I outline a deflationary truthmakers account of social groups. Potentially, the approach allows us to say, with traditional ontological individualists, that there are only pluralities of individuals out there, ontologically speaking, but that there are nevertheless colloquial and social-scientific truths about social groups. If tenable, this kind of theory has the virtue of being both ontologically parsimonious and compatible with ordinary and social-scientific discourse—a virtue which the stock reductive / ontological dependence accounts of social groups arguably lack.

This thesis is about the conceptualization of persistence of physical, middle-sized objects within the theoretical framework of the revisionary ‘B-theory’ of time. According to the B-theory, time does not flow, but is an extended and inherently directed fourth dimension along which the history of the universe is ‘laid out’ once and for all. It is a widespread view among philosophers that if we accept the B-theory, the commonsensical ‘endurance theory’ of persistence will have to be rejected. The endurance theory says (...) that objects persist through time by being wholly present at distinct times as numerically the same entity. Instead of endurantism, it has been argued, we have to adopt either ‘perdurantism’ or the ‘stage theory’. Perdurantism is the theory that objects are four-dimensional ‘space-time worms’ persisting through time by having distinct temporal parts at distinct times. The stage theory says that objects are instantaneous temporal parts (stages) of space-time worms, persisting by having distinct temporal counterparts at distinct times. In the thesis, it is argued that no good arguments have been provided for the conclusion that we are obliged to drop the endurance theory by acceptance of the B-theory. This conclusion stands even if the endurance theory incorporates the claim that objects endure through intrinsic change. It is also shown that perdurantism and the stage theory come with unwelcome consequences. -/- Paper I demonstrates that the main arguments for the view that objects cannot endure in B-time intrinsically unchanged fail. Papers II and III do the same with respect to the traditional arguments against endurance through intrinsic change in B-time. Paper III also contains a detailed account of the semantics of the tenseless copula, which occurs frequently in the debate. The contention of Paper IV is that four-dimensional space-time worms, as traditionally understood, are not suited to take dispositional predicates. In Paper V, it is shown that the stage theory needs to introduce an overabundance of persistence-concepts, many of which will have to be simultaneously applicable to a single object (qua falling under a single sortal), in order for the theory to be consistent. The final article, Paper VI, investigates the sense in which persistence can, as is sometimes suggested, be a ‘conventional matter’. It also asks whether alleged cases of ‘conventional persistence’ create trouble for the endurance theory. It is argued that conventions can only enter at a trivial semantic level, and that the endurance theory is no more threatened by such conventions than are its rivals. (shrink)

In this article, we analyze and reject two versions of the content‐argument against animal beliefs, namely, the ontological argument from Davidson and the epistemological argument from Stich. One of the main defects of the strongest version of the argument is that it over‐intellectualizes belief ascriptions in humans and thus sets the comparative bar for belief ascriptions in animals too high. In the second part of the article, we develop a gradualist notion of belief which captures basic beliefs as well as (...) Davidsonian linguistic beliefs, and we specify the conditions under which belief ascriptions to nonlinguistic animals are justified. (shrink)

Can institutional objects be identified with physical objects that have been ascribed status functions, as advocated by John Searle in The Construction of Social Reality (1995)? The paper argues that the prospects of this identification hinge on how objects persist – i.e., whether they endure, perdure or exdure through time. This important connection between reductive identification and mode of persistence has been largely ignored in the literature on social ontology thus far.

