. After revealing flaws in the (...) psychological approach, we introduce a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation. This framework demonstrates that a science of art appreciation must investigate how appreciators process causal and historical information to classify and explain their psychological responses to art. Expanding on research about the cognition of artifacts, we identify three modes of appreciation: basic exposure to an artwork, the artistic design stance, and artistic understanding. The artistic design stance, a requisite for artistic understanding, is an attitude whereby appreciators develop their sensitivity to art-historical contexts by means of inquiries into the making, authorship, and functions of artworks. We defend and illustrate the psycho-historical framework with an analysis of existing studies on art appreciation in empirical aesthetics. Finally, we argue that the fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure can be amended to meet the requirements of the framework. We conclude that scientists can tackle fundamental questions about the nature and appreciation of art within the psycho-historical framework. (shrink)

Critics of the target article objected to our account of art appreciators' sensitivity to art-historical contexts and functions, the relations among the modes of artistic appreciation, and the weaknesses of aesthetic science. To rebut these objections and justify our program, we argue that the current neglect of sensitivity to art-historical contexts persists as a result of a pervasive aesthetic–artistic confound; we further specify our claim that basic exposure and the design stance are necessary conditions of artistic understanding; and we explain (...) why many experimental studies do not belong to a psycho-historical science of art. (shrink)

Silence in organizations refers to a state in which employees refrain from calling attention to issues at work such as illegal or immoral practices or developments that violate personal, moral, or legal standards. While Morrison and Milliken (Acad Manag Rev 25:706–725, 2000) discussed how organizational silence as a top-down organizational level phenomenon can cause employees to remain silent, a bottom-up perspective—that is, how employee motives contribute to the occurrence and maintenance of silence in organizations—has not yet been given much research (...) attention. In this paper, we argue that this perspective is a meaningful complementation of the existing literature and that it is sensible to conceptualize distinct forms of employee silence (Pinder and Harlos, Research in personnel and human resources management. JAI Press, Greenwich, 2001; van Dyne et al., J Manag Stud 40:1359–1392, 2003). Drawing on past research and theory we conceptualize four forms of employee silence, namely quiescent, acquiescent, prosocial, and opportunistic silence. We present scales to assess the four forms and provide empirical tests for their distinctiveness and patterns of relationships to various correlates and potential antecedents and consequences. (shrink)

Research shows that after layoffs, employees often report decreased commitment and performance which has been coined the survivor syndrome. However, the mechanisms underlying this effect remain underexplored. The purpose of the paper is to show that reduced organizational identification can serve as an explanation for the survivor syndrome. We conducted a laboratory experiment, in which participants work as a group of employees for another participant who acts as employer. In the course of the experiment, the employer decides whether one of (...) his or her employees should be laid off or not. Mediation analysis supports a social identity-based explanation for the emergence of the survivor syndrome: downsizing causes lower identification with the employer which in turn relates to lower performance of employees. (shrink)

According to general relativity, we live in a four-dimensional curved universe. Since the human mind cannot visualize those four dimensions, a popular analogy compares the universe to a two-dimensional rubber sheet distorted by massive objects. This analogy is often used when teaching GR to upper secondary and undergraduate physics students. However, physicists and physics educators criticize the analogy for being inaccurate and for introducing conceptual conflicts. Addressing these criticisms, we analyze the rubber sheet analogy through systematic metaphor analysis of textbooks (...) and research literature, and present an empirical analysis of upper secondary school students’ use and understanding of the analogy. Taking a theoretical perspective of embodied cognition allows us to account for the relationship between the experiential and sensory aspects of the metaphor in relation to the abstract nature of spacetime. We employ methods of metaphor and thematic analysis to study written accounts of small groups of 97 students who worked with a collaborative online learning environment as part of their regular physics lessons in five classes in Norway. Students generated conceptual metaphors found in the literature as well as novel ones that led to different conceptions of gravity than those held by experts in the field. Even though most students showed awareness of some limitations of the analogy, we observed a conflict between students’ embodied understanding of gravity and the abstract description of GR. This conflict might add to the common perception of GR being counterintuitive. In making explicit strengths and weaknesses of the rubber sheet analogy and learners’ conceptual difficulties, our results offer guidance for teaching GR. More generally, these findings contribute to the epistemological implications of employing specific scientific metaphors in classrooms. (shrink)

The coordinate-free methods of the preceding paper are illustrated in three problems. First, the electrodynamics of a homogeneous, isotropic, and gyrotropic medium is investigated; it is shown that such a medium can exhibit optical activity, and the propagation of a plane electromagnetic wave in such a medium is discussed. Then, the electrodynamics of a homogeneous system made anisotropic by a uniform external magnetic field is considered; a description of Faraday rotation is provided, the ionosphere being used in an example. Finally, (...) the reflection and refraction of a plane electromagnetic wave at the interface of two media are described by coordinate-free operators. (shrink)

Several reaction time (RT) studies report faster responses when responses to temporal information are arranged in a spatially congruent manner than when this arrangement is incongruent. The resulting space–time congruency effect is commonly attributed to a culturally salient localization of temporal information along a mental timeline (e.g., a mental timeline that runs from left to right). The present study aims to provide a compilation of the published RT studies on this time–space association in order to estimate the size of its (...) effect and the extent of potential publication bias in this field of research. In this meta-analysis, three types of task are distinguished due to hitherto existing empirical findings. These findings suggest that the extent to which time is made relevant to the experimental task has a systematic impact on whether or not the mental timeline is activated. The results of this meta-analysis corroborate these considerations: First, experiments that make time a task-relevant dimension have a mean effect size of d = 0.46. Second, in experiments in which time is task irrelevant, the effect size does not significantly deviate from zero. Third, temporal priming studies have a surprisingly high mean effect size of d = 0.47, which, however, should be adjusted to d = 0.36 due to publication bias. (shrink)

v. 1. A-D -- v. 2. E-L -- v. 3. M-Z -- v. 4. Verzeichnisse.

