The emerging consensus in the philosophy of cognition is that cognition is situated, i.e., dependent upon or co-constituted by the body, the environment, and/or the embodied interaction with it. But what about emotions? If the brain alone cannot do much thinking, can the brain alone do some emoting? If not, what else is needed? Do (some) emotions (sometimes) cross an individual's boundary? If so, what kinds of supra-individual systems can be bearers of affective states, and why? And does that make (...) emotions ?embedded? or ?extended? in the sense cognition is said to be embedded and extended? Section 2 shows why it is important to understand in which sense body, environment, and our embodied interaction with the world contribute to our affective life. Section 3 introduces some key concepts of the debate about situated cognition. Section 4 draws attention to an important disanalogy between cognition and emotion with regard to the role of the body. Section 5 shows under which conditions a contribution by the environment results in non-trivial cases of ?embedded? emotions. Section 6 is concerned with affective phenomena that seem to cross the organismic boundaries of an individual, in particular with the idea that emotions are ?extended? or ?distributed.? (shrink)

Nach einem weit verbreiteten Urteil gibt Kant der Ökonomie in seinem Werk keinen nennenswerten Raum. Die vorliegende Studie widerlegt dies, indem sie Kants Äußerungen zu ökonomischen Themen systematisiert: zur Selbstständigkeit, zum Kaufmann, zum Handel, zum Geld, zur „Staatswirthschaft" sowie zum technischen Fortschritt. Sie erschließt Kants Ökonomie aus der Ergänzung rechtlicher und ethischer Pflichten durch deren anthropologische Ausführungsbedingungen. Dabei geht sie aus von einem zeitgenössischen Verständnis der Ökonomie als Wissenschaft vom Wohlstand. Im deutschsprachigen Raum des 18. Jahrhunderts konkurrieren hier drei Paradigmen (...) miteinander: das aristotelische, das smithianische und das kameralistische. Sie identifizieren jeweils das Haus, den Markt oder den Staat als zentrale Handlungssphäre der Ökonomie. Die Studie kommt zu dem Schluss, dass Kants praktische Philosophie für Ergänzungen aus jeder dieser ökonomischen Handlungssphären offen ist, solange diese freiheitliche Prinzipien erfüllen; sie ist damit nicht, wie gelegentlich behauptet, auf eine einzige Wirtschaftsordnung festgelegt, etwa auf eine rein marktliberale. Relevant ist dies für die Kant-Forschung, für die Wirtschaftsphilosophie sowie für die Ideengeschichte. (shrink)

The invention in 1986 of scanning force microscopy (SFM) provided a new and powerful tool for the investigation of biological structures. SFM yields a three‐dimensional view at nanometer resolution of the surface topography associated with biological objects. The potential for imaging either macromolecules or biomolecules and cells under native (physiological) conditions is currently being exploited to obtain functional information at the molecular level. In addition, the forces involved in individual bimolecular interactions are being assessed under static and dynamic conditions. In (...) this report we focus on the imaging capability of the SFM. The rather broad spectrum of applications represented is intended to orient the prospective user of biological SFM. (shrink)

The concept of self-legislation or autonomy is one of the outstanding innovations of Kant’s ethics. Nevertheless, it should not be ignored that it also builds on previous positions. Even if Kant in the Groundwork classifies all other moral principles as heteronomous, it is important to recognize that Kant incorporates elements of Wolff’s theory of self-legislation and Crusius’ theory of obligation into his theory of autonomy. In this essay, I present the relevant themes in Wolff and Crusius and discuss how they (...) were taken up by Kant in the mid-1780s. (shrink)

:Von einigen Ästhetikern ist die Auffassung vertreten worden, daß ästhetische Erfahrung der vorrangige oder sogar einzig legitime Gegenstand philosophischer Ästhetik sei. Diese Privilegierung ästhetischer Erfahrung läßt sich aber in keiner ihrer höchst unterschiedlichen Begründungsgestalten aufrechterhalten. Damit werden alle Konzeptionen, die ästhetische Erfahrung als eine Erfahrung sui generis konstruieren, hinfällig, und es stellt sich die Frage, ob es dann überhaupt noch einen legitimen Sinn gibt, in dem von ästhetischer Erfahrung die Rede sein kann. An der entfremdeten Erfahrungsgestalt einer rein auf Informationsbeschaffung (...) abgestellten Wahrnehmung läßt sich ein solcher durchaus ablesen. Ästhetische Erlebnisse erweisen sich dabei aber als Aspekte ganz gewöhnlicher Erfahrungen.GermanVon einigen Ästhetikern ist die Auffassung vertreten worden, daß ästhetische Erfahrung der vorrangige oder sogar einzig legitime Gegenstand philosophischer Ästhetik sei. Diese Privilegierung ästhetischer Erfahrung läßt sich aber in keiner ihrer höchst unterschiedlichen Begründungsgestalten aufrechterhalten. Damit werden alle Konzeptionen, die ästhetische Erfahrung als eine Erfahrung sui generis konstruieren, hinfällig, und es stellt sich die Frage, ob es dann überhaupt noch einen legitimen Sinn gibt, in dem von ästhetischer Erfahrung die Rede sein kann. An der entfremdeten Erfahrungsgestalt einer rein auf Informationsbeschaffung abgestellten Wahrnehmung läßt sich ein solcher durchaus ablesen. Ästhetische Erlebnisse erweisen sich dabei aber als Aspekte ganz gewöhnlicher Erfahrungen. (shrink)