Consciousness is targeted by both philosophers and neuroscientists; but different methodological premises and even different conceptions about what conscious experience is and how the challenges and potential problems associated with consciousness research should be formulated underlie the different approaches. Namely, whereas empirical data and the constant refinement of experimental procedures to expand and modify this body of empirical data and resulting empirical theories are crucial to neuroscience, the significance of empirical knowledge to philosophy is less clear: Although empirical data certainly (...) can influence philosophical concepts, the latter are nonetheless prerequisites of empirical research itself and thus may themselves not be empirically testable. The present paper elaborates from a multidisciplinary, neuroscientist-philosopher’s perspective the relation of philosophical concepts and empirical research on consciousness, drawing on two exemplary controversies from the philosophy of mind – on the ontological status of experiential properties and on free will. Consequences from both the scientific and the philosophical standpoint are discussed. (shrink)

León and Zahavi (2023) have made a compelling case for the necessity of philosophy — and not only neuroscience — for investigating consciousness. In particular, they argue that any theory of consciousness cannot avoid philosophical enquiry and thus only can choose between good or bad philosophy. Also, the topics of self-consciousness and selfhood are highlighted as problems of consciousness sui generis next to the mind–body problem. I will try to elucidate a bit more the specific approaches to consciousness that philosophy (...) and neuroscience take and thus elaborate why the philosophy and the neuroscience of consciousness are complimentary rather than mutually exclusive. (shrink)

Biologists rely on theories, apply models and construct explanations, but rarely reflect on their nature and structure. This book introduces key topics in philosophy of science to provide the required philosophical background for this kind of reflection, which is an important part of all aspects of research and communication in biology. It concisely and accessibly addresses fundamental questions such as: Why should biologists care about philosophy of science? How do concepts contribute to scientific advancement? What is the nature of scientific (...) controversies in the biological sciences? Chapters draw on contemporary examples and case studies from across biology, making the discussion relevant and insightful. Written for researchers and advanced undergraduate and graduate students across the life sciences, its aim is to encourage readers to become more philosophically minded and informed to enable better scientific practice. It is also an interesting and pertinent read for philosophers of science. (shrink)

An action-oriented perspective changes the role of an individual from a passive observer to an actively engaged agent interacting in a closed loop with the world as well as with others. Cognition exists to serve action within a landscape that contains both. This chapter surveys this landscape and addresses the status of the pragmatic turn. Its potential influence on science and the study of cognition are considered (including perception, social cognition, social interaction, sensorimotor entrainment, and language acquisition) and its impact (...) on how neuroscience is studied is also investigated (with the notion that brains do not passively build models, but instead support the guidance of action). A review of its implications in robotics and engineering includes a discussion of the application of enactive control principles to couple action and perception in robotics as well as the conceptualization of system design in a more holistic, less modular manner. Practical applications that can impact the human condition are reviewed (e.g., educational applications, treatment possibilities for developmental and psychopathological disorders, the development of neural prostheses). All of this foreshadows the potential societal implications of the pragmatic turn. The chapter concludes that an action-oriented approach emphasizes a continuum of interaction between technical aspects of cognitive systems and robotics, biology, psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities, where the individual is part of a grounded cultural system. (shrink)

David Chalmers has distinguished the “hard” and the “easy” problem of consciousness, arguing that progress on the “easy problem”—on pinpointing the physical/neural correlates of consciousness—will not necessarily involve progress on the hard problem—on explaining why consciousness, in the first place, emerges from physical processing. Chalmers, however, was hopeful that refined theorizing would eventually yield philosophical progress. In particular, he argued that panpsychism might be a candidate account to solve the hard problem. Here, I provide a concise stock-take on both the (...) empirical-neuroscientific and philosophical-conceptual progress on consciousness. It turns out that, whereas empirical progress is indisputable, philosophical progress is much less pronounced. While Chalmers was right, I argue, in distinguishing distinctive types of problems of consciousness, his prediction of progress on the hard problem was overly optimistic. Empirical progress and philosophical progress are essentially uncoupled; a more skeptical perspective on progress in philosophy in general is appropriate. (shrink)

