Frühe Störungen können zu unterschiedlichen pathogenen Zuständen führen, z.B. unrepräsentierte, prädeterminierte und namenlose/nicht-existentielle. In namenlosen Zuständen verschwindet die objektale Erwartung, versagen projektive und externalisierende Mechanismen, und das Sinnliche atrophiert auf physische Reize, kann intrapsychisch nicht mehr zur Versinnlichung beitragen und lässt den objektalen Kontakt entleeren. Behandlungstechnisch dominieren in solchen Zuständen Halten und sinnliche Transformationen. Die technischen Schwierigkeiten werden aufgezeigt: einerseits die Gefahr, namenlose Merkmale zu übersehen und im objektal-symbolischen Beziehungsraum zu bleiben, andererseits die notwendige Verschiebung von Interventionen auf das Sinnliche, (...) Haltende und das minutiöse Erfassen von inneren, nicht-psychisierten Zuständen des Patienten. Die Überwindung namenloser Zustände braucht Prozesse in vivo (Präsenzmoment; »O«). Konstruktionen, so die These, sind hier nicht ausreichend. Diese Überlegungen werden an einem detaillierten Fallbeispiel eines frühen Zusammenbruchs illustriert und diskutiert. (shrink)

Nietzsche gave it a sub-title: A Book for Everyone and No One. For Everyone does not, of course, mean for just anybody. For Everyone means for each man as man, in so far as his essential nature becomes at any given time an object worthy of his thought. And No One means for none of the idle curious who come drifting in from everywhere, who merely intoxicate themselves with isolated fragments and particular aphorisms from this work; who won't proceed along (...) the path of thought that here seeks its expression, but blindly stumble about in its half-lyrical, half-shrill, now deliberate, now stormy, often lofty and sometimes trite language. (shrink)

Über die Ideen der theoretischen Vernunft hinaus kennt die Ideenlehre Kants eine Reihe von Ideen reflektierender Urteilskraft und praktischer Vernunft, deren Status, ob konstitutiv oder regulativ, deren systematischer Zusammenhang und deren Legitimation nicht offensichtlich sind. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes stellen Versuche einer Klärung dar, etwa hinsichtlich der Modifikationen der Idee der Zweckmäßigkeit, die die Kritik der Urteilskraft als ästhetische, organologische und ethiko-theologische Zweckmäßigkeit entfaltet. Außerdem wird Zweckmäßigkeit auch in Gestalt der Frage nach dem Fortschritt zum Besseren in der Geschichte thematisiert. (...) Weitere Beiträge diskutieren Ideen der moralisch-praktischen Vernunft, die Freiheitsidee, die personifizierte Idee des Guten, und der Rechtsvernunft, etwa die Staats- und die Völkerrechtsidee. *** In addition to theoretical reason, Kant s theory of ideas recognises a number of ideas of reflective judgment and of practical reason. Their status, systematic coherence and legitimation are not obvious. The essays in this volume seek to offer clarification, for example by modifying the idea of purposiveness which the Critique of Judgement develops as aesthetic, organological and ethico-theological purposiveness. Purposiveness is also thematised as the question of historical progress towards improvement. Other contributions discuss ideas of moral and practical reason, the idea of freedom, the personified idea of goodness, and legal reason, e.g. the forms of national and international law. (shrink)

Contrary to popular assumption, Kant's theory of state experienced a major transformation during the period between "On the Common Saying" of 1793 and the "Metaphysical First Principles of the Doctrine of Right" of 1797. This transformation is primarily expressed in the systematic new formulation of the relationship between "noumenal state" and "phenomenal state". Kant's new system permits him, on the one hand, to develop the idea of state a priori from his theory of private right and thus to systematically incorporate (...) central elements of the modern tradition, including Rousseau's "Contrat Social". On the other hand, it allows him to formulate the theory of state forms as a theory of the "phenomenal state", which in turn provides a tool for legal evaluation of the then current political events in revolutionary France. This article considers the differences between the Doctrine of Right and Kant's earlier works as well as the role Schlegel's review of Perpetual Peace played in stimulating Kant's new conception of the state. Kants Staatsphilosophie ist - entgegen der gängigen Auffassung - in der Zeit zwischen der Schrift zum 'Gemeinspruch' von 1793 und den 'Metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Rechtslehre' von 1797 einer grundsätzlichen Wandlung unterworfen, welche in einer systematischen Neufassung des Verhältnisses von 'Staat in der Idee' und 'Staat in der Erscheinung' ihren entscheidenden Ausdruck findet. Diese neue Systematik ermöglicht es Kant einerseits, die Staatsidee a priori aus dem Privatrecht zu entwickeln und damit zentrale Bestandstücke der modernen Tradition - darunter das Rousseausche 'Ideal des Bürgerbundes' - systematisch einzubinden. Andererseits erlaubt sie es, die Staatsformenlehre als eine Lehre des 'Staates in der Erscheinung' zu fassen, womit sie ein Instrumentarium für die rechtliche Einordnung der aktuellen politischen Vorgänge im revolutionären Frankreich bereitstellt. - Auf die Differenzen der Rechtlehre gegenüber den früheren Schriften , sowie auf die Rolle der Schlegelschen Rezension des 'Ewigen Frieden' als Anlaß für Neukonzeption wird hingewiesen. (shrink)

