The paper aims to investigate the effects of corporate social performance (CSP) on bankruptcy likelihood in times of economic upswing. This is important because prior related literature focused on data containing times of economic crises. We measure bankruptcy likelihood with the Altman Z score and CSP with Refinitiv ESG scores. By applying static panel data regressions and instrumental variable regressions on a sample of 6696 US-firm-year observations from 2010 to 2019 our main findings are: (i) In contrast to existing research, (...) the level of firms’ CSP seems to have no (positive) effect on the likelihood of bankruptcy during times of economic upswing. (ii) Increasing a firm’s CSP in times of economic upswing leads to a rise in bankruptcy likelihood. We conclude that the positive effects of CSP on stakeholder relationships fail to materialize in flourishing business environments. The costs of increasing CSP, thus, exceed their immediate positive effects and raise bankruptcy likelihood. However, as they reduce financial default risk in subsequent crises, CSP investments can be seen as a balancing measure. Our findings bear implications for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. (shrink)

Increasing evidence suggests that cognitive-control processes can be configured to optimize either persistence of information processing (by amplifying competition between decision-making alternatives and top-down biasing of this competition) or flexibility (by dampening competition and biasing). We investigated whether high-frequency binaural beats, an auditory illusion suspected to act as a cognitive enhancer, have an impact on cognitive-control configuration. We hypothesized that binaural beats in the gamma range bias the cognitive-control style toward flexibility, which in turn should increase the crosstalk between tasks (...) in a dual-task paradigm. We replicated earlier findings that the reaction time in the first-performed task is sensitive to the compatibility between the responses in the first and the second task—an indication of crosstalk. As predicted, exposing participants to binaural beats in the gamma range increased this effect as compared to a control condition in which participants were exposed to a continuous tone of 340 Hz. These findings provide converging evidence that the cognitive-control style can be systematically biased by inducing particular internal states; that high-frequency binaural beats bias the control style toward more flexibility; and that different styles are implemented by changing the strength of local competition and top-down bias. (shrink)

Social choice rules are often evaluated and compared by inquiring whether they satisfy certain desirable criteria such as the Condorcet criterion, which states that an alternative should always be chosen when more than half of the voters prefer it over any other alternative. Many of these criteria can be formulated in terms of choice sets that single out reasonable alternatives based on the preferences of the voters. In this paper, we consider choice sets whose definition merely relies on the pairwise (...) majority relation. These sets include the Copeland set, the Smith set, the Schwartz set, von Neumann-Morgenstern stable sets, the Banks set, and the Slater set. We investigate the relationships between these sets and completely characterize their computational complexity, which allows us to obtain hardness results for entire classes of social choice rules. (shrink)

BackgroundStress is a major risk factor for the impairment of psychological well-being. The present study aimed to evaluate the empirical evidence of the Transactional Stress Model proposed by Lazarus and Folkman in patients with psychosomatic health conditions.MethodsA structural equation model was applied in two separate subsamples of inpatients from the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine for consecutive model building and confirmatory analyses using self-reported health status information about perceived stress, personal resources, coping mechanisms, stress response, and psychological well-being.ResultsThe initial model was (...) created to reflect the theoretical assumptions by Lazarus and Folkman about their transactional stress concept. This model was modified until a sufficient model fit was reached. The modified model was confirmed in a second sample. Perceived external stressors and personal resources explained 91% of the variance of the stress response, which was closely related to symptoms of depression. The attenuating effect of resources on stress response was higher than the impact of perceived stressors on stress response.ConclusionThe empirical data largely confirmed the theoretical assumption of the Transactional Stress Model, which was first presented by Lazarus and Folkman, in patients with a wide range of psychosomatic conditions. However, data analyses were solely based on self-reported health status. Thus, proposed inner psychological mechanisms such as the appraisal process could not be included in this empirical validation. The operationalization and understanding of coping processes should be further improved. (shrink)