Der Körper hat Konjunktur. Als ausgestellter, verfüg- und verführbarer begegnet er uns täglichim Übermaß. Es war nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis im Spiel der sich in den Wissenschafteneinander ablösenden turns auch ein corporeal (oder body) turn ausgerufen würde. Dabeibleibt im genannten turn der Gegenstand der Untersuchung nicht selten reduziert auf das, wasman im deutschen Sprachgebrauch »Körper« nennt: ein physisches Substrat, das wie ein Dingunter Dingen beschreibbar ist. Gegen diese Verkürzung stellt der Begri des »Leibes«,spätestens seit Edmund Husserl, eine präzise (...) theoretische Intervention in die wissenschaftlicheund philosophische Diskussion um Körper und Körperlichkeit dar: Dem objektiv beobachtbaren Körper, den wir haben, wird der lebendige Leib, der wir sind, gegenübergestellt. Diesem »Leib«, seiner Geschichte, seinen Varianten und seinem Versprechen gehen dieAutoren der vorliegenden Beiträge nach. Inhaltsübersicht Emmanuel Alloa/Thomas Bedorf/Christian Grüny/Tobias Nikolaus Klass: Einleitung I. Der Leibbegriff in der Phänomenologie Emmanuel Alloa / Natalie Depraz: Edmund Husserl – „Ein merkwürdig unvollkommenkonstituiertes Ding“ – Stefan Kristensen: Maurice Merleau-Ponty I – Körperschema undleibliche Subjektivität – Emmanuel Alloa: Maurice Merleau-Ponty II – Fleisch und Dierenz – David Espinet: Martin Heidegger – Der leibliche Sinn von Sein – Thomas Bedorf: EmmanuelLevinas – Der Leib des Anderen – Karel Novotný: Körper, Leib, Aektivität in Jan Pato č kasPhänomenologie der natürlichen Welt – Julia Scheidegger: Michel Henry – TranszendentaleLeiblichkeit – Jörg Sternagel: Bernhard Waldenfels – Responsivität des Leibes – Kerstin Andermann: Hermann Schmitz – Leiblichkeit als kommunikatives Selbst- und Weltverhältnis II. Zur Geschichte des Leibbegris Emmanuel Alloa: Archaische Leiblichkeit. Die griechische Antike und die Entdeckung desKörpers – Theresia Heimerl: Der Leib Christi und der Körper des Christen: Körper und Leib alszentrale Problemzonen des Christentums – Marc Rölli: Philosophische Anthropologie im 19. Jahrhundert – Zwischen Leib und Körper – Tobias Nikolaus Klass: Friedrich Nietzsche – Denkenam „Leitfaden des Leibes“ – Andreas Cremonini: Sigmund Freud – Der gelebte vs. derphantasmatische Leib – Uta Noppeney: Kurt Goldstein und Frederik Buytendijk – Der Leib-Begri in der organismischen Biologie – Volker Schürmann: Max Scheler und Helmuth Plessner– Leiblichkeit in der Philosophischen Anthropologie – Marion Lauschke: Ernst Cassirer und AbyWarburg – Kulturanthropologie III. Grenzen und Kritik des Leibbegris Christian Grüny: Theodor W. Adorno – Soma und Sensorium – Ulrich Johannes Schneider: Michel Foucault – Der Körper und die Körper – Burkhard Liebsch: Paul Ricoeur – Das leiblicheSelbst begegnet dem Widerstand des Anderen – Mirjam Schaub: Gilles Deleuze – Was weiß ein„Körper ohne Organe“ vom Leib? – Kathrin Busch: Jean-Luc Nancy – Exposition und Berührung– Shaun Gallagher: Embodiment: Leiblichkeit in den Kognitionswissenschaften – Marie-Luise Angerer: Gender und Performance – Ist leibliche Identität ein Konstrukt? – Thomas Bedorf/Selin Gerlek: Praxistheorien – Leibkörperliche Praktiken im Vollzug. (shrink)

I outline a deflationary truthmakers account of social groups. Potentially, the approach allows us to say, with traditional ontological individualists, that there are only pluralities of individuals out there, ontologically speaking, but that there are nevertheless colloquial and social-scientific truths about social groups. If tenable, this kind of theory has the virtue of being both ontologically parsimonious and compatible with ordinary and social-scientific discourse—a virtue which the stock reductive / ontological dependence accounts of social groups arguably lack.

