Sensory processing dysfunction is characterized by a behaviorally observed difference in the response to sensory information from the environment. While the cerebellum is involved in normal sensory processing, it has not yet been examined in SPD. Diffusion tensor imaging scans of children with SPD and typically developing controls were compared for fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity, and axial diffusivity across the following cerebellar tracts: the middle cerebellar peduncles, superior cerebellar peduncles, and cerebral peduncles. Compared to TDC, children with SPD (...) show reduced microstructural integrity of the SCP and MCP, characterized by reduced FA and increased MD and RD, which correlates with abnormal auditory behavior, multisensory integration, and attention, but not tactile behavior or direct measures of auditory discrimination. In contradistinction, decreased CP microstructural integrity in SPD correlates with abnormal tactile and auditory behavior and direct measures of auditory discrimination, but not multisensory integration or attention. Hence, altered cerebellar white matter organization is associated with complex sensory behavior and attention in SPD, which prompts further consideration of diagnostic measures and treatments to better serve affected individuals. (shrink)

Dispositions and tendencies feature significantly in the biomedical domain and therefore in representations of knowledge of that domain. They are not only important for specific applications like an infectious disease ontology, but also as part of a general strategy for modelling knowledge about molecular interactions. But the task of representing dispositions in some formal ontological systems is fraught with several problems, which are partly due to the fact that Description Logics can only deal well with binary relations. The paper will (...) discuss some of the results of the philosophical debate about dispositions, in order to see whether the formal relations needed to represent dispositions can be broken down to binary relations. Finally, we will discuss problems arising from the possibility of the absence of realizations, of multi-track or multi-trigger dispositions and offer suggestions on how to deal with them. (shrink)

Normativität hat in den Sozialwissenschaften noch immer etwas Anrüchiges, fast Abschreckendes. Es gibt eine lange Traditionslinie in den Sozialwissenschaften, die versucht, ihre Disziplin gegenüber normativen Argumenten „sauber“ zu halten. Das wird in der Regel damit begründet, dass im wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisprozess Gesinnungsmotive nicht hilfreich sind und im Extremfall Ergebnisse verzerren. Befürworter normativer Sozialwissenschaften halten dagegen, dass die fehlende Thematisierung etwa von sozialen Ungleichheits- und Herrschaftsverhältnissen die Welt, so wie sie gerade ist, einmal mehr bestätigt – und das ist eben auch nicht (...) normfrei und kann es auch nicht sein, weil, so eine zentrale These des vorliegenden Bandes, Theorien notwendig mit normativen Bezügen behaftet sind. Damit ist das Spektrum der Positionen angedeutet, die in diesem Sammelband zu finden sind. Er hat einerseits das Ziel, normative Verwicklungen auch in den sozialwissenschaftlichen Ansätzen aufzuspüren, die stärker auf die Idee einer wertfreien Wissenschaft verpflichtet sind. Andererseits werden Ansätze, die explizit herrschaftskritische Positionen vertreten, auf die Plausibilität ihrer normativen Setzungen hin überprüft. Die normativen Hintergründe sozialwissenschaftlicher Theoriebildung aufzuzeigen und eine Debatte über die normativen Bezüge der Sozialwissenschaften anzuregen ist das Anliegen dieses Bandes. (shrink)

Considered together, Butler and Whitehead draw from a wide palette of disciplines to develop distinctive theories of becoming, of syntactical violence, and creative opportunities of limitation. The contributors of this volume offer a unique contribution to and for the humanities in the struggles of politics, economy, ecology, and the arts.

Immunological mechanisms and therapy approaches in psychotic syndromes were recently supported by the discovery of autoantibody-associated limbic and non-limbic encephalitis. However, how clinical diagnostic procedures in psychiatry should be adapted to these new insights is still unclear. In this study, we analyzed the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and neuroimmunological alterations and their association with cerebral MRI (cMRI) and electroencephalographic (EEG) findings. From 2006 until 2013, we acquired 180 CSF samples from psychotic patients. Between 2006 and 2009, CSF examinations were only performed (...) in cases in which organic brain disease was suspected. Since then, this procedure has been integrated into our routine diagnostic workup. CSF basic diagnostics were supplemented by measuring antineuronal antibodies against intracellular synaptic antigens, antibodies against intracellular onconeural antigens, antibodies against neuronal cell surface antigens and thyroid antibodies. In addition, cMRIs and EEGs were conducted. We found white cell counts elevated in 3.4% of the cases, albumin quotient elevated in 21.8%, and protein concentration elevated in 42.2%. Evidence of intrathecal immunoglobulin synthesis was found in 7.2% of the cases. Antibodies measured against neuronal cell surface antigens were positive in 3.2%. Reactivity on antibodies against intracellular onconeural antigens were detected in 3.5%. Serum thyroid antibodies were elevated in 24.7%. Abnormalities were found in 39.5% of cMRIs and in 34.3% of EEGs. The main finding of our study was the high prevalence of CSF and autoantibody abnormalities in 54.4% of psychotic patients. In combination with cMRIs and EEGs, 75.6% showed abnormal findings. Our results are discussed with regard to the concept of immunological encephalopathy. Future studies should analyze the efficacy of immunomodulatory therapies. (shrink)

