This paper proposes a method for computing the temporal aspects of the interpretations of a variety of Germa sentences. The method is strictly modular in the sense that it allows each meaning-bearing sentence constituent to make its own, separate, contribution to the semantic representation of any sentence containing it. The semantic representation of a sentence is reached in several stages. First, an ‘initial semantic representation’ is constructed, using a syntactic analysis of the sentence as input. This initial representation is then (...) transformed into the definitive representation by a series of transformations which reflect the ways in which the contributions from different constituents of the sentence interact. Since the different constituents which make their respective contributions to the meaning of the sentence are in most instances ambiguous, the initial representations are typically of a high degree of underspecification. (shrink)

Quipus, knotted structures of woollen or cotton cords, were used as a bureaucratic tool in the Inca state. In the absense of a writing system, numerals and possibly other pieces of information were encoded on the quipus by tying knots into elaborately structured coloured cords. Though interpretation of the quipu contents is far from complete, some information on Inca mathematics can be deducted from the analysis of ancient specimen, especially when combined with the results of anthropological and linguistic research in (...) contemporary Andean societies. In this paper, the quipus are introduced, their structure is explained, and some results on mathematical concepts of the Incas are presented based on a comparison of mathematical and anthropological literature on the subject. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Utopias in Africa is an emerging academic field. While we are witnessing an increasing number of fictional and ideological utopias, little attention is paid to lived utopias. The Green Camp Gallery Project is such a lived utopia, which predominantly strives for realizing desired future imaginations in daily practices. Localized in the urban context of Durban, in a derelict house in the industrial area, the Green Camp strives for a “simple post-growth life,” which is closely related to nature and the (...) philosophy of Ubuntu. In so doing, the Green Camp responds to the overlapping crisis of urbanity and offers an alternative future aspiration. The Green Camp is not perfect and it is not able to solve the deep problems of South African society, but it offers an “island” of hope and imagination in a challenging urban environment. At the same time the lived utopia reveals the agency of the urban marginalized and contradicts widespread assumptions concerning environmentalism. Based on a qualitative study, the article takes an unusual perspective by analyzing the imagination of lived utopia in an emerging utopian hotspot—Africa. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a novel propositional semantics based on the framework of branching time. The basic idea is to replace the moment-history pairs employed as parameters of truth in the standard Ockhamist semantics by pairs consisting of a moment and a consistent, downward closed set of so-called transitions. Whereas histories represent complete possible courses of events, sets of transitions can represent incomplete parts thereof as well. Each transition captures one of the alternative immediate future possibilities open at a (...) branching point. The transition semantics exploits the structural resources a branching time structure has to offer and provides a fine-grained picture of the interrelation of modality and time. In addition to temporal and modal operators, a so-called stability operator becomes interpretable as a universal quantifier over the possible future extensions of a given transition set. The stability operator allows us to specify how and how far time has to unfold for the truth value of a sentence at a moment to become settled and enables a perspicuous treatment of future contingents. We show that the semantics developed along those lines generalizes and extends extant approaches: both Peirceanism and Ockhamism can be viewed as limiting cases of the transition approach that build on restricted resources only, and on both accounts, stability collapses into truth. (shrink)

This study investigates the role of sensory processing sensitivity as a predictor of employees’ proactive work behavior. SPS is a multidimensional concept that depicts differences in people’s sensory awareness, processing, and reactivity to internal and external influences. Based on research on SPS as grounded in a heightened sensitivity of the behavioral inhibition and activation systems, it was argued that the relationships with task proactivity and personal initiative as indicators of proactive work behavior differ for the three SPS dimensions. Furthermore, based (...) on the person–environment fit perspective, SPS was assumed to moderate the relationship between employees’ job complexity and proactivity. The hypotheses were tested in two two-wave studies. Across both studies, ease of excitation was unrelated to proactivity. Low sensory threshold was negatively related to personal initiative, only in Study 2, but it did not predict task proactivity. Meanwhile, aesthetic sensitivity was positively related to proactivity, but in Study 2, this relationship could only be established for personal initiative. Moreover, job complexity was positively related to proactivity for those employees high but not for those low in AES. EOE and LST did not act as moderators. This study offers evidence of positive behavioral implications among highly sensitive persons when dealing with job complexity. Overall, the study presents an interesting point of departure for the role of SPS in employee proactivity that calls for more research. (shrink)