Posner & Raichle's (1994) book is a fascinating and readable account of the studies the authors have conducted on the localization of cognitive functions in the brain mainly using PET and EEC evoked potential methods. Our criticism concerns the underrepresentation of some imaging techniques (magnetoencephalography) and some forms of brain activity (spontaneous activity). Furthermore, the book leaves the reader with the impression that the brain only responds to external events.

The purpose of this study was to explore situations experienced by 12 health-care providers working in two nursing homes. Individual interviews, using a narrative approach, were conducted. A phenomenological–hermeneutical method, developed for researching life experiences, was applied in the analysis. The findings showed that good care situations are experienced when the time culture is flexible, the carers act in a sovereign time rhythm, not mentioning clock time or time as a stress factor. The results are discussed in terms of anthropological (...) and sociological theory: time as event and action and flexible time cultures. Care settings for persons with dementia represent many challenges, such as a heavy workload and time strain. Time ethics is a construction, understanding time used in caring for persons suffering from dementia, which involves a mature, responsible and flexible nursing approach to these patients. (shrink)

The debate on the role and identity of Christian social ethics in liberal democracy touches upon the question about the relationship between universality and specificity. Rather than argue for the difference between these approaches, it can be argued that they are to be understood in a differentiated unity with each other. This idea can be substantiated by a figurative appropriation of a Chalcedonian Christology, particularly the communicatio idiomatum . The communicative dimension of this concept has been found to be useful (...) for a reinterpretation of the idea of responsibility. By engaging contemporary positions of communicative ethics, H. Richard Niebuhr's understanding of responsibility as responsiveness, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christological concept of responsibility in a constructive dialogue with each other, the article has attempted to outline main tenets of a responsive concept of responsibility based on a broadly conceived Chalcedonian Christology. This responsive understanding of responsibility serves as the foundation of a third position beyond the futile antagonism of liberalism and communitarianism. Hereby it maintains the reasonableness of a liberal democratic assertion of a common political discourse, and yet it also contends the necessity of authentic particular worldviews and outlooks. In its argument for such a third-way thinking it hopes to contribute with an understanding where these positions are seen in a constructive relationship – rather than in contrast – with each other. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking new study, Lowell Nissen explores the use of teleological language in the study of subjects such as behaviorism, negative feedback, and natural selection. He argues that all existing analyses fail to explain how teleological language can be used legitimately, and provides his own analysis in terms of intentionality.

Background: Nursing workforce in Western European health institutions has become more diverse because of immigration and recruitment from Asian, African, and East-European countries. Minority healthcare providers may experience communication problems in interaction with patients and coworkers, and they are likely to experience conflict or uncertainty when confronted with different cultural traditions and values. Persons with dementia are a vulnerable group, and the consequences of their illness challenge the ability to understand and express oneself verbally. The large number of minority healthcare (...) providers in nursing homes underlines the importance to obtain better knowledge about this group’s experiences with the care challenges in dementia care units. Research question: Can you tell about any challenges in the experiences in the encounter with persons suffering from dementia? Participants and research context: Five minority healthcare providers in a nursing home, in a dementia unit. All guidelines for research ethic were followed. Ethical consideration: The participants were informed that participation was voluntary, and they were guarantied anonymity. Method: We used a qualitative method, conducting individual interviews, using a narrative approach. In the analysis, we applied a phenomenological–hermeneutical method, developed for researching life experiences. Findings: One theme and four subthemes: striving to understand the quality of care for persons with dementia. The subthemes: sensitivity to understand the patients’ verbal and nonverbal expressions. To understand gratefulness, understand the patient as an adult and autonomous person, and understand the patient as a patient in a nursing home. Challenges comprise both ethical and cultural striving to understand persons with dementia. Conclusion: To care for persons with dementia in an unfamiliar context may be understood as a striving for acting ethically, when at the same time striving to adapt and acculturate to new cultural norms, in order to practice good dementia care. (shrink)