This book offers a faithful and meticulous reading of Heidegger's magnum opus , Being and Time .

Certification is a crucial part of the organic farming system to protect the integrity of the whole organic sector. Process-oriented on-site auditing by skilled inspectors is the central element of the certification procedure to protect the organic sector against fraud. However, little is known about the role of the inspectors in the certification scheme. In recent years, the requirements and challenges for the organic certification system have changed significantly. The aim of the present study is to get insights into strategies (...) and action patterns used by organic inspectors and thus to better understand their behaviour. Due to the exploratory character of the study, a qualitative approach was chosen. Twenty narrative expert interviews with organic inspectors were conducted. The evaluation was carried out with the narration analysis, which was basis for a typology analysis. The results of the study show that all organic inspectors develop strategies and behavioural patterns, which can be structured in two levels: an interpersonal and a professional level. On the interpersonal level, the results indicate that the inspectors’ behaviour patterns lie between goodwill and demonstration of power. At the professional level, the organic inspectors work with a risk or a checklist-oriented control approach. A risk-oriented control is characterised by the intrinsic motivation of the organic inspector to maintain the integrity of the organic sector. Risk-oriented inspectors set a control focus on the detection of fraud. The aspect of personal ethical involvement and interpersonal actions in control systems should be included when considering improvements in the organic sector. (shrink)

The concept of emergence is widely used in both the philosophy of mind and in cognitive science. In the philosophy of mind it serves to refer to seemingly irreducible phenomena, in cognitive science it is often used to refer to phenomena not explicitly programmed. There is no unique concept of emergence available that serves both purposes.

The goal of this paper is to examine moods, mostly in comparison to emotions. Nearly all of the features that allegedly distinguish moods from emotions are disputed though. In a first section I comment on duration, intentionality, and cause in more detail, and develop intentionality as the most promising distinguishing characteristic. In a second section I will consider the huge variety of moods, ranging from shallow environmentally triggered transient moods to deep existential moods that last much longer. I will explore (...) what their sources are, and how they impact one another, other affective processes, and our being in the world. I follow several eminent emotion researchers and try to carve out their insights, many seemingly mutually excluding each other. As it will turn out, most of them are, in fact, not excluding each other, but contribute to a layered picture of moods that fits well in between emotions and personality traits. Eventually, I will shortly discuss what we can do with our moods. (shrink)

In the second half of the 19th century, pre-Hispanic jade artifacts from Mexico—especially jade celts and votive axes—stood at the center of scholarly debates on the origins of American civilizations. The contradiction between the prevalence of carved jades, on the one hand, and the apparent absence of jade mineral deposits in the Americas, on the other, resuscitated centuries-old theories that placed the beginnings of pre-Hispanic civilizations in China. The increasing availability of Chinese and Mexican jades in the same spaces of (...) commercial exchange, collection, display, and study—following French imperialist interventions in China and Mexico in the 1860s, which resulted in the plunder of a massive number of antiquities; and in a broader context of interest in jade that brought together artifacts from the South Pacific and from Neolithic contexts in Europe—contributed material proof to these theories. The so-called “jade question” was mostly dismissed by the 20th century, but the debates surrounding jade's mineralogical identity and provenance provide insight into the kinds of epistemological configurations, material limitations, and geopolitical arrangements that bore upon the emergence of new disciplines, including mineralogy, archaeology, and prehistory, as well as the new sciences of the pre-Hispanic past. This essay explores these processes and reconstructs the dense networks of private and public institutions, scholars, collectors, dealers, and connoisseurs, that made jade artifacts from Mexico—and Central America—into a scientific, aesthetic, and commercial category. (shrink)

