Individuals regaining reliable day-to-day walking function after incomplete spinal cord injury report persisting unsteadiness when confronted with walking challenges. However, quantifiable measures of walking capacity lack the sensitivity to reveal underlying impairments of supra-spinal locomotor control. This study investigates the relationship between intramuscular coherence and corticospinal dynamic balance control during a visually guided Target walking treadmill task. In thirteen individuals with iSCI and 24 controls, intramuscular coherence and cumulant densities were estimated from pairs of Tibialis anterior surface EMG recordings during (...) normal treadmill walking and a Target walking task. The approximate center of mass was calculated from pelvis markers. Spearman rank correlations were performed to evaluate the relationship between intramuscular coherence, clinical parameters, and center of mass parameters. In controls, we found that the Target walking task results in increased high-frequency intramuscular coherence, which negatively related to changes in the center of mass movement, whereas this modulation was largely reduced in individuals with iSCI. The impaired modulation of high-frequency intramuscular coherence during the Target walking task correlated with neurophysiological and functional readouts, such as motor-evoked potential amplitude and outdoor mobility score, as well as center of mass trajectory length. The Target walking effect, the difference between Target and Normal walking intramuscular coherence, was significantly higher in controls than in individuals with iSCI [F = 13.042, p < 0.001]. Intramuscular coherence obtained during challenging walking in individuals with iSCI may provide information on corticospinal gait control. The relationships between biomechanics, clinical scores, and neurophysiology suggest that intramuscular coherence assessed during challenging tasks may be meaningful for understanding impaired supra-spinal control in individuals with iSCI. (shrink)

Der Nationalökonom Moritz Julius Bonn (1873-1965) gehörte zu den bekanntesten politischen Intellektuellen seiner Epoche. Bonn fungierte als Gesandter der Reichsregierung in Versailles und auf zahlreichen Konferenzen zur Reparationsfrage. Max Weber und Carl Schmitt haben ihn hoch geschätzt, Harald Laski hielt ihn für den besten Amerika-Kenner seit Toqueville. Erstaunlicherweise hat sich mit seinem Gang ins Exil seine Spur weitgehend verloren. Es ist höchste Zeit, an diesen kosmopolitischen Liberalen und mit ihm an die vergebene Chance der Weimarer Republik zu erinnern. (...) Er stritt für den Parlamentarismus, den demokratischen Rechtsstaat, sozialen Pluralismus, die europäische Aussöhnung und die Zähmung des Kapitalismus. Erstmals sind in diesem Band die wichtigsten Schriften der Weimarer Epoche vereint, darunter auch sein klassischer Essay Die Krisis der europäischen Demokratie, der 1925 zeitgleich in England, den USA, Frankreich und Spanien erschienen war. (shrink)

Viennese Brain Research and the Formation of Austrian Positivism. In this paper, I want to argue that the Vienna School of Medicine and especially the Viennese Brain Anatomy had an impact on the formation of the Austrian positivism. I argue that Carl von Rokitansky's (1804–1878) doctrine that psychological phenomena must be translated into anatomical facts and Theodor Meynert's (1833–1892) theory of brain functions served as one basis for the formation of the Austrian positivism. In this sense, two of the (...) main early positivistic thinkers, Ernst Mach (1838–1916) and Richard Wahle (1857–1935), used Meynert's brain theory to argue for a bundle view of the Self. Friedrich Jodl (1849–1914) also thought about his theory, and even Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) who demanded a ‘reduction of the psychology to the brain physiology’ grappled with this approach. Meynert, a scholar of Rokitansky, the founder of the Vienna School of Medicine, was a leading figure in the history of neurology and has made several significant contributions to this discipline. He argues that the Self does not exist from an anatomical point of view. As Richard Wahle tells us, Meynert's theory of the brain functions was widely accepted under the brain researchers by the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. He makes clear that brain researchers did in common refer to Meynert's theory to explain psychical functions as brain functions. He says from their point of view there was no doubt about it. Mach talks about Meynert's theory in Erkenntnis und Irrtum. There he says that Meynert's brain theory explains the nature and conditions of the consciousness. Michael Hagner argues that Mach's “Das Ich ist unrettbar” is hardly imaginable without the cerebral embedding of the mental functions. (shrink)

An Introduction to Carl Stumpf's influences over other philosophers.