The paper encircles the subjectivity of drug taking as one form of contemporary practice in which fundamental theoretical issues are dealt with. In particular, following Mariana Valverde's genealogy of alcohol regulation (Valverde, 1998), the question of the free will, and the paradox of the simultaneous being and non-being of the autonomous subject, are viewed as present in various approaches to drugs. The current neo-pragmatist wave substitutes low-key practical notions of habits for a dichotomy of free will or determinism. The concept (...) of objectification promises to overcome that dichotomy by externalizing it; in terms of this concept, we can distinguish the abstract-imagined 'fix' from a genuinely transforming realization, and suggest that ours is the age of the fix, of instrumental commodities that change us in ways we do not intend. But, it is claimed, an inescapable issue of the self-dissolution of the subject remains; perhaps in the definitive shape of a suicide, or in the minor shapes of fixes such as a tactics of feigned surrender, New Age Higher Powers, or imagined communities. Determined to realize the idea of a benevolent surrender of the subject, the paper ends in an attempt to contribute to the coming to an understanding of herself and with herself of a person who finds herself at the troublesome intersection of Narcotics Anonymous and a social work development network of Copenhagen City called Wild Learning. (shrink)

The authors of this volume — all of them recognized representatives of a wide range of academic disciplines — agree that Locke’s work must have had a considerable influence both on English and German literature and the visual arts of Great Britain, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From the perspective of interdisciplinarity and intertextuality, the essays presented here deal with Locke as a source of ideas for Archibald Alison, John Constable, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith, Johann Timotheus (...) Hermes, William Hogarth, Immanuel Kant, Martin Knutzen, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, George Lillo, Edward Moore, Johann Gottwerth Müller, Joshua Reynolds, Samuel Richardson, John Ruskin, Joseph Spence, Laurence Sterne, J. M. W. Turner and Thomas Whately, among others. (shrink)

Background: The nursing community in the Nordic countries has become multicultural because of migration from European, Asian and African countries. In Norway, minority health care providers are recruited in to nursing homes which have become multicultural workplaces. They overcome challenges such as language and strangeness but as a group they are vulnerable and exposed to many challenges. Purpose: The aim is to explore minority healthcare providers, trained nurses and nurses’ assistants, and their experiences of challenges when working in a multicultural (...) team in a Norwegian context. Research method: The study has a qualitative design, using narrative interviews, and a phenomenological–hermeneutic analysis method to explore the experiences of challenges in dementia care. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by The Norwegian Regional Ethics Committee, and the Norwegian Social Science Data Services. Participation and research context: Five informants from different African, Asian and European countries participated in the study. The study was conducted in a Norwegian nursing home, in a dementia care unit. Findings: The results show that minority health care providers experience and find meaning in being a member of a team, they overcome challenges, characterized by the interdependency in the team, appreciating new cultural experiences and striving to belong. They must overcome challenges such as language problems and the feeling of strangeness. Discussion: The findings are discussed considering Løgstrup’s ethic of proximity, the ethical demand of trust, and interdependency. The ethical demand is an answer to a common, transparent, unspoken agreement to be met, seen, and understood. Conclusion: The study shows that cooperation in a multi-professional and multi-ethnic team is important, and secures the quality of care to persons with dementia. Further research is necessary to examine the relation between a multi-ethnic staff and the patients experiencing dementia. Further research is necessary to examine ethnicity, the relation between a multi-ethnic staff, the patients experiencing dementia and next of kin. (shrink)

Taking as a starting point the assertion of an ambiguity in the Lutheran tradition's assessment of reason, the essay argues that the Kantian unreserved confidence in reason is criticised in Bonhoeffer. Based upon a Christological understanding of reason, Bonhoeffer endorses a view of reason which is specifically Christian and yet maintains a universality. With a focus on Bonhoeffer's Ethik as the hermeneutical key to his theology, Bonhoeffer's notion is also discussed in light of contemporary Christian ethics. In this part it (...) is particularly the role of reason within a public discourse which is treated in the essay. Here it is argued that Bonhoeffer may be appropriated in attempting to outline a Christological ontology of reason holding essential implications for the sources and conditions of public discourse. (shrink)

The ethics of artificial intelligence is a widely discussed topic. There are numerous initiatives that aim to develop the principles and guidance to ensure that the development, deployment and use of AI are ethically acceptable. What is generally unclear is how organisations that make use of AI understand and address these ethical issues in practice. While there is an abundance of conceptual work on AI ethics, empirical insights are rare and often anecdotal. This paper fills the gap in our current (...) understanding of how organisations deal with AI ethics by presenting empirical findings collected using a set of ten case studies and providing an account of the cross-case analysis. The paper reviews the discussion of ethical issues of AI as well as mitigation strategies that have been proposed in the literature. Using this background, the cross-case analysis categorises the organisational responses that were observed in practice. The discussion shows that organisations are highly aware of the AI ethics debate and keen to engage with ethical issues proactively. However, they make use of only a relatively small subsection of the mitigation strategies proposed in the literature. These insights are of importance to organisations deploying or using AI, to the academic AI ethics debate, but maybe most valuable to policymakers involved in the current debate about suitable policy developments to address the ethical issues raised by AI. (shrink)

Trustful interaction serves the interests of those involved. Thus, one could reason that trust itself may be analyzed as part of rational, goaloriented action. In contrast, common sense tells us that trust is an emotion and is, therefore, independent of rational deliberation to some extent. I will argue that we are right in trusting our common sense. My argument is conceptual in nature, referring to the common distinction between trust and pure reliance. An emotional attitude may be understood as some (...) general pattern in the way the world or some part of the world is perceived by an individual. Trust may be characterized by such a pattern. I shall focus on two central features of a trusting attitude. First, trust involves a participant attitude (Strawson) toward the person being trusted. Second, a situation of trust is perceived by a trusting person as one in which shared values or norms motivate both his own actions as well as those of the person being trusted. As an emotional attitude, trust is, to some extent, independent of objective information. It determines what a trusting person will believe and how various outcomes are evaluated. Hence, trust is quite different from rational belief and the problem with trust is not adequately met in minimizing risk by supplying extensive information or some mechanism of sanctioning. Trust is an attitude that enables us to cope with risk in a certain way. If we want to promote trustful interaction, we must form our institutions in ways that allow individuals to experience their interest and values as shared and, thus, to develop a trusting attitude. (shrink)

This open access collection of AI ethics case studies is the first book to present real-life case studies combined with commentaries and strategies for overcoming ethical challenges. Case studies are one of the best ways to learn about ethical dilemmas and to achieve insights into various complexities and stakeholder perspectives. Given the omnipresence of AI ethics in academic, policy and media debates, the book will be suitable for a wide range of audiences, from scholars of different disciplines (e.g. AI science, (...) ethics, politics, philosophy, economics) to policy-makers, lobbying NGOs, teachers and the educated public. (shrink)

This study investigates the ethical use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies (BD + AI)—using an empirical approach. The paper categorises the current literature and presents a multi-case study of 'on-the-ground' ethical issues that uses qualitative tools to analyse findings from ten targeted case-studies from a range of domains. The analysis coalesces identified singular ethical issues, (from the literature), into clusters to offer a comparison with the proposed classification in the literature. The results show that despite the variety (...) of different social domains, fields, and applications of AI, there is overlap and correlation between the organisations’ ethical concerns. This more detailed understanding of ethics in AI + BD is required to ensure that the multitude of suggested ways of addressing them can be targeted and succeed in mitigating the pertinent ethical issues that are often discussed in the literature. (shrink)

A central characteristic of living organisms is their agency, that is, their intrinsic activity, both in terms of their basic life processes and their behavior in the environment. This aspect is currently a subject of debate and this article provides an overview of some of the relevant publications on this topic. We develop the argument that agency is immanent in living organisms. There is no life without agency. Even the basic life processes are an intrinsic activity, which we call the (...) organismic level of agency. In addition to this we describe several further levels. These capture different qualities that occur or transform during evolution. In addition to the organismic level, we propose an ontogenetic level, a level of directed agency, directed agency with extended flexibility, and a level that includes the capacities to follow preconceived goals. A further property of organisms is their autonomy. It has been shown that the capacity for autonomy changed during evolution. Here we propose that the two organismic properties autonomy and agency are closely related. Enhanced physiological and behavioral autonomy extends the scope of self-generated, flexible actions and reactions. The increase in autonomy through the evolution of a widened scope of behavioral possibilities and versatility in organisms coincides with extended levels of agency. Especially the human organization, including the sophisticated brain, is the basis for an extended level of agency referring to the capacities to follow preconceived goals. However, it is important for the understanding of the phenomenon of agency not only to assume this latter form, but also to look at the different levels of agency. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is known that people covertly attend to threatening stimuli even when it is not beneficial for the task. In the current study we examined whether overt selection is affected by the presence of an object that signals threat. We demonstrate that stimuli that signal the possibility of receiving an electric shock capture the eyes more often than stimuli signalling no shock. Capture occurred even though the threat-signalling stimulus was neither physically salient nor task relevant at any point during the (...) experiment. Crucially, even though fixating the threat-related stimulus made it more likely to receive a shock, results indicate that participants could not help but doing it. Our findings indicate that the presence of a stimulus merely signalling the possibility of receiving a shock is prioritised in selection, and exogenously captures the eyes even when this ultimately results in the execution of the threat. Oculomotor capture was particularly pronounced for the fastest saccades which is consistent with the idea that threat influences visual selection at an early stage of processing, when selection is mainly involuntarily. (shrink)

The degree of success in creating quality care for people suffering from dementia is limited despite extensive research. This article describes healthcare providers’ experience with the ethical challenges and possibilities in the relationship with patients suffering from dementia and its impact on quality care. The material is based on qualitative, in-depth individual narrative interviews with 12 professional healthcare providers from two different nursing homes. The transcribed interview texts were subjected to a phenomenological–hermeneutical interpretation. To provide quality care to patients with (...) dementia, the healthcare providers emphasized the importance of sensing and understanding the patients’ emotional and bodily expressions through sentient attentiveness and recognition of the patient as a person. They also described reciprocity of expressions in the relationship where the patient recognized them both as persons and healthcare providers. The analyses of the findings are, inter alia, discussed in light of Løgstrup’s relational philosophy of ethics. (shrink)

As Kant shows in A 71–76 of the First Critique, his table of the twelve “logical functions of understanding” (in A 70) is an indispensable extension of a table of four well-known logical functions that we find in a section of the Logic that was “already finished” in Aristotle’s times: The Square of Oppositions. The undisputed completeness of this special table thus warrants the completeness of Kant’s general table as well. Any further philosophical proof of completeness for Kant’s table of (...) judgements as a whole is therefore not necessary at all. And due to the contingency of “kind and number” of human forms of intuition and functions of judgment, such a ‘proof’ would not even be possible according to Kant – and thus it is not a subject (or even a part) of his Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. A concluding evaluation of Kant’s own statements about the proof-structure of the B-Deduction as a whole supports this claim. (shrink)

Models are one of the main instruments in scientific research. Disciplines have developed a different understanding of the notion, function and purpose of models. We thus need a systematic approach in order to understand, to build and to use models. This book gives an insight into the disciplinary modelling know-howand is a starting point to develop a general model approach that generalises and combines for an interdisciplinary use.

The two main challenges of the theory of conceptual content presented by Robert Brandom in Making It Explicit are to account for a referential dimension of conceptual content and to account for the objectivity of conceptual norms. Brandom tries to meet both these challenges in chapter 8 of his book. I argue that the accounts presented there can only be understood if seen against the background of Brandom's theory of communication developed in chapter 7. This theory is motivated by the (...) well-known problem that semantic holism threatens the possibility of communication because it has the consequence that words mean different things in different mouths. Brandom offers a solution to this problem in terms of what he calls recurrence commitments. I show that chapter 8 of Making It Explicit should be understood as arguing that a practice that includes acknowledging interpersonal recurrence commitments institutes both conceptual contents with a referential dimension and objective conceptual norms. I close by raising the objection that Brandom's argument can only show that conceptual norms are communally shared and not that they are objective. I propose an emendation of this argument, having recourse to a practice Brandom refers to as rational rectification in his new book Between Saying and Doing. (shrink)