Several theories of emergence will be distinguished. In particular, these are synchronic, diachronic, and weak versions of emergence. While the weaker theories are compatible with property reductionism, synchronic emergentism and strong versions of diachronic emergentism are not. Synchronice mergentism is of particular interest for the discussion of downward causation. For such a theory, a system's property is taken to be emergent if it is irreducible, i.e., if it is not reductively explainable. Furthermore, we have to distinguish two different types of (...) irreducibility with quite different consequences: If, on the one hand, a system's property is irreducible because of the irreducibility of the system's parts' behavior on which the property supervenes, we seem to have a case of "downward causation". This kind of downward causation does not violate the principle of the causal closure of the physical domain. If, on the other hand, a systemic property is irreducible because it is not exhaustively analyzable in terms of its causal role, downward causation is not implied. Rather, it is dubitable how unanalyzable properties might play any causal role at all. Thus, epiphenomenalism seems to be implied. The failure to keep apart the two kinds of irreducibility has muddled recent debate about the emergence of properties considerably. (shrink)

This paper revisits the often debated question Can machines think? It is argued that the usual identification of machines with the notion of algorithm has been both counter-intuitive and counter-productive. This is based on the fact that the notion of algorithm just requires an algorithm to contain a finite but arbitrary number of rules. It is argued that intuitively people tend to think of an algorithm to have a rather limited number of rules. The paper will further propose a modification (...) of the above mentioned explication of the notion of machines by quantifying the length of an algorithm. Based on that it appears possible to reconcile the opposing views on the topic, which people have been arguing about for more than half a century. (shrink)

This essay explores how indigenous knowledge about plant and animal remedies was gathered, classified, tested, and circulated across wide networks of exchange for natural knowledge between Europe and the Americas. There has been much recent interest in the “bioprospecting” of local natural resources—medical and otherwise—by Europeans in the early modern world and the strategies employed by European travellers, missionaries, or naturalists have been well documented. By contrast, less is known about the role played by indigenous and Creole intermediaries in this (...) process. And yet, the transmission of knowledge between indigenous communities and the European cabinet was neither transparent nor natural, and often involved epistemological, linguistic, and religious obstacles. Drawing on printed and manuscript collections of indigenous remedies, written in colonial Mexico between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, I focus on how local intermediaries, like creoles scholars, sought to overcome such obstacles by observing indigenous uses of remedies, by studying indigenous languages and by producing natural histories and pharmacopoeias in indigenous languages. Ultimately, behind the Creole participation in the transmission of indigenous remedies, one can point to political and cultural interests and to inclusive definitions of knowledge, which cut across oppositions between science and superstition, cabinet and field, centre and periphery. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Eine Karriere im Hochleistungssport ist mit hohen zeitlichen Belastungen verbunden. Da die Spitzensport- Karriere lebenszeitlich beschränkt ist und in der Regel in der vierten Lebensdekade beendet wird, stellt sich die Frage nach den Auswirkungen eines Engagements im Hochleistungssport auf die Berufskarriere. Hierzu wurden im Rahmen einer quantitativ orientierten Kohortenanalyse ehemalige Spitzensportler zu ihrem beruflichen Werdegang und möglichen Einflussfaktoren des Hochleistungssports retrospektiv befragt. Die Befunde der beiden Teiluntersuchungen zeigen, dass die hohen zeitlichen Anforderungen des Spitzensports den beruflichen Werdegang nur zum (...) Teil beeinträchtigen. Dies gilt nicht nur für sehr erfolgreiche Sportler, sondern auch für Hochleistungssportler, die weniger erfolgreich sind, sowie für Profisportler, die besonders intensiv in das System Hochleistungssport eingebunden sind. Dabei wirken sich Faktoren, wie institutionelle Unterstützungsmaßnahmen, Bekanntheit und soziale Kontakte sowie die Chance im Berufsfeld Spitzensport zu arbeiten, positiv auf die Berufskarriere aus. Allerdings haben sich aufgrund der Professionalisierung des Hochleistungssports die Risiken im kohortenspezifischen Vergleich vergrößert. (shrink)

In recent decades, the demand for ethically acceptable treatment of animals – especially in case of livestock animals – has increased significantly in western societies and can thus have a significant impact on the consumption of animal products. Therefore, it is of great importance to understand the influence and the mode of action of animal-ethical values. In consumer research, the consumer value-attitude system consisting of global values, domain-specific values and attitudes is essential in many studies. However, there have been no (...) attempts so far to operationalise domain-specific values in the context of human-animal relationship empirically. This means that an essential component for the analysis of animal product consumption behaviour is missing. Therefore, the present study includes animal ethics into the consumer value-attitude system as domain-specific values. The aim is, to analyse the influence of animal-ethical values on consumer behaviour concerning animal products. As a concrete example, the consumption of game meat is chosen in this study, because the consumption of game meat is often judged in a contradictory way in terms of animal welfare. This offers the possibility to cover the entire spectrum of societal animal-ethical values. The study is based on a virtually representative online survey with 523 German participants. A structural equation model is used for analysis. It was found, that animal ethics can be perfectly integrated into the value system as domain-specific values. Furthermore, the results show that especially the two extreme positions in animal ethics, original anthropocentrism and abolitionism, have a significant influence on consumer behaviour – in this case on the consumption of game meat. Overall, this first study on domain-specific values in the context of human-animal relationship contributes to a deeper understanding of which animal-ethical values affect the behaviour of consumers. This is of great importance for marketing and consumer theory concerning animal products. (shrink)