This volume includes 22 articles that provide an introduction to fundamental issues in the theory of fiction. It covers the most influential approaches used to demarcate the boundary between fictional and non-fictional media based on pragmatic, receptive, and contextual theories. The handbook explores core philosophical and psychological questions about the functions and the institutional history of fictionality since ancient times.

Hardy’s non-locality paradox is a proof without inequalities showing that certain non-local correlations violate local realism. It is ‘possibilistic’ in the sense that one only distinguishes between possible outcomes (positive probability) and impossible outcomes (zero probability). Here we show that Hardy’s paradox is quite universal: in any (2,2,l) or (2,k,2) Bell scenario, the occurrence of Hardy’s paradox is a necessary and sufficient condition for possibilistic non-locality. In particular, it subsumes all ladder paradoxes. This universality of Hardy’s paradox is not true (...) more generally: we find a new ‘proof without inequalities’ in the (2,3,3) scenario that can witness non-locality even for correlations that do not display the Hardy paradox. We discuss the ramifications of our results for the computational complexity of recognising possibilistic non-locality. (shrink)

The era of ‘big data’ studies and computational social science has recently given rise to a number of realignments within and beyond the social sciences, where otherwise distinct data formats – digital, numerical, ethnographic, visual, etc. – rub off and emerge from one another in new ways. This article chronicles the collaboration between a team of anthropologists and sociologists, who worked together for one week in an experimental attempt to combine ‘big’ transactional and ‘small’ ethnographic data formats. Our collaboration is (...) part of a larger cross-disciplinary project carried out at the Danish Technical University, where high-resolution transactional data from smartphones allows for recordings of social networks amongst a freshman class. With a parallel deployment of ethnographic fieldwork among the DTU students, this research set-up raises a number of questions concerning how to assemble disparate ‘data-worlds’ and to what epistemological and political effects? To address these questions, a specific social event – a lively student party – was singled out from the broader DTU dataset. Our experimental collaboration used recordings of Bluetooth signals between students’ phones to visualize the ebb and flow of social intensities at the DTU party, juxtaposing these with ethnographic field-notes on shifting party atmospheres. Tracing and reflecting on the process of combining heterogeneous data, the article offers a concrete case of how a ‘stitching together’ of digital and ethnographic data-worlds might take place. (shrink)

While many studies from analytical sociology apply agent-based modeling to analyze the transformational mechanisms linking the micro to the macro level, we hold the view that both situational and action formation mechanisms can rather be unveiled by means of more advanced quantitative methods. By focusing on selective exposure to quality newspapers, our study has both an analytical and a substantive aim. First., our analytical aim is to amend the psychological mechanism of avoiding cognitive dissonance by social mechanisms allowing postulates on (...) how the selective exposure effect might vary by particular social groups. Second, our substantive aim is to set the ground for a longitudinal analysis of selective exposure to quality papers by placing these social mechanisms in the context of social and cultural change. By referring to hypothetical data, we illustrate which kind of (multilevel) moderator effects would have to hold if our hypotheses were true. (shrink)