Die Autoren berichten über die erste kontrollierte Psychotherapiestudie, die psychoanalytische und kognitiv-verhaltenstherapeutische Langzeitpsychotherapien mit randomisierter und präferierter Zuweisung mit­einander vergleicht. In vier Behandlungszentren wurden 554 chronisch depressive Patienten interviewt, von denen 252 in die Studie aufgenommen werden konnten. In den Selbsteinschätzungen der Patienten zeigten sich große und stabile Veränderungen. Die vollständige Remissionsrate (für BDI) lag nach einem Jahr bei 34 % und stieg auf 45 % nach drei Jahren. Analoge Ergebnisse zeigten sich in den Einschätzungen der unabhängigen, bezogen auf die (...) Therapieverfahren verblindeten Rater (QIDS). Entgegen ihrer Hypothesen fanden die Autoren aber keinen statistisch signifikanten Unterschied zwischen den Verfahren und auch keine Effektunterschiede zwischen randomisierter Therapiezuweisung und Behandlung mit der präferierten Psychotherapie. Besser als in anderen Studien sind die erzielten Remissionsraten, die zeigten, dass chronisch depressive Patienten von Langzeitpsychotherapien profitieren. (shrink)

Die Frage nach Gott war seit Platon – und verstärkt im Denken Augustins – ein Hauptpunkt des philosophischen Fragens überhaupt. Noch Kant zählte sie zu den »Kardinalsätzen der reinen Vernunft«, zu den Fragen, an denen »die Vernunft ihr größtes Interesse hat«. Martin Heidegger, dessen Denken weithin von der Gottesfrage angeregt ist und um sie kreist, hat dagegen erwogen, »von Gott im Bereich des Denkens zu schweigen« – nicht weil er diese Frage für belanglos hielt, sondern weil das Denken sich für (...) diese Frage erst neu öffnen und vorbereiten müsse. In die von Kant und Heidegger bestimmte Situation hinein hat Emmanuel Levinas ein Denken entfaltet, das – im Wissen um die Schwierigkeiten – einen neuen Zugang zur Gottes- frage eröffnet. Der aus einem Symposion entstandene Band enthält Beiträge von Levinas-Interpreten der ›ersten Stunde‹ (Bernhard Casper, Jean Greisch und Ludwig Wenzler), aber auch Beiträge, die Levinas in Verbindung mit Autoren der abendländischen Philosophie sehen (Johannes Brachtendorf, Norbert Fischer und Eduard Zwierlein), und schließlich Beiträge, die sich der immanenten Auslegung von Aspekten seines Werks zuwenden (Sarah Allen, Reinhold Esterbauer, Branko Klun und Jakub Sirovátka). (shrink)

Krueger, F. Wissenschaften und der zusammenhang des wirklichen; geleitwort.--Buchholz, H. das problem der kontinuität.--Buchholz, h. Die unmöglichkeit absoluter metrischer präzision und die erkenntnistheoretischen konsequenzen dieser unmöglichkeit.--Bergfeld, E. Die axiome der euklidischen geometrie psychologisch und erkenntnistheoretisch untersucht.--Fischer, H. Erlebnis und metaphysik.--Weidauer, F. Zur syllogistik.

What kind of reality is legal reality, how is it created, and what are its a priori foundations? These are the central questions asked by the early phenomenologists who took interest in social ontology and law. While Reinach represents the well-known “realist” approach to phenomenology of law, Felix Kaufmann and Fritz Schreier belonged to the “positivist” “Vienna School of Jurisprudence,” combining Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law with Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology—and thereby challenging Reinach’s views on how legal reality and (...) the legal a priori were to be conceived. This paper addresses the controversy between these positivist and realist approaches to phenomenology of law, with the goal of introducing the lesser known theories of Kaufmann and Schreier. The special focus on their critique of Reinach’s outline should give us an overview of their positions vis-à-vis the basic and a priori elements of which legal reality consists and the role that phenomenology plays in analyzing them. There is one general tendency to be noted: While the phenomenological legal positivists see the root of legal reality in an act of interpretation according to a “normative scheme of interpretation,” Reinach locates the roots of legal reality in social interaction and argues for the existence of entities independent of any interpretation. (shrink)

Meister Eckhart war ein eigenstandiger Denker der abendlandischen Philosophie und Theologie, der als solcher noch nicht wirksam erfasst wurde - was mit den kirchlichen Prozessen und der Rezeption zusammenhangt, die ihn mit mystischen Schwarmereien in Verbindung gebracht hat. Dem "Aufbruch Meister Eckharts ins 21. Jahrhundert" (Georg Steer), den man dennoch erhoffen kann, soll dieser Band dienen. Dazu gehoren die Besinnung auf die grosse abendlandische Tradition (mit Aristoteles, Plotin, Origenes, Dionysius, Augustinus und Thomas von Aquin), Textinterpretationen und die unmittelbare Wirkungsgeschichte (Heinrich (...) Seuse, Nikolaus von Kues, Martin Luther) sowie die denkerische Beziehung zu epochalen Figuren (Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl). Schliesslich erfolgt ein Blick auf die Eckhart-Rezeption durch Rainer Maria Rilke, Martin Heidegger, Karl Rahner, Bernhard Welte und Joachim Kopper und auf die Beziehung zum zen-buddhistischen und konfuzianischen Denken. (shrink)