This article focuses on existential feelings. To begin with, it depicts how they differ from other affective phenomena and what type of intentionality they manifest. Furthermore, a detailed analysis shows that existential feelings can be subdivided, first, into elementary and nonelementary varieties, and second, into three foci of primary relatedness: oneself, the social environment, and the world as such. Eventually, five strategies of emotion regulation are examined with respect to their applicability to existential feelings. In the case of harmful existential (...) feelings, it turns out that none seems fitting except one, attentional deployment. (shrink)

Review by: Achim Blumensath The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 19, Issue 3, Page 394-396, September 2013.

Der Beitrag geht im Anschluss an die Arbeiten Léon Wurmsers der Bedeutung des Schamaffekts in Freuds Schriften nach. Auf der einen Seite versucht er zu entwickeln, dass die Scham unter dem übergreifenden Titel der Peinlichkeit bereits in den frühen Schriften Freuds eine zentrale Rolle spielt: Peinlichkeit benennt vor diesem Hintergrund alle Unlustgefühle, die das eigene Selbst betreffen. Auf der anderen Seite stellt die Konfrontation mit peinlichen Erlebnissen und Erfahrungen für die Psychoanalyse eine Herausforderung dar, die sich auch in Freuds eigenen (...) Schriften niederschlägt. Eine besondere Bedeutung kommt in diesem Zusammenhang der »Traumdeutung« zu, die im Wesentlichen autobiographisch fundiert ist und den Traumdeuter so zu einem für die Scham typischen Spiel von Verdecken und Offenlegen zwingt. Anhand des vieldiskutierten Traum von Irmas Injektion will der Beitrag zeigen, dass Freuds Zentrierung der Deutung der eigenen Träume auf den Themenkomplex der Schuld die Präsenz von Schamkonflikten entgegensteht, die sich insbesondere in Freuds Verhältnis zu den Mitgliedern seiner eigenen Familie, seinen frühen Experimenten mit Kokain sowie seinem Freund Fleischl verbinden. Scham, so wäre zu schließen, kommt in der Geschichte der Genese der Psychoanalyse daher eine Schlüsselstellung zu. (shrink)

A central problem for the international governance of heritable germline gene editing is that there are important differences in attitudes and values as well as ethical and health care considerations around the world. These differences are reflected in a complicated and diverse regulatory landscape. Several publications have discussed whether reproductive uses would be legally permissible in individual countries and whether clinical applications could emerge in the context of regulatory gaps and gray areas. Systematic comparative studies that explore issues related to (...) the governance of this technology from different national and international perspectives are needed to address the lack of knowledge in this area. In this research report, we contribute to filling this gap by presenting views of stakeholders in the United Kingdom on challenges to the governance of heritable genome editing. We present findings from a multistakeholder study conducted in the United Kingdom between October 2016 and January 2018 and funded by the Wellcome Trust. This research included interviews, literature analysis, and a workshop. We involved leading U.K. scientists, in vitro fertilization clinicians, and representatives from regulatory bodies, patient organizations, and other civil societal organizations, as well as fertility companies. Part one of this article explores stakeholder perceptions of possible global developments in heritable genome editing and associated risks and governance challenges. Part two presents a range of policy options that were generated during the workshop in relation to the challenges discussed in part one. (shrink)

Several species concepts are generally discussed and evaluated. Then the new definition, the pheno-genetic species concept, is developed; it reads: a species is the largest possible, regional evolutionary unit of pheno-genetically equal (in the typical, specific characters), identically reproducing demes. It is separated from sympatric species by a reproductive isolation that guarantees a unique evolution, an evolution different from that of other species and sufficiently uninfluenced, and that is accompanied by another distinctive pheno-genetic gap. It is separated from allopatric species (...) by a distinctive pheno-genetic gap that - in the case of missing reproductive isolation in bisexual forms — allows the conclusion that such an isolation would have developed, if the species had been sympatric with the allopatric species. This definition is applied to several situations of evolution. The effects of the concepts on the classification of lizards are demonstrated by examples. (shrink)