Currently, there is not yet a full-fledged philosophical sub-discipline devoted to artifacts. In order to establish such a general philosophical discourse on artifacts, two topics are of special importance: artifact functionality and artifact categorization. Both are central to the question of what artifacts are in general and in particular. This introduction first presents the current state of the art in the debates on functions, both in general and in the domain of artifacts in particular. It then unfolds the three debates (...) relevant for artifact kinds, namely the ontological, epistemological and semantic debates on artifact categorization, and presents the most important theory options currently under scrutiny in these fields. It proceeds by introducing the contributions in this special issue on the functions and kinds of art works and other artifacts, and discusses possible perspectives for a general philosophy of artifacts. (shrink)

The concept of a function is central both to biology and to technology. But there is an intricate debate how functions as well as related entities like dispositions and roles are to be represented in top level ontologies and how they are to be related. We review important philosophical accounts and ontological models for functions and roles and discuss three models for the relation of functions and dispositions. We conclude that mainly because of the need to account for malfunctioning, functions (...) should not be treated as a subtype of dispositions, but as their sibling category. (shrink)

Among the various approaches to the question of the nature of the mind , Augustine’s philosophical arguments for the existence of an incorporeal and spiritual substance in man and against materialism are here thoroughly examined on their merits as a source of insight for contemporary discussion. This book, originally published in 1986, employs Augustine’s method of introspection, and argues that, as a philosopher, Augustine can teach the modern mind how to detect the reality of such a spiritual subject in and (...) through basic human acts and faculties, such as imagination, memory, knowledge, free-will and self-knowledge. It presents a critical dialogue with various materialistic anthropologies directly addressed by Augustine himself, or those which have arisen at later periods, including epiphenomenalism, mind-brain identity theory, Marxism and others. (shrink)

The 2013 Rostock Symposium on Systems Biology and Bioinformatics in Aging Research was again dedicated to dissecting the aging process using in silico means. A particular focus was on ontologies, as these are a key technology to systematically integrate heterogeneous information about the aging process. Related topics were databases and data integration. Other talks tackled modeling issues and applications, the latter including talks focussed on marker development and cellular stress as well as on diseases, in particular on diseases of kidney (...) and skin. (shrink)

As occupational health management (OHM) and work health promotion (WHP) become increasingly prominent in companies worldwide, little is known about consumers' attitudes towards work health‐related issues. Do consumers consider the health of employees in German companies to be important? Do German companies consider consumers to be relevant stakeholders in voluntary occupational health (OH) and well‐being activities? In the first of two qualitative interview studies, German consumers were asked which actors they consider to be responsible in OH contexts and whether or (...) not they prefer OH‐related product attributes to other socially desirable ones. During a second qualitative interview study with representatives from German companies, suppliers, institutions, and organizations concerned with voluntary and legally mandatory OH, participants were asked about their expectations regarding whether or not consumers are interested in such OH activities. Both studies highlight the difference between the consumers' perspective on OH issues and responsibilities on the one hand and what companies and stakeholders believe consumers think about OH issues and responsibilities on the other. The findings show that consumers can recognize non‐mandatory OH and well‐being activities as elements of their own social responsibility (ConSR), while companies usually do not consider this perspective in their corporate social responsibility (CSR). (shrink)

'Standstill' could be the name for the exact kind of experience that is the hiatus between social expectations and real possibilities of agency. Standstill may also be the name of an aesthetic strategy to instill a non-linear time of resistance and experience into the political protocol of progress. Finally, standstill can be the name for the temporal fissure in the midst of the subject, for the lapse between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of a statement, the limit (...) that is the border between the inside and the outside. It can be the name for the mode of potentiality, for the moment of gesture, or, with Walter Benjamin, the medium of the dialectical image. The essays of this book transverse these dimensions of standstill as an in-between of time. The book includes essays by Georges Didi-Huberman, David Lapoujade, Peter Osborne, Jacques Rancière, Christine Ross, and others as well as conversations with Via Lewandowsky, Aernout Mik and Marcel Odenbach." -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Collaborative consumption activities like saving food and buying used clothes are an important and rapidly growing part of sustainable consumer behavior. Many political and commercial campaigns promote collaborative consumption practices by highlighting subsets of normative motives, such as sustainable, social, and ecological effects. Whether or not consumers can comprehend these claims and incorporate them into their decision-making process is, however, unclear. This article introduces a new experimental study design to ethical consumer research—an adapted version of the Defining Issues Test—that enables (...) to assess consumers’ ability to cognitively and intuitively understand moral arguments in collaborative consumption contexts. The experiment was conducted with N = 435 collaborative consumers from Germany. The findings indicate that in different collaborative consumption contexts, consumers consider different moral arguments as important. Furthermore, the findings also indicate that consumers can incorporate the provider’s point of view in their moral judgment. (shrink)