Tradition und Traditionsbruch gehören zu den entscheidenden Herausforderungen in einer beschleunigt zusammenwachsenden Welt. Sollen beide Seiten nicht in einem unfriedlichen Antagonismus verharren, so ist Prämissentransparenz und Grenzbestimmung der je eigenen und fremden Argumente gefragt. In der Auseinandersetzung mit klassischen Quellen der europäischen und außereuropäischen Philosophiegeschichte soll der vorliegende Band zeigen, daß Selbstkritik und Selbstaffirmation in allen Weltphilosophien nur mehr zwei entgegengesetzte Reaktionen auf eine von innen oder von außen gefährdete Identität zum Ausdruck bringen. Skepsis und Dogmatik betreffen darum nicht allein (...) den Kern der abendländischen Annäherungen, sondern sie treffen den Nerv aller Weltphilosophien gleichermaßen. Skeptisch-kritische Positionen prägen ebenso die buddhistische, taoistische und islamische Philosophie; spekulativ-systematische Ansätze finden ihren Niederschlag in der islamischen, der hinduistischen wie auch der europäischen Philosophie; rationalistische und analytische Strömungen lassen sich in allen genannten philosophischen Traditionen ausfindig machen. Leitend ist darum die gemeinsame Frage: Wie ist Identitätskonstruktion in Traditionen möglich, ohne dogmatisch zu werden, und wie können Relativität und Skepsis ihre produktive Funktion entfalten, ohne auf die Universalität der Werte (wie etwa der Menschenrechte) verzichten zu müssen? (shrink)

Dieser Band präsentiert einen Überblick über die Medizinethik. Er stellt konzeptuelle und methodische Zugänge zum Fach dar und bietet Einblicke in zentrale Themenfelder. Kurze Einführungen und Lektürefragen zu ausgewählten Texten erleichtern die systematische Einordnung der verschiedenen theoretischen und praktischen Fragestellungen der Medizinethik.

On May 18, 1958, Martin Heidegger led a one-day colloquium in Freiburg on the topic of “Art and Thinking” together with Shin’ichi Hisamatsu, the Japanese philosopher and Buddhist scholar. The protocol of the colloquium, published in volume 16 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe, presents a conversation among the colloquium participants about art in the East Asian world. In this conversation, Heidegger is particularly interested in hearing from Hisamatsu about the conception of art present in the East Asian world prior to the introduction (...) of Western aesthetic concepts and about the relationship between form and formlessness in East Asian aesthetics. The conversation allows Hisamatsu to clarify for the participants what he takes to be the most essential features of Zen art and how these features compare with those found in modern Western abstract art. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that population-level time perspectives can be approximated using “big data” on search engine queries, and that these indices, in turn, predict the per-capita Gross Domestic Product of countries. Although these findings seem to support Baumard's suggestion that affluence makes people more future-oriented, they also reveal a more complex relationship between time perspectives and economic outputs.

In Fig. 2 of the aforementioned article the mean value of the “chair” condition is incorrectly displayed as 0.011 when it should be 0.008. All statistics in the text are correct, and the conclusions remain the same.

Regarding philosophical importance, Edmund Husserl is arguably "the" German export of the early twentieth century. In the wake of the linguistic turn of the humanities, however, his claim to return to the "Sachen selbst" became metonymic for the neglect of language in Western philosophy. This view has been particularly influential in post-structural literary theory, which has never ceased to attack the supposed "logophobie" of phenomenology. "Phenomenology to the Letter. Husserl and Literature" challenges this verdict regarding the poetological and logical implications (...) of Husserl’s work through a thorough re-examination of his writing in the context of literary theory, classical rhetoric, and modern art. At issue is an approach to phenomenology and literature that does not merely coordinate the two discourses but explores their mutual implication. Contributions to the volume attend to the interplay between phenomenology and literature, experience and language, as well as images and embodiment. The volume is the first of its kind to chart a phenomenological approach to literature and literary approach to phenomenology. As such it stands poised to make a novel contribution to literary studies and philosophy. (shrink)

The defense of plants against herbivores and pathogens involves the participation of an enormous range of different metabolites, some of which act directly as defensive weapons against enemies (toxins or deterrents) and some of which act as components of the complex internal signaling network that insures that defense is timed to enemy attack. Recent work reveals a surprising trend: The same compounds may act as both weapons and signals of defense. For example, two groups of well‐studied defensive weapons, glucosinolates and (...) benzoxazinoids, trigger the accumulation of the protective polysaccharide callose as a barrier against aphids and pathogens. In the other direction, several hormones acting in defense signaling (and their precursors and products) exhibit activity as weapons against pathogens. Knowing which compounds are defensive weapons, which are defensive signals and which are both is vital for understanding the functioning of plant defense systems. (shrink)