Unter dem Titel "Lebenswelt und Wissenschaft" hat der XXI.

According to an increasingly popular view known as non-doxasticism, religious faith need not include belief, but only some cognitively weaker attitude. This view comes with great promises, as it offers a way for the agnostic to partake in religion. My concern is how such a non-doxastic faith might be understood as a rational attitude. I offer three desiderata for any account of rational, non-doxastic faith. These desiderata are based on general considerations regarding epistemic rationality and on major themes from current (...) literature on the closely related notions of trust and hope. The first desideratum states that faith must be able to meet the demands of reason. The second requires, perhaps surprisingly, that faith should not imply trust. The third requires that faith should imply hope while excluding despair. I show how several prominent accounts of non-doxastic faith, by Lara Buchak, Daniel Howard-Snyder and Daniel McKaughan, all fail to meet at least one of these desiderata. I also suggest that the desiderata should make us prefer a reconstructive methodology. (shrink)

Do the terms “logical positivism” and “logical empiricism” mark a philosophically real and significant distinction? There is, of course, no doubt that the first term designates the group of philosophers known as the Vienna Circle, headed by Moritz Schlick and including Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Philipp Frank, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Friedrich Waismann and others. What is debatable, however, is whether the name “logical positivism” correctly distinguishes their doctrines from related ones called “logical empiricism” that emerged from the Berlin (...) Society for Scientific Philosophy around Hans Reichenbach which included Walter Dubislav, Kurt Grelling, Kurt Lewin and a young Carl Gustav Hempel.1 The .. (shrink)

Scientific indigenous psychologies have been developed mostly in non‐western countries. Indigenous psychologies, seeing mainstream psychology as too western in its cultural foundation, are based on the culture of the society being investigated. In this article I critique the concept of culture used by representative researchers of indigenous psychologies in the English‐language literature and contrast it to current concepts of culture in the social sciences. Furthermore, I argue that the concept of culture used in this literature has implications for the cultural (...) contents that are identified as the culture of a specific society. I also suggest that the political dimensions of what contents of culture are associated with a specific society are not given sufficient attention in this literature. Finally, alternative approaches to culture for the indigenous psychologies are discussed. (shrink)

In a recent issue of The Lancet, the historian Roger Cooter predicted that the field of bioethics will soon die of self-inflicted wounds. “Conspiring against it,” he wrote, “is exposure of the funding of some of its US centres by pharmaceutical companies; exclusion of alternative perspectives from the social sciences; retention of narrow analytical notions of ethics in the face of popular expression and academic respect for the place of emotions; divisions within the discipline ; and collusion with, and appropriation (...) by, clinical medicine.” Cooter's prognosis? “Hardly wet behind the ears, bioethics seems destined for a short lifespan.”. (shrink)

The clash between religious freedom and equality for lesbians and gay men has become a controversial legal issue in the United Kingdom. Increasingly, claims are made that compliance with anti-discrimination norms impacts upon conscientious, faith-based objectors to same-sex sexual acts. This article explores this issue and draws insights from North American case law, where this question has been considered in the context of competing constitutional rights. It raises far-reaching issues concerning the distinction between belief and practice, as well as the (...) role of identity in the public sphere. The author advocates that courts and tribunals should adopt a fact-specific approach which is sensitive to the rights in a particular context, and which focuses upon the values of accommodation, tolerance and mutual respect. (shrink)

The culture concept used in the indigenous psychologies is important since these psychologies aim to be rooted in the local culture of the research participants. Culture is an empirical phenomenon. Thus, the extent to which meaning content is shared in a society, and by what categories of people, is an empirical issue. It should not be solved by default by the use of a culture concept that assumes that all cultural content is shared. The philosophical and pragmatic?political reasons suggested by (...) Hwang and Liu are not convincing enough to change this conclusion. Moreover, irrespective of the cultural concept used, it is imperative that the researcher has empirically informed him/herself about the cultural understanding of the participants in the study. Finally, the indigenous psychologies are not intrinsically allied with the nation state and need to be seen as a part of cross?cultural psychology. (shrink)