A number of attempts have been made to conceptualise legal reasoning along falsificationist lines. This paper criticises a recent one by Bernhard Schlink. After familiarising the reader with falsificationism, I argue that falsificationism is premised on an epistemological asymmetry between singular observation statements and universal hypotheses, and that absent such an asymmetry in the context of statutory interpretation, framing jurisprudence in falsificationist terms is unwarranted and misleading. To get off the ground, legal falsificationism would need to combine with some (...) kind of broadly intuitionist moral cognitivism, but even then, it would still misrepresent what is going on in legal reasoning. The arguments in this paper apply mutatis mutandis to all falsificationist theories of legal and ethical reasoning. I point to some by Albert, Canaris and Larenz. (shrink)

Este artigo consiste em uma reflexão cênico-teórica acerca das reverberações artísticas e filosóficas do pensamento imanente em dança em intersecção com o pensamento filosófico de Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari. A Teoria da Dança Imanente sugere uma performance artística em movimento na qual o corpo dialoga consigo para criar uma dança própria, pessoal e subjetiva. Assim, objetiva-se analisar o dispositivo teórico-conceitual da Dança Imanente em aberturas e intersecções performativas que culminam no entrelaçamento entre corpo, arte e filosofia. O procedimento metodológico (...) deu-se em diálogo bibliográfico e artístico, no qual as principais referências teórico-práticas são: Ana Flávia Mendes, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Fischer-Lichte, Zourabichivli, dentre outros. A pesquisa questiona a designação ideal e a iminência em dança propondo a emancipação do criador-performer por vias imanentes. (shrink)

The majority of Kant scholars has taken it for granted that for Kant the soul is in some sense present in space and that this assumption is by and large unproblematic. If we read Kant’s texts in the context of debates on this topic within 18th century rationalism and beyond, a more complex picture emerges, leading to the somewhat surprising conclusion that Kant in 1770 can best be characterised as a Cartesian about the mind. The paper first develops a framework (...) for describing the various positions on the place of the soul in space as varieties of ‘localism’, since German philosophers of the 18th century all agreed on the fact that the soul is in some sense present in space. Strong localists (Crusius, Knutzen) maintain that the soul occupies a place that cannot at the same time be occupied by a material substance. The Königsberg Wolffian Christian Gabriel Fischer is an ‘epistemic localist’ defending the view that our knowledge about the presence of the soul in space is limited. Bilfinger holds that the soul only represents itself as being present in space, he is a ‘representational localist’. The Cartesians, including Leonhard Euler and his teacher Samuel Werenfels, assume that the soul is effective in a region of space without truly being present there. They are ‘virtual localists’. Kant’s attitude towards this problem before the 1760s is a bit unclear. But his writings in this period are at least compatible with the strong localism defended by Knutzen. In the Herder transcripts (1762-1764) and other texts after 1760, Kant begins to distance himself from this view, but he does not articulate clearly his own position. This trend culminates in Dreams of a Spirit Seer (1766), where Kant oscillates somewhat uneasily between epistemic and virtual localism and criticises explicitly the Cartesian thesis that the soul’s presence in the body is limited to a determinate region. The dissertation from 1770 marks another radical change in Kant’s views on the place of the soul. Here, he subscribes to virtual localism and its concomitant thesis that the soul itself is, properly speaking, nowhere. Together with the thesis that the soul knows that it belongs to the mundus intelligibilis this makes Kant in 1770 a Cartesian about the mind. (shrink)

No-lose theorems state that---no matter what the result of an experiment will be---there will be a relevant epistemic gain if the experiment is performed. Here I provide an analysis of such theorems, looking at examples from particle physics. I argue that no-lose theorems indicate the pursuitworthiness of experiments by partially decoupling the expected epistemic gain of an experiment from the ex-ante probability that the primarily intended outcome is achieved. While an experiment's pursuitworthiness typically depends on the ex-ante probability that the (...) intended outcome is realized, this is not the case if there is a no-lose theorem in place. I argue that this works only if (1) the theorem's win condition is attainable with reasonable effort, (2) the theorem's underlying assumptions are plausible, and (3) all potential experimental outcomes are epistemically relevant. I also explore the consequences of no-lose theorems for considerations of scientific pursuitworthiness. First, no-lose theorems can play an important role in assessing the risk associated with investing into a research project. Second, no-lose experiments can enhance scientists' agreement about the pursuitworthiness of experiments. My analysis also shows that no-lose theorems can face a number of limitations in these contexts. (shrink)