In this paper, we put forward an interdisciplinary framework describing different levels of self-representations, namely non-conceptual, conceptual and propositional self-representations. We argue that these different levels of self-representation are differently affected by cultural upbringing: while propositional self-representations rely on “theoretical” concepts and are thus strongly influenced by cultural upbringing, non-conceptual self-representations are uniform across cultures and thus universal. This differentiation offers a theoretical specification of the distinction between an independent and interdependent self-construal put forward in cross-cultural psychology. Hence, this does (...) not only allow for a deeper understanding of different self-conceptions, but also for a formulation of new hypotheses regarding the cultural influence on self-representations. As one example, we will highlight the role of the proposed levels of self-representation for emotional experience and formulate some major implications of our interdisciplinary framework for future empirical research. (shrink)

The role of nonverbal communication in patients with post-stroke language impairment (aphasia) is not yet fully understood. This study investigated how aphasic patients perceive and produce co-speech gestures during face-to-face interaction, and whether distinct brain lesions would predict the frequency of spontaneous co-speech gesturing. For this purpose, we recorded samples of conversations in patients with aphasia and healthy participants. Gesture perception was assessed by means of a head-mounted eye-tracking system, and the produced co-speech gestures were coded according to a linguistic (...) classification system. The main results are that meaning-laden gestures (e.g., iconic gestures representing object shapes) are more likely to attract visual attention than meaningless hand movements, and that patients with aphasia are more likely to fixate co-speech gestures overall than healthy participants. This implies that patients with aphasia may benefit from the multimodal information provided by co-speech gestures. On the level of co-speech gesture production, we found that patients with damage to the anterior part of the arcuate fasciculus showed a higher frequency of meaning-laden gestures. This area lies in close vicinity to the premotor cortex and is considered to be important for speech production. This may suggest that the use of meaning-laden gestures depends on the integrity of patients’ speech production abilities. (shrink)

Biobanking in Europe has made major steps towards harmonization and shared standards for the collection and processing of data and samples stored in biobanks. Still, biobanks and researchers face substantial legal difficulties in the field of data protection and sample management. Data protection law was harmonized almost 15 years ago while rights in samples fall under the competence of the Member States of the EU. Despite the Data Protection Directive the field of data protection shows a substantial degree of deviation (...) as public health was excluded from the harmonization. Biobanks seem to have substantially fewer difficulties to cope with in terms of the legal requirements in the field of sample management. This paper discusses the legal framework, experiences of different biobanks in Europe and potential ways forward. It also highlights the need for a health economic analysis of the costs and benefits of privacy protection in Europe. At the moment, policymakers seem to build their decisions on an insufficient evidence base which underestimates the potential value of biobanks for European public health. Within the past few years little progress has been achieved with regards to the development of a unified legal framework in Europe, The diversity in the legal system is also reflected in the different approaches of ethics committees towards biobanking. To secure the responsible and effective use of data and samples, more efforts are needed to come up with pathways for a solution. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead bietet in seiner philosophischen Kosmologie einen Deutungsrahmen, mit dem Wirklichkeit primär von ihrer Prozesshaftigkeit begriffen werden kann. Eine solche prozesshafte Konzeption der Wirklichkeit hat folgerichtig auch Auswirkungen darauf, wie Religion und damit zusammenhängend das Gott-Welt-Verhältnis gedacht wird. Der Band möchte einen Beitrag zu einer systematischen Rekonstruktion von Whiteheads Religionstheorie und -philosophie leisten und zugleich zeigen, wie ihr Potential für die aktuelle Debatte fruchtbar gemacht werden kann.