Statements about the behavior of biological entities, e.g. about the interaction between two proteins, abound in the literature on molecular biology and are increasingly becoming the targets of information extraction and text mining techniques. We show that an accurate analysis of the semantics of such statements reveals a number of ambiguities that is necessary to take into account in the practice of biomedical ontology engineering. Several concurring formalizations are proposed. Emphasis is laid on the discussion of biological dispositions.

Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary effort to understand the structures and functions of the brain and brain-mind relations. This effort results in an increasing amount of data, generated by sophisticated technologies. However, these data enhance our descriptive knowledge, rather than improve our understanding of brain functions. This is caused by methodological gaps both within and between subdisciplines constituting neuroscience, and the atomistic approach that limits the study of macro- and mesoscopic issues. Whole-brain measurement technologies do not resolve these issues, but rather (...) aggravate them by the complexity problem. The present article is devoted to methodological and epistemic problems that obstruct the development of human neuroscience. We neither discuss ontological questions nor review data, except when it is necessary to demonstrate a methodological issue. As regards intradisciplinary methodological problems, we concentrate on those within neurobiology and psychology. As regards interdisciplinary problems, we suggest that core disciplines of neuroscience can be integrated using systemic concepts that also entail human-environment relations. We emphasize the necessity of a meta-discussion that should entail a closer cooperation with philosophy as a discipline of systematic reflection. The atomistic reduction should be complemented by the explicit consideration of the embodiedness of the brain and the embeddedness of humans. The discussion is aimed at the development of an explicit methodology of integrative human neuroscience, which will not only link different fields and levels, but also help in understanding clinical phenomena. (shrink)

Companies increasingly offer their employees the opportunity to participate in voluntary Workplace Health Promotion programmes. Although such programmes have come into focus through national and regional regulation throughout much of the Western world, their ethical implications remain largely unexamined. This article maps the territory of the ethical issues that have arisen in relation to voluntary health promotion in the workplace against the background of asymmetric relationships between employers and employees. It addresses questions of autonomy and voluntariness, discrimination and distributive justice, (...) as well as privacy and responsibility. Following this analysis, we highlight the inadequacy of currently established ethical frameworks to sufficiently cover all aspects of workplace health promotion. Thus, we recommend the consideration of principles from all such frameworks in combination, in a joint reflection of an Ethics of Workplace Health Promotion. (shrink)

The contributions to this collection deal with the fundamental problem of unity, which plays a decisive role in many contemporary debates (even when this role ...

This literature review systematically synthesizes studies that link consumer research to differences and similarities in virtue ethics between the East and the West, with a focus on early Chinese and ancient Greek virtue ethics. These two major traditions provide principles that guide consumer behavior and thus serve as a background to comparatively explain and evaluate the ethical nature of consumer behavior in the East and the West. The paper first covers Eastern and Western theoretical and normative approaches of virtue ethics (...) in the field of consumer research. The subsequent systematic literature review then synthesizes empirical works in this field. Since only a few papers adopt a cross-cultural consumer research perspective, one of the main aims of this review is to encourage scholars to pursue both theoretical and empirical cross-cultural consumer research on virtue ethics. To this end, the paper closes by suggesting some fruitful directions for future research to stimulate this relatively under-researched area. (shrink)