Good’s theorem is the apparent platitude that it is always rational to ‘look before you leap’: to gather information before making a decision when doing so is free. We argue that Good’s theorem is not platitudinous and may be false. And we argue that the correct advice is rather to ‘make your act depend on the answer to a question’. Looking before you leap is rational when, but only when, it is a way to do this.

Appropriate as a textbook for graduate courses, _The Evolution and Function of Cognition_ provides a systematic and progressively inclusive integration of the facts and principles of cognitive psychology. It includes contributions of information processing and reaction, and emphasizes historical continuity. In addition, the book shows how evolutionary psychology fits in with the mainstream of thought in psychological theory. _The Evolution and Function of Cognition_ will benefit scholars and researchers interested in the general topics of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science.

Inductive characterizations of the sets of terms, the subset of strongly normalizing terms and normal forms are studied in order to reprove weak and strong normalization for the simply-typed λ-calculus and for an extension by sum types with permutative conversions. The analogous treatment of a new system with generalized applications inspired by generalized elimination rules in natural deduction, advocated by von Plato, shows the flexibility of the approach which does not use the strong computability/candidate style à la Tait and Girard. (...) It is also shown that the extension of the system with permutative conversions by η-rules is still strongly normalizing, and likewise for an extension of the system of generalized applications by a rule of ``immediate simplification''. By introducing an infinitely branching inductive rule the method even extends to Gödel's T. (shrink)

In this reply, I discuss some important issues raised in two commentaries. One relates to the distinction between hate and revenge, which also touches upon the more general problem of the usefulness of distinguishing between various related emotions. I argue that emotion researchers need to define specific emotions carefully in order to be able to examine such emotions without necessarily using emotion words. A second comment focusses on the factors influencing the development of hate over time. The question is whether (...) there is an intrapersonal mechanism leading to an increase or decrease of hate over time. I think it is the social environment that is essential in the maintenance of hate. (shrink)

Humans are complex social beings. To understand human behaviour, an integrated perspective is required - one which considers both what we regularly do and what motivates us. Personality, Values, Culture uses an evolutionary perspective to look at the similarities and differences in personality and values across modern societies. Integrating research on personality and human values into a functional framework that highlights their underlying compatibilities, Fischer describes how personality is shaped by the complex interplay between genes and the environment, both (...) over the course of human evolution and within the lifespan of individuals. He proposes a gene-culture coevolution model of personality and values to explain how and why people differ around the world and how genes, economics, social conditions, and climate jointly shape personality. (shrink)

Vom 3. bis 7. April 1991 fand unter dem Titel »Das Ende der großen Entwürfe und das Blühen systemischer Praxis« in Heidelberg ein interdisziplinärer Kongreß statt, der international bekannten Theoretikern der Kybernetik, Systemtheorie, Systemtherapie und anderer Bereiche Gelegenheit bot, angesichts des Zusammenbruchs vieler großer Entwürfe und einer nie dagewesenen Vielfalt konkurrierender Paradigmen ihre Konzepte und ihre Praxis zu diskutieren. Der vorliegende Band vereinigt die wichtigsten theoretischen Beiträge dieses Kongresses.

A model of an intentional self-observing system is proposed based on the structure and functions of astrocyte-synapse interactions in tripartite synapses. Astrocyte-synapse interactions are cyclically organized and operate via feedforward and feedback mechanisms, formally described by proemial counting. Synaptic, extrasynaptic and astrocyte receptors are interpreted as places with the same or different quality of information processing described by the combinatorics of tritograms. It is hypothesized that receptors on the astrocytic membrane may embody intentional programs that select corresponding synaptic and extrasynaptic (...) receptors for the formation of receptor-receptor complexes. Basically, the act of self-observation is generated if the actual environmental information is appropriate to the intended observation processed by receptor-receptor complexes. This mechanism is implemented for a robot brain enabling the robot to experience environmental information as “its own”. It is suggested that this mechanism enables the robot to generate matches and mismatches between intended observations and the observations in the environment, based on the cyclic organization of the mechanism. In exploring an unknown environment the robot may stepwise construct an observation space, stored in memory, commanded and controlled by the intentional self-observing system. Finally, the role of self-observation in machine consciousness is shortly discussed. (shrink)