Der Sammelband nimmt erstmalig seit Ende des Kalten Krieges für den deutschsprachigen Raum eine komprimierte Bestandsaufnahme der aktuellen Aktivitäten, rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen, politischen und militärischen Konfliktlinien und Kooperationsräume sowie weiterführender Trends und Herausforderungen im Weltraum vor. Dabei werden zum einen die rechtlichen, militärischen, wirtschaftlichen und technologischen Herausforderungen des Bedeutungszuwachses dieses strategisch gewichtigen Raumes analysiert. Zum anderen werden Handlungsfähigkeit und -bedarf ausgewählter Weltraummächte, ihre Kooperationsmöglichkeiten und Konfliktpotenziale sowie der internationale politische Regulierungsbedarf herausgearbeitet und darauf aufbauend politische Handlungsempfehlungen dargelegt.,,Eine hervorragend gelungene Bestandsaufnahme der (...) umfassenden Bedeutung des Weltraums." Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Karl Kaiser, Harvard University Die Herausgeber PD Dr. Antje Nötzold ist Privatdozentin und wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Professur Internationale Politik der TU Chemnitz. Dr. Enrico Fels ist Geschäftsführer des Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS) der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. Andrea Rotter ist Referatsleiterin für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik bei einer politischen Stiftung. Dr. Moritz Brake ist Senior Fellow am Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS) und Experte für Maritime Sicherheit und Strategie am German Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies (GIDS) als Reserveoffizier der Deutschen Marine. (shrink)

The transition semantics presented in Rumberg (J Log Lang Inf 25(1):77–108, 2016a) constitutes a fine-grained framework for modeling the interrelation of modality and time in branching time structures. In that framework, sentences of the transition language L_t are evaluated on transition structures at pairs consisting of a moment and a set of transitions. In this paper, we provide a class of first-order definable Kripke structures that preserves L_t-validity w.r.t. transition structures. As a consequence, for a certain fragment of L_t, validity (...) w.r.t. transition structures turns out to be axiomatizable. The result is then extended to the entire language L_t by means of a quite natural ‘Henkin move’, i.e. by relaxing the notion of validity to bundled structures. (shrink)

Digitalization and the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will bring about substantial changes in all aspects of life. This happens in a world marked by the poisonous synergy of five Ps, polarization, populism, protectionism, post‐truth, patriarchy, as well as an ambiguous interplay of secularization and new visibility of religion.If development of AI is to be beneficial for people and planet a number of challenges must be met. In this regard, religion‐and‐science dialogue needs improvement in making things not only intellectually but (...) also spiritually fit. Ethics should be involved from the beginning rather than being called upon first when problems arise. Faith communities have a prophetical, diaconal, ethical, and theological role.Based on the characterization of life as a fourfold web of relationality, personal, social, political, as well as global issues are identified and discussed. These include mental health disorders, addiction, manipulation, and self‐exploitation. Reflections on leadership suggest resilience, coexistence, and hope as theological key components for navigating the uncharted realms of the digital age. (shrink)

Der Band versammelt Beiträge, die die Konstruktivität wissenschaftlicher Theoriebildung in ihrem Verhältnis zur Körperlichkeit des Menschen thematisieren. Dazu stellt das Buch mit dem Fahrrad ein technisches Gerät , eine Maschine in den Mittelpunkt, die die Körperlichkeit des Menschen in paradigmatischer Weise aufgreift. In vier Teilen zum Fahrrad, zur Person, zum Organismus und zur Konstruktion entwickeln die Autoren verschiedene miteinander korrespondierende empirische und philosophische Zugangsweisen. Die Autoren verbindet das gemeinsame Anliegen, eines kritische Analyse ihres Gegenstandsbereiches mit Blick auf den Körper zu (...) entwickeln. (shrink)

