Advancements in computing, instrumentation, robotics, digital imaging, and simulation modeling have changed science into a technology-driven institution. Government, industry, and society increasingly exert their influence over science, raising questions of values and objectivity. These and other profound changes have led many to speculate that we are in the midst of an epochal break in scientific history. -/- This edited volume presents an in-depth examination of these issues from philosophical, historical, social, and cultural perspectives. It offers arguments both for and against (...) the epochal break thesis in light of historical antecedents. Contributors discuss topics such as: science as a continuing epistemological enterprise; the decline of the individual scientist and the rise of communities; the intertwining of scientific and technological needs; links to prior practices and ways of thinking; the alleged divide between mode-1 and mode-2 research methods; the commodification of university science; and the shift from the scientific to a technological enterprise. Additionally, they examine the epochal break thesis using specific examples, including the transition from laboratory to real world experiments; the increased reliance on computer imaging; how analog and digital technologies condition behaviors that shape the object and beholder; the cultural significance of humanoid robots; the erosion of scientific quality in experimentation; and the effect of computers on prediction at the expense of explanation. -/- Whether these events represent a historic break in scientific theory, practice, and methodology is disputed. What they do offer is an important occasion for philosophical analysis of the epistemic, institutional and moral questions affecting current and future scientific pursuits. (shrink)

Describing actions entails that relations between objects are discovered. A pervasively neural account of this process requires that fundamental problems are solved: the neural pointer problem, the binding problem, and the problem of generating discrete processing steps from time-continuous neural processes. We present a prototypical solution to these problems in a neural dynamic model that comprises dynamic neural fields holding representations close to sensorimotor surfaces as well as dynamic neural nodes holding discrete, language-like representations. Making the connection between these two (...) types of representations enables the model to describe actions as well as to perceptually ground movement phrases—all based on real visual input. We demonstrate how the dynamic neural processes autonomously generate the processing steps required to describe or ground object-oriented actions. By solving the fundamental problems of neural pointing, binding, and emergent discrete processing, the model may be a first but critical step toward a systematic neural processing account of higher cognition. (shrink)

The book explores two radical changes of cultural and social paradigm that determined the World after 1945 - Modernism and Postmodernism. From the cataclysmic atmosphere emerged the second wave of Modernism. In art this attitude was manifested in the form of a radical break with the aesthetic and stylistic characteristics of prior generations. In architecture the International Style was born, meanwhile similar "universality" was also a characteristic of musical serialism. From the beginning of the 1970s the wheels again began to (...) turn in the other direction. The powerful destructive will of modernism increasingly waivered, and the period after modernism - postmodernism - began. The book answers questions related to the reasons for these turnarounds, their consequences and their implications. (shrink)

Some pejoratives are slurs—they target people on the basis of protected characteristics. Other pejoratives are what we can call “cognitive-behavioural pejoratives”: they target contemptible conduct or character, not protected characteristics. These two classes of pejoratives are semantically similar, yet the ethical profiles of their use are radically different. There is an Estonian pejorative that targets people on the basis of a mixture of ethnicity (approximately: Russian) and a cognitive-behavioural trait (approximately: chauvinism). What is the ethical status of the use of (...) such a word: a word that combines properties of ethically very different pejoratives? This paper draws upon interviews with members of the ethnic group that the word’s usage is associated with, and members of the ethnic group targeted by the word, to better understand the laudability and criticizability of various some uses of the pejorative. We defend the view that the pejorative had some plausibly laudable uses during the period when Estonia was annexed by Soviet Russia, and that (even these) uses of the pejorative are in principle susceptible to faults that, when they arise, make use of the word criticizable. (shrink)

This collection of essays by Gregor Sebba (1905-1985) reflects the curiosity and insight of his mind. The range of topics is wide, including philosophy and the history of ideas, literature and art; yet there is a single underlying theme - human creativity and the search for truth - pursued along paths as diverse as Greek tragedy, Eric Voegelin's concept of order in history, and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and T.S.Eliot.