The Consequence Argument is one of the leading arguments for the incompatibility of causal determinism and free will in the sense of freedom to do otherwise. Thus, it challenges “classical compatibilism” of the sort defended by many philosophers, such as Hume, Schlick, Ayer, Lehrer, Perry, Lewis, Vihvelin, et, al. David Lewis has offered what has become the most influential response: local-miracle compatibilism. I present a critique of this kind of response to the Consequence Argument. My critique shows that, although Lewis-style (...) local-miracle compatibilism may effectively address some versions of the Consequence Argument, it does not succeed in refuting others. My critique consists, in large part, in arguing for a new reconstruction of the principle of the fixity of the past - a principle that played a crucial role in the history of the debate and that has, in one form or another, been employed by many important historical figures. I will also show why Lewis’s famous views about our powers in time-travel are false. (shrink)

The main item in the present volume was published in 1930 under the title Das Unendliche in der Mathematik und seine Ausschaltung. It was at that time the fullest systematic account from the standpoint of Husserl's phenomenology of what is known as 'finitism' (also as 'intuitionism' and 'constructivism') in mathematics. Since then, important changes have been required in philosophies of mathematics, in part because of Kurt Godel's epoch-making paper of 1931 which established the essential in completeness of arithmetic. In the (...) light of that finding, a number of the claims made in the book (and in the accompanying articles) are demon strably mistaken. Nevertheless, as a whole it retains much of its original interest and value. It presents the issues in the foundations of mathematics that were under debate when it was written (and in some cases still are);, and it offers one alternative to the currently dominant set-theoretical definitions of the cardinal numbers and other arithmetical concepts. While still a student at the University of Vienna, Felix Kaufmann was greatly impressed by the early philosophical writings (especially by the Logische Untersuchungen) of Edmund Husser!' He was never an uncritical disciple of Husserl, and he integrated into his mature philosophy ideas from a wide assortment of intellectual sources. But he thought of himself as a phenomenologist, and made frequent use in all his major publications of many of Husserl's logical and epistemological theses. (shrink)

There is a surprising consensus among vegan philosophers that freeganism—eating animal-based foods going to waste—is permissible. Some ethicists even argue that vegans should be freegans. In this paper, we offer a novel challenge to freeganism drawing upon Donaldson and Kymlicka’s ‘zoopolitical’ approach, which supports ‘restricted freeganism’. On this position, it’s prima facie wrong to eat the corpses of domesticated animals, as they are members of a mixed human-animal community, ruling out many freegan practices. This exploration reveals how the ‘political turn’ (...) in animal ethics can offer fertile lenses through which to consider ethical puzzles about eating animals. (shrink)

Religions commonly are taken to provide general orientation in leading one's life. We develop here the idea that religions also may have a much more concrete guidance function in providing systematic decision biases in the face of cognitive-control dilemmas. In particular, we assume that the selective reward that religious belief systems provide for rule-conforming behavior induces systematic biases in cognitive-control parameters that are functional in producing the wanted behavior. These biases serve as default values under uncertainty and affect performance in (...) any task that shares cognitive-control operations with the religiously motivated rule-conforming behavior the biases were originally developed for. Such biases therefore can be unraveled and objectified by means of rather simple tasks that are relatively well understood with regard to the cognitive mechanisms they draw on. (shrink)

It is being increasingly recognized that the Saussurean dictum of “the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign” is in conflict with the pervasiveness of the phenomenon commonly known as “sound symbolism”. After first presenting a historical overview of the debate, however, we conclude that both positions have been exaggerated, and that an adequate explanation of sound symbolism is still lacking. How can there, for example, be (perceived) similarity between expressionsand contents across different sensory modalities? We offer an answer, based on the (...) Peircian notion of iconic ground, and G. Sonesson’s distinction betweenprimary and secondary iconicity. Furthermore, we describe an experimental study, in a paradigm first pioneered by W. Kohler, and recently popularized by V.Ramachandran, in which we varied vowels and consonants in fictive word-forms, and conclude that both types of sounds play a role in perceiving an iconic ground between the word-forms and visual figures. The combination of historical conceptual analysis, semiotic explication and psychological experimentationpresented in this article is characteristic of the emerging paradigm of cognitive semiotics. (shrink)