The internet could be an efficient political instrument if it were seen as part of a democracy where free and open discourse within a vital public sphere plays a decisive role. The model of deliberative democracy, as developed by Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib, serves this concept of democracy best. The paper explores first the model of deliberative democracy as a ‘two-track model’ in which representative democracy is backed by the public sphere and a developing civil society. Secondly, it outlines (...) the normative concept of the public sphere and its basic ideas, namely the uncoerced communication of equal participants with equal access and equal rights to intervene or propose themes. The third part for discussion shows how the internet could fit into this concept of public sphere and influence the quality of political debates, and emphasizes the important role it can play in the political process. (shrink)

"As a 'rhetoric of the mean' (mesotes ideal), sensibility provides a positive catalog of emotionalization. This is because ethos as an emotional level is viewed as being able, through gentle emotions, to please, placate and achieve sympathy and virtue (Quintilian). Sensibility in literature creates a bridge between an 'art of the soul' that developed into a major subjective and personal factor in the 18th century and a sense of sociability that aimed to integrate the individual into the community. The goal (...) of this study is to provide, through a structural linking of the ethos of virtue and the 'rhetoric of the mean', a reading of literature of sensibility based on rhetoric and cultural history that can explain both its public success 'with the people' and the reasons for why it failed to meet its own claims."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

The globalization of production and trade has contributed to the rise in complex global value chains where the reach of state regulation is limited. As an alternative, private regulation, developed and administered by companies, industry associations, and nongovernmental organizations, has emerged to safeguard economic, environmental, and social sustainability in producer countries and along the value chain. The academic literature on private regulation in global value chains has grown over the last decade, but currently few major reviews of the research have (...) been undertaken. This paper examines peer-reviewed research in the relevant disciplines published in academic journals up to December 2011. Our goal is to identify and classify the topics and theories in the global value chain literature. We conclude that the number of articles explicitly examining private regulation, in a global value chain context, is relatively small when considering the importance and growth of these chains in the world’s economy. We also conclude that agriculture, forestry, and apparel manufacturing are the most often studied economic sectors; in contrast, other sectors, such as the information, communication and technology, with their complex global value chains, and often problematic environmental and social conditions, are understudied. (shrink)

How is it possible to develop an identity that lives from the meaningful relationship to a concrete tradition without falling into fundamentalist self-closure when trying to maintain this relationship? The present study addresses this question by interpreting Alasdair MacIntyre's traditional concept in response to the lack of orientation in contemporary society. The American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre assumes that modern societies can only convey identity through the traditions they contain. He defines "tradition" as a discussion about the correct interpretation of the (...) traditional content. MacIntyre sees coexistence in plural societies as a permanent encounter of different, traditional identities that struggle to convince each other of the truthfulness of their own worldview. The consequence is not blind conflict, but rather the acquisition of cultural language skills: Real encounters occur when a tradition learns to understand its counterpart from its genuine perspective. In this way, MacIntyre makes communicative competence the guiding factor of its model. In conversation with Karl Barth's theology, the study further develops this model from a Protestant perspective. Barth is received as the 20th century theologian who most consistently thought of Christian identity in particular terms. Even more than for Barth, the self-assurance of Christian tradition is being put to the test today. The study develops a model of Christian orientation in pluralism, which is based on the interplay of cultural competence and trust in the sustainability of one's own religious identity. (shrink)