Standard citation-based bibliometric tools have severe limitations when they are applied to periods in the history of science and the humanities before the advent of now-current citation practices. This paper presents an alternative method involving the extracting and analysis of mentions to map and analyze links between scholars and texts in periods that fall outside the scope of citation-based studies. Focusing on one specific discipline in one particular period and language area—Anglophone philosophy between 1890 and 1979—we describe a procedure to (...) create a mention index by identifying, extracting, and disambiguating mentions in academic publications. Our mention index includes 1,095,765 mention links, extracted from 22,977 articles published in 12 journals. We successfully link 93% of these mentions to specific philosophers, with an estimated precision of 82% to 91%. Moreover, we integrate the mention index into a database named EDHIPHY, which includes data and metadata from multiple sources and enables multidimensional mention analyses. In the final part of the paper, we present four case studies conducted by domain experts, demonstrating the use and the potential of both EDHIPHY and mention analyses more generally. (shrink)

Infinite time register machines (ITRMs) are register machines which act on natural numbers and which are allowed to run for arbitrarily many ordinal steps. Successor steps are determined by standard register machine commands. At limit times register contents are defined by appropriate limit operations. In this paper, we examine the ITRMs introduced by the third and fourth author (Koepke and Miller in Logic and Theory of Algorithms LNCS, pp. 306–315, 2008), where a register content at a limit time is set (...) to the lim inf of previous register contents if that limit is finite; otherwise the register is reset to 0. The theory of these machines has several similarities to the infinite time Turing machines (ITTMs) of Hamkins and Lewis. The machines can decide all ${\Pi^1_1}$ sets, yet are strictly weaker than ITTMs. As in the ITTM situation, we introduce a notion of ITRM-clockable ordinals corresponding to the running times of computations. These form a transitive initial segment of the ordinals. Furthermore we prove a Lost Melody theorem: there is a real r such that there is a program P that halts on the empty input for all oracle contents and outputs 1 iff the oracle number is r, but no program can decide for every natural number n whether or not ${n \in r}$ with the empty oracle. In an earlier paper, the third author considered another type of machines where registers were not reset at infinite lim inf’s and he called them infinite time register machines. Because the resetting machines correspond much better to ITTMs we hold that in future the resetting register machines should be called ITRMs. (shrink)

This article aims to adapt to Spanish the Relational Needs Satisfaction Scale and to test the factor structure with a clinical and a non-clinical sample. A total of 459 individuals completed the RNSS, a measure of life satisfaction and of psychological wellbeing. Results showed that the translation was adequate. An exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted followed by the test of three models that confirmed the five-factor structure and the second-order global factor proposed in the original study, and in (...) adaptations to other languages. The advantages and disadvantages of these models are discussed. Correlations of the RNSS with life satisfaction and psychological wellbeing measures were in the expected direction, providing evidence of convergent validity. The Spanish version of the RNSS is a valid and reliable measure of the construct it was intended to measure, though some improvements in item wording could be incorporated and tested. (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)

Relations occur on all levels of systems. Following a major assumption of generalized quantum theory, namely that the principles of quantum mechanics will occur on higher system levels as well, it was investigated in an a posteriori analysis of pre-existing data whether relational patterns found for two-photon experiments are similarly performed by two cell-populations. In particular, the typical pattern in outcomes of two-photon entanglement experiments was extrapolated to discover similar patterns of relationships in the cellular biological system of the Ciliate (...) Paramecium caudatum. In the former case we find one photon assuming a particular state when being measured and the other assuming a correlated state with regard to the first particle. From a perspective of degrees of freedom (df) the author interprets this outcome as follows: Each particle has only one df for assuming a particular state (e.g. its spin). When measured this is leading to a pattern: They use their two degrees of freedom for establishing a relation among them (particle-to-particle) and for a relation with the environment (particle-to-measurement). If this pattern is unique then we should find it also in cell-to-cell relationships. It was suggested to consider causations in cell-to-cell relations as the analogue to the relationship between the quantum particles (see above) and the dependence of repeating the experiments as the analogue to the measurement event in the quantum experiment. It was hypothesized that in a relational system of two cell populations only one should be sensitive to the repetition of the experiment. The other population, however, should establish a relation with the first one. Since the author had successfully performed experiments with pairs of cell populations that were separated with glass barriers from each other but having effects on each other (Fels in PLoS One 4:e5086, 2009), the system was perfectly well suited for testing the hypothesis. The assessed cell variable was cell division. An a posteriori analysis of three similar experiments confirmed that when populations were in a relation with each other, only one of them stood in relation with the repetition of the experiment. (shrink)

Was ist Natur oder was könnte sie sein? Diese und weitere Fragen sind grundlegend für Naturdenken und -handeln. Das Lehr- und Studienbuch bietet eine