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)

This study examines the working memory systems involved in human wayfinding. In the learning phase, 24 participants learned two routes in a novel photorealistic virtual environment displayed on a 220° screen while they were disrupted by a visual, a spatial, a verbal, or—in a control group—no secondary task. In the following wayfinding phase, the participants had to find and to “virtually walk” the two routes again. During this wayfinding phase, a number of dependent measures were recorded. This research shows that (...) encoding wayfinding knowledge interfered with the verbal and with the spatial secondary task. These interferences were even stronger than the interference of wayfinding knowledge with the visual secondary task. These findings are consistent with a dual‐coding approach of wayfinding knowledge. (shrink)

Duns Scotus vigorously defends an idea foreign to Greek philosophers, namely that the individual has a higher ontological dignity than the species. He develops this view in two contexts: the problem of the principle of individuation and the discussion of divine ideas of individuals. This article focuses on the latter, in which Scotus critiques Aquinas, whom he mistakenly interprets as denying that there are divine ideas of individuals, as well as Henry of Ghent, who repeatedly rejects this hypothesis. In connection (...) with the claim that God has distinct ideas for each individual, Scotus argues that the intentio naturae concerns not merely the species, but also individu-als. Contrary to Greek thought, therefore, Scotus holds that the purpose of individuals is not merely to guarantee the eternity of the species; rather, they have an intrinsic value. (shrink)

Das Gemeinwohl ist Gegenstand, aber auch Bedingung politischer Auseinandersetzungen. Daher ist eine reflexiver Politik gefordert, die ihr Selbstverständnis auf der Basis einer Gemeinwohlkonzeption definiert. Der Autor thematisiert die theoretischen Grundlagen einer gemeinwohlorientierten Politik und veranschaulicht diese anhand von Beispielen.

This is a purely conceptual paper. It aims at presenting and putting into perspective the idea of a proof-theoretic semantics of the logical operations. The first section briefly surveys various semantic paradigms, and Section 2 focuses on one particular paradigm, namely the proof-theoretic semantics of the logical operations.

The knowability paradox is an instance of a remarkable reasoning pattern (actually, a pair of such patterns), in the course of which an occurrence of the possibility operator, the diamond, disappears. In the present paper, it is pointed out how the unwanted disappearance of the diamond may be escaped. The emphasis is not laid on a discussion of the contentious premise of the knowability paradox, namely that all truths are possibly known, but on how from this assumption the conclusion is (...) derived that all truths are, in fact, known. Nevertheless, the solution offered is in the spirit of the constructivist attitude usually maintained by defenders of the anti-realist premise. In order to avoid the paradoxical reasoning, a paraconsistent constructive relevant modal epistemic logic with strong negation is defined semantically. The system is axiomatized and shown to be complete. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss Gabbay's idea of basing nonmonotonic deduction on semantic consequence in intuitionistic logic extended by a consistency operator and Turner's suggestion of replacing the intuitionistic base system by Kleene's three-valued logic. It is shown that a certain counterintuitive feature of these approaches can be avoided by using Nelson's constructive logic N instead of intuitionistic logic or Kleene's system. Moreover, in N a more general notion of consistency can be defined and nonmonotonic deduction can thus be based (...) on a logical system satisfying the Deduction Theorem. (shrink)

This volume is dedicated to Prof. Dag Prawitz and his outstanding contributions to philosophical and mathematical logic. Prawitz's eminent contributions to structural proof theory, or general proof theory, as he calls it, and inference-based meaning theories have been extremely influential in the development of modern proof theory and anti-realistic semantics. In particular, Prawitz is the main author on natural deduction in addition to Gerhard Gentzen, who defined natural deduction in his PhD thesis published in 1934. The book opens with an (...) introductory paper that surveys Prawitz's numerous contributions to proof theory and proof-theoretic semantics and puts his work into a somewhat broader perspective, both historically and systematically. Chapters include either in-depth studies of certain aspects of Dag Prawitz's work or address open research problems that are concerned with core issues in structural proof theory and range from philosophical essays to papers of a mathematical nature. Investigations into the necessity of thought and the theory of grounds and computational justifications as well as an examination of Prawitz's conception of the validity of inferences in the light of three “dogmas of proof-theoretic semantics” are included. More formal papers deal with the constructive behaviour of fragments of classical logic and fragments of the modal logic S4 among other topics. In addition, there are chapters about inversion principles, normalization of proofs, and the notion of proof-theoretic harmony and other areas of a more mathematical persuasion. Dag Prawitz also writes a chapter in which he explains his current views on the epistemic dimension of proofs and addresses the question why some inferences succeed in conferring evidence on their conclusions when applied to premises for which one already possesses evidence. (shrink)