The article takes up J. P. Arnason's basic theoretical assumption that the western trajectory to modernity marks only one possibility of the modern constellation and that modernity has to be pluralized. Arnason's differentiation between a civilizational paradigm and a civilizational horizon allows us to acknowledge the ambivalent perceptions of modernity prevalent in the colonial and postcolonial encounter and gives space for counter-paradigms of modernity. Through a brief discussion of Indian reflections on modernity (P. Chatterjee, J. Alam) I want to argue (...) that the aspect of agency, marginalized in the philosophical and sociological debate on multiple modernities, has to be integrated into the theory. Examples from the Indian Himalayas should show how in everyday life as well as in the course of a social movement for regional autonomy `preferred futures' are negotiated on the basis of a reflexive balancing of `traditional' and `modern' elements which are articulated and joined in a self-made present. The article ends with a plaidoyer for an anthropology of modernity. (shrink)

Many authors have recently highlighted the importance of prediction for language comprehension. Pickering & Garrod (P&G) are the first to propose a central role for prediction in language production. This is an intriguing idea, but it is not clear what it means for speakers to predict their own utterances, and how prediction during production can be empirically distinguished from production proper.

Die Studie untersucht Gottesbilder von Kindern und Jugendlichen. Im Zentrum stehen Zeichnungen von Sechst- und Zehntklässlern, die Brüche und Spannungen enthalten. Ungewohnte Darstellungen kommen zum Vorschein: Gott nimmt beispielsweise eine Auszeit, er beschützt und überwacht die Welt oder er erscheint als Fata Morgana. Die Untersuchung orientiert sich methodologisch an der dokumentarischen Bild- und Textinterpretation: Sie schafft erstmals Einsichten in das Ringen von Kindern und Jugendlichen um die eigene Gottesvorstellung. Im Fokus steht die Frage, inwiefern Kinder und Jugendliche von sich aus (...) theologisieren. Ermöglicht der empirische Zugriff, besondere Typen des Gottesbildes zu identifizieren, so greifen exemplarisch ausgewählte systematisch-theologische Modelle diese Problemstellungen auf. Deren reflektierte Anwendung eröffnet die Möglichkeit, ein passgenaues Setting für ein weiteres Theologisieren zu konturieren. (shrink)

Applied philosophy is experiencing its “golden days,” as Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen says in his insightful introduction to A Companion to Applied Philosophy. Applied philosophy seems to be distinguished from its opposite, pure philosophy, usually understood as traditional philosophy, which deals with subjects such as free will, consciousness, or knowledge in philosophical subdisciplines like ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. To embrace applied philosophy could thus mean to advocate for a philosophy that deals with questions “relevant to ‘the important questions of everyday life,’” as (...) Leslie Stevenson puts it, as opposed to questions that arise from within the subdisciplines of pure philosophy. (shrink)

What moral claims do undocumented immigrants have to membership? Joseph Carens has argued that illegal migrants with long-term residence have a claim to national membership because they already are de facto members of local communities. This article builds on the linkage between illegality, residence, and rights, but shifts the focus from the migrant to the state, and from membership-based arguments to the rule of law. I argue that the rule of law, as expressed in the principle of legal certainty, provides (...) an alternative justification for the regularization of resident undocumented migrants. The principle of legal certainty recognizes the right of individuals to make long-term plans for their lives by requiring that state action be reasonably predictable and nonarbitrary. Thus, as an expression of legal certainty, both civil and criminal codes have statutes of limitation that place a time limit beyond which most crimes and misdemeanors can no longer be prosecuted, and individuals can move on with their lives. Not only do these statutes recognize the individual’s right to be free from arbitrary state control, they also demand that the state cut its losses and accept the consequences of its failure to act in a timely manner. I contend that, in the absence of a statute of limitation on illegal entry, the deportation of settled migrants constitutes an arbitrary act of state power. The article explores a number of judicial rulings to illustrate the argument’s normative logic. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility of resistance under conditions of extreme state power in liberal democracies. It examines the strategies of migrants without legal status who, when threatened with one of the most awesome powers of the liberal state—expulsion—shed their legal identity in order to escape the state’s reach. Remarkably, in doing so, they often succeed in preventing the state from exercising its sovereign powers. The article argues that liberal states are uniquely constrained in their dealing with undocumented migrants. Not (...) only are they forced to operate within the constraints of the international legal order—making repatriation contingent on the possession of identity documents—but the liberal state is also constitutionally limited in its exercise of coercion against the individual. The article concludes that it is those individuals who have the weakest claims against the liberal state that are most able to constrain its exercise of sovereignty. (shrink)