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, EarlyView.

There is substantial support for the general idea that a formalization of comprehenders' expectations about the likely next word in a sentence helps explaining data related to online sentence processing. While much research has focused on syntactic, semantic, and discourse expectations, the present event‐related potentials (ERPs) study investigates neurolinguistic correlates of pragmatic expectations, which arise when comprehenders expect a sentence to conform to Gricean Maxims of Conversation. For predicting brain responses associated with pragmatic processing, we introduce a formal model of (...) such Gricean pragmatic expectations, using an idealized incremental interpreter. We examine whether pragmatic expectancies derived from this model modulate the amplitude of the N400, a component that has been associated with predictive processing. As part of its parameterization, the model distinguishes genuine pragmatic interpreters, who expect maximally informative true utterances, from literal interpreters, who only expect truthfulness. We explore the model's non‐trivial predictions for an experimental setup which uses picture‐sentence verification with ERPs recorded at several critical positions in sentences containing the scalar implicature trigger some. We find that Gricean expectations indeed affect the N400, largely in line with the predictions of our model, but also discuss discrepancies between model predictions and observations critically. (shrink)

This is the first full English translation of Bernard Bolzano's masterwork, the Theory of Science (1837)--a monumental and revolutionary study in logic, epistemology, heuristics, and scientific methodology. Each volume includes an introduction which illuminates the historical context of Bolzano's work and its continuing relevance.

In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), Günther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.

Although the genetics of dorsal‐ventral polarity which leads to mesoderm formation in Drosophila are understood in considerable detail, subsequent molecular mechanisms involved in patterning the mesoderm primordium into individual mesodermal subtypes are poorly understood. Two papers published recently (1,2) suggest strongly that an inductive signal from dorsal ectoderm is involved in subdividing the underlying mesoderm, and present evidence that one of the signalling factors is Decapentaplegic (Dpp), a member of the bone morphogenetic protein subgroup of the Transforming Growth Factor‐β (TGF‐β) (...) super family of proteins. (shrink)

The experiactional stream of a person can be seen to be organized. It takes place in situation as a "situated event." Events have a duration through time; they could be called: Time-Gestalten. Events first tend to appear in the stream of experience in imaginary anticipation usually as a result of a social invitation or as a self-initiated project. In anticipatory experience projected events are developed, worked-on, thought about on repeated occasions. The event takes shape in experience as an anticipation before (...) it takes place . This has consequences and is important because strategy-decisions are made which actually create the future event. During the recorded experience I actually decided what I was going to do for the lecture. The meaning of this anticipated event which has personal as well as social-professional horizons sets limits to what is allowed into the imaginary anticipation or the projecting. They could be said to act as "charges" upon my experiaction here and now. It seems that the event in anticipatory elaboration is richer and allows more play in experience. As we approach the actualization proper the range of possibilities narrows. Anticipation has to become embodied: it springs into action and enters the domain of public and shared social reality. We witness the event. Any component of the experiactional stream-particularly in the anticipating phases of event-structures-is built up in complex ways. This may be described as "interwovenness." Whatever we focus on can be seen to arise on a string of previous encounters reaching back into one's at bottom indeterminate biographical stock of experiaction. This stock hovers horizonally around the theme-what I pay attention to at the moment-and codetermines its meaning. This makes for idiosyncratic meanings. But our past experience is also in a good measure shared because it is based on experiences of communication to which I had access through language or images. To some extent, therefore, there is also a public and shared meaning to a perceived theme. Components of the experiactional stream are also gathered up and connected through a higher and unifying intention, the project. We take many steps to actualize a project, and we also seem to have more than one project going on at any one time. This tends to "mix-up" our stream of experiaction in surprising and complex ways. In this study I have taken a small step which turned out to be connected to the larger sequence of being involved in giving a lecture. This event as an over-arching project casts its shadow ahead of itself and colored my anticipatory experience in clearly definable ways. The general structural features uncovered here through reflection were present and at work during my experiaction although I was not explicitly aware of them at the time, while living them out. Nevertheless, my pre-reflective experiaction turned out to have been structured and organized. In what I thought was an unique-private experience there were revealed and operative general-universal structures. The personal-existential and the general-phenomenological components are inextricably intertwined and collaborative in the creation of human experience in a particular situation. They constitute a tension inherent in the flow of experiaction. In living we constantly move between these levels and as researchers in this field we always try to bridge this "gap" that arises in understanding which dichotomizes "lived immediacy" and "theoretical understanding." Either extreme-"just living" or "just thinking"-if emphasized unduly is an aberration. The human way is to experiact and to make sense of it so that mere living-out is humanized into living-with-awareness. This can never be fully accomplished but is always in process, ongoing. Everyone has to unfold his own awareness and understanding, recognizing that the depth or ground of living eludes objectification and final conceptual grasp. We can only tune-in. (shrink)