The book (in German) on “Solar Energy – challenge for research, development and international co-operation” is the report of a study group of the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. It reviews solar thermal, photovoltaic, and bio mimetic solar energy techniques; prospects of de-central techniques in developing countries; transport and storage of solar energy; and chances for cooperation with Arabic countries and countries of the South of the former Soviet Union. The prospect of large scale energy production in arid areas, and (...) the modern potentials of conducting electricity over long distances by high-voltage DC transmission (V, 2.1) are particularly relevant for the concluding section. Political chances as well as risks were considered for reliable long term cooperation with various Arab countries on these issues. The recommendations appear to be still appropriate 25 years after the book was published, particularly the political advice in favour of cooperation between Europe and suitable countries of the Maghreb. The global time scale of implementation (discussed in chapter I, 7.2) is of the same (high) magnitude as that of other major changes in the history of technology, such as the substitution of sailing ships by steamboats which took almost a century. (shrink)

The serotonin transporter plays an important role in regulating serotonergic transmission via removal of serotonin from synaptic clefts. Alterations in 5-HTT expression and subsequent 5-HT transmission have been found to be associated with changes in behaviour, such as fearfulness or activity, in humans and other vertebrates. In humans, alterations in 5-HTT expression have been suggested to be able to lead to better learning performance, with more fearful persons being better at learning. Similar effects of the variation in the 5-HTT on (...) fearfulness have been found in chickens, and in this study, we investigated effects on learning. Therefore, we tested 52 adult laying hens, differing in their functional 5-HTT genotype in an operant learning paradigm in three different phases and in a tonic immobility test for fearfulness. We found that the 5-HTT polymorphism affects the initial learning performance of laying hens, with homogeneous wild-type hens being the slowest learners, and the most fearful birds. W/W hens, showed significantly more choices to solve the initial learning task and had the highest latencies in a tonic immobility test, indicating the highest fearfulness. Our results provide interesting first insights into the role of 5-HTT in chickens and its sensitive interaction with the environment. We further suggest that the 5-HTT gene can be an interesting target gene for future breeding strategies as well as for further experimental studies. (shrink)

Papers from a conference held March 2010, Zug, Switzerland.

Der soziale und medizinische Umgang mit „Transsexualität“ (Transidentität) stößt in zunehmendem Maße auf Kritik. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, welches semantisch-begriffliche „Konzept“ von Transidentität in Deutschland vorherrscht und inwieweit die Konstituenten dieses Konzeptes den Denkhorizont, vor dem die ethischen Implikationen des Phänomens Transidentität verhandelt werden, begrenzen. Es lässt sich zeigen, dass der gegenwärtige Umgang mit Transidentität auf mehreren kaum hinterfragten, gleichwohl systematisch und ethisch problematischen Setzungen basiert. Zu diesen gehören (1) die Pathologisierung von Transidentität und deren weitgehende Überstellung (...) in den Zuständigkeitsbereich der Medizin, (2) die Behauptung eines Primats der chirurgischen Therapie (Vernachlässigung der postoperativen Phase), (3) das Paradigma „Bigenus“, (4) die terminologisch fassbare „Sexualisierung“ des vorliegenden Identitätsproblems und (5) die juristische Vorgabe, wonach der Personenstand an gonadal-morphologischen Kriterien festzumachen ist. Um das Ziel eines ethisch reflektierten und dadurch gesellschaftlich wie medizinisch verantwortungsvollen Umgangs mit Transidentität ernsthaft verfolgen zu können, ist es zunächst erforderlich, die bezeichneten Setzungen in einem offen geführten Diskurs auf den Prüfstand zu stellen. Erst das Ergebnis einer solchen Prüfung kann den Weg für einen zeitgemäßeren, medizinethisch belastbaren (reflektierten) Umgang mit Transidentität ebnen. (shrink)