Indicative conditionals with present tense antecedents can have ‘shifted’ readings that are unexpected given the semantic behavior of the tenses outside of conditionals. In this paper, we compare two accounts of this phenomenon due to Kaufmann (J Semant 22(3):231–280, 2005) and Schulz (SALT XVIII, pp. 694–710, 2008), by reconstructing them in the framework of branching time. We then propose a novel account of indicative conditionals based on the branching time semantics suggested in Rumberg (J Logic Lang Inf 25(1):77–108, 2016), viz. (...) transition semantics. We show that not only is the account of ‘shifted’ readings with present tense antecedents within this semantics very natural, but it also is empirically superior to its rivals in some respects. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 1 Seiten: 346-360.

Abstract State Machines (ASMs) provide a formal method for transparent design and specification of complex dynamic systems. They combine advantages of informal and formal methods. Applications of this method motivate a number of computability and decidability problems connected to ASMs. Such problems result for example from the area of verifying properties of ASMs. Their high expressive power leads rather directly to undecidability respectively uncomputability results for most interesting problems in the case of unrestricted ASMs. Consequently, it is rather natural to (...) ask whether there exist expressive classes of ASMs for which we can prove positive decidability and computability results. In this work, we introduce such a class of ASMs. The concept is similar to the one of the guarded fragment of first-order logic. We analyze the expressive power of this class and prove that it is stronger than Datalog LITE and the guarded fragment of first-order fixed point logic. Some decidability and computability results have been proven in earlier works. (shrink)

This article compares health promotion attitudes towards prostate cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Our aim is to demonstrate that these two apparently distinct conditions of the aging body – one affecting the male reproductive system, the other primarily the brain – are addressed in similar fashion in recent public health activities because of a growing emphasis on a ‘cardiovascular logic’. We suggest that this is a form of reductionism, and argue that it leaves us with a dangerous paradox: while re-transcending, at (...) least partially, the conceptual separation of body and brain, it clouds much-needed discussion and research, such as contingent issues of socio-economic and socio-cultural disease disparities. (shrink)

Neunzehn Alte Gedichte aus der Han-Zeit. By Manfred W. Frühauf. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019. Pp. x + 369. €58.

Although there is increasing public criticism of intensive livestock production, the market share of meat with an animal welfare standard exceeding legal requirements remains small. Food retailers, in their role as gatekeepers, can influence changes in production and consumption patterns. Their strategic role between farmers and consumers allows them to control commodity, information and value flow and therefore places them into a key position when it comes to the distribution of meat with a higher animal welfare standard. The aim of (...) this explorative study is to identify factors which motivate food retailers to take on the marketing of products of increased animal welfare standards, in this case, pasture-based beef. Nine in depth-interviews were conducted with representatives of the food retail industry. The interviews took place in June 2018, followed a structured guideline and were transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were categorized and evaluated using qualitative content analysis. Results showed that food retailers are driven by both extrinsic and intrinsic motives. The main extrinsic motive is the perceived customer demand. Consciousness for animal welfare and the regional production cycles, including close connection between farmers and retailers are inherently intrinsic motives. Interestingly, the interviewed retailers show a high personal interest and moral obligation with regard to sourcing and marketing pasture-based beef. As such, this research finds innovative retailers, who take on a new role in sustainable food systems which exceed classical distribution functions and may have a considerable effect in transforming the food system. (shrink)