Face perception and emotion categorization are widely investigated under laboratory conditions that are devoid of real social interaction. Using mobile eye-tracking glasses in a standardized diagnostic setting while applying the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2), we had the opportunity to record gaze behavior of children and adolescents with and without Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASCs) during social interaction. The objective was to investigate differences in eye-gaze behavior between three groups of children and adolescents either (1) with ASC or (2) with unconfirmed (...) diagnosis of ASC or (3) with neurotypical development (NTD) during social interaction with an adult interviewer in a diagnostic standard situation using the ADOS-2. In a case control study, we used mobile eye-tracking glasses in an ecologically valid and highly standardized diagnostic interview to investigate suspected cases of ASC. After completion of the ASC diagnostic gold standard including the ADOS-2, the participants were assigned to two groups based on their diagnosis (ASC vs. non-ASC) and compared with a matched group of neurotypically developed controls. The primary outcome measure is the percentage of total dwell times assessed for different areas of interest (AOI) with regard to the face and body of a diagnostic interviewer and the surrounding space. Overall, 65 children and adolescents within an age range of 8.3–17.9 years were included in the study. The data revealed significant group differences, especially in the central-face area. Previous investigations under laboratory conditions gave preferential attention to the eye region during face perception to describe differences between ASC and NTD. In this study – using an ecologically valid setting within a standard diagnostic procedure – the results indicate that neurotypically developed controls seem to process faces and facial expressions in a holistic manner originating from the central-face region. Conversely, participants on the Autism Spectrum (tAS) seem to avoid the central-face region and show unsystematic gaze behavior, not using the preferred landing position in the central-face region as the Archimedean point of face perception. This study uses a new approach, and it will be important to replicate these preliminary findings in future research. (shrink)

Being an "untimely review", this paper reviews Aristotle's 'Categories' as if they were published today, in the era of computerised information, where categorisation becomes more and more essential for information retrieval. I suggest a systematic ordering of Aristotle's list of categories and argue that Aristotle's discussion of ontological dependency and his focus on concrete entities are still a source of new insight and can indeed be read as a contribution to the emerging field of applied ontology and ontological engineering.

The essays in this collection have been written for Gerd Buchdahl, by colleagues, students and friends, and are self-standing pieces of original research which have as their main concern the metaphysics and philosophy of science of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They focus on issues about the development of philosophical and scientific thought which are raised by or in the work of such as Bernoulli, Descartes, Galileo, Kant, Leibniz, Maclaurin, Priestly, Schelling, Vico. Apart from the initial bio-bibliographical piece and those (...) by Robert Butts and Michael Power, they do not discuss Buchdahl or his ideas in any systematic, lengthy, or detailed way. But they are collected under a title which alludes to the book, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science: The Classical Origins, Descartes to Kant (1969), which is central in the corpus of his work, and deal with the period and some of the topics with which that book deals. (shrink)

Band 1. Paradigmen personaler Identität -- Band 2. Soziale Gruppen und Identitätspraktiken.

_Religion, War and the Crisis of Modernity: A Special Issue Dedicated to the Philosophy of Jan Patočka_ _The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy_ provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer. Contributors: Ivan Chvatík, Nicolas de Warren, James Dodd, Eddo Evink, Ludger Hagedorn, Jean-Luc Marion, Claire Perryman-Holt, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Michael Staudigl, Christian (...) Sternad, and Ľubica Učník. (shrink)

In cognitive science, long-term anticipation, such as when planning to do something next year, is typically seen as a form of ‘higher’ cognition, requiring a different account than the more basic activities that can be understood in terms of responsiveness to ‘affordances,’ i.e. to possibilities for action. Starting from architects that anticipate the possibility to make an architectural installation over the course of many months, in this paper we develop a process-based account of affordances that includes long-term anticipation within its (...) scope. We present a framework in which situations and their affordances unfold, and can be thought of as continuing a history of practices into a current situational activity. In this activity affordances invite skilled participants to act further. Via these invitations one situation develops into the other; an unfolding process that sets up the conditions for its own continuation. Central to our process account of affordances is the idea that engaged individuals can be responsive to the direction of the process to which their actions contribute. Anticipation, at any temporal scale, is then part and parcel of keeping attuned to the movement of the unfolding situations to which an individual contributes. We concretize our account by returning to the example of anticipation observed in architectural practice. This account of anticipation opens the door to considering a wide array of human activities traditionally characterized as ‘higher’ cognition in terms of engaging with affordances. (shrink)

In order to develop the ontology of tendencies for use in the representation of medical knowledge, tendencies are compared with other kinds of entities possessing the realizable-realization structure, specifically: dispositions, propensities, abilities and virtues. The peculiarities of tendencies are discussed and a standard schema of tendency ascription is developed in order to represent the relations between the ascriptions of tendency tokens to particulars and the ascriptions of tendency types to universals. Two nonstandard cases and their epistemic variants are discussed.

After a short sketch of Lowe’s account of his four basic categories, I discuss his theory of formal ontological relations and how Lowe wants to account for dispositional predications. I argue that on the ontic level Lowe is a pan-categoricalist, while he is a language dualist and an exemplification dualist with regard to the dispositional/categorical distinction. I argue that Lowe does not present an adequate account of disposition. From an Aristotelian point of view, Lowe conflates dispositional predication with hôs epi (...) to poly statements about what is normally or mostly the case. (shrink)