A hyperintensional semantics for natural language is proposed which is agnostic about the question of whether propositions are sets of worlds or worlds are sets of propositions. Montague’s theory of intensional senses is replaced by a weaker theory, written in standard classical higher-order logic, of fine-grained senses which are in a many-to-one correspondence with intensions; Montague’s theory can then be recovered from the proposed theory by identifying the type of propositions with the type of sets of worlds and adding an (...) axiom to the effect that each world is the set of propositions which are true there. Senses are compositionally assigned to linguistic expressions by a categorial grammar with only two rule schemas, based on the implicative fragment of intuitionistic linear propositional logic, and a fully explicit grammar fragment is provided that illustrates the compositional assignment of sense to a variety of constructions, including dummy-subject constructions, infinitive complements, predicative adjectives and nominals, raising to subject, ‘tough-movement’, and quantifier scope ambiguities. Notably, the grammar and the derivations that it licenses never make reference to either worlds or to the extensions of senses. (shrink)

Recently, the Pythagoreans have received rather more attention, both in their own right and as part of the developing picture of Presocratic thought, than they received for much of the twentieth century. Thanks to these studies, a new and more complicated picture is emerging. This article refines this picture critically examining Aristotle's claims about Pythagorean influence on Plato, along with the related question of who among early Greek thinkers actually counts as a Pythagorean. It provides a reminder that Aristotle's account (...) of the history of earlier thought is always a history of just a part of the philosophy of his predecessors, and makes clear that the eagerness with which some present-day scholars find Pythagorean influence on later thought may be misplaced. (shrink)

This article investigates what notions of “just health care” are found at three Swedish hospitals among health care personnel and whether these notions are relevant to what priorities are actually made. Fieldwork at all three hospitals and 114 in-depth interviews were conducted. Data have been subject to conceptual and ethical analysis and categorisation. According to our findings, justice is an important idea to health care personnel at the studied hospitals. Two main notions of just health care were found. The main (...) idea was the notion of “equal treatment according to need”, the basic idea being that differences in treatment should be justified by differences in needs. The competing idea that merit should affect the treatment received is occasionally encountered, the idea here being that patients, by acting irresponsibly, may no longer deserve to be treated strictly according to needs. In practice, priorities are made on grounds that only partly comply with the basic idea of justice in health care, as it is understood by staff at the studied hospitals. Exceptions are made due to regional differences, considerations of cost-effectiveness, economic incentives, tradition, the daily patient flow, research, private alternatives, patient influence and favouritism of health care personnel. (shrink)

This paper argues that a fact which constitutes part of a subject’s being justified in adopting an action or a belief at a particular time need not be part of what induced the subject to adopt that action or belief but it must be something to which the subject had immediate access. It argues that similar points hold for justification of the involuntary acquisition of a belief and for the justification of continuing a belief (actively or dispositionally.).

Summary During his prolific career, the German Jewish scientist Franz Boas (Minden, 1858 - New York, 1942) recognized as the founding father of American Cultural Anthropology – maintained assiduous contacts with the European scientific community, in a privileged way with that of the German area. The contribution addresses the Boasian correspondence with the two directors of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, the philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf, and the ethnomusicolo-gist Erich Moritz von Hornbostel. All three were united by a common (...) scientific experimental training and a solid musical education, typical of their Bildungsbu ü rgertum. With them, Boas consistently shared his fieldwork findings regarding music, sound, and language among the Indians of British Columbia: indeed, their epistolary exchanges intertwine epistemological reflections centered on the study of «exotische Musik» in context with technical problems, derived from the use of phonographic recordings and the relative shipments of wax cylinders by Boas to the Phonographic Archive. So far, the critical literature has not paid particular attention to their correspondence, that offer instead a privileged look in observing the birth of Ethnomusicology, at the time still defined as comparative Musicology (vergleichende Musikwissenschaft). Starting from a biographical contextualization and following the micro-history of the scientific and personal relationship of these scientists, the contribution aims to explore the hypothesis that the emerging Ethnomusicology significantly contributed to the definition of Cultural Anthropology as a discipline. In his painstaking research devoted to the Native Indian sounds and languages, Boas observed indeed what happens if a mind is exposed to a new sound, musical or linguistic context; he had therefore to rigorously deal with the phenomena of mishearing, sound-blindness and biasing filter related to the perception of «new sounds». Thanks to his fieldwork, Boas would endorse a relativistic and “in context” approach to perception and mental representations of sounds, fostering his eventual lifelong, hectic concern about a broaden antiracist theory of human mental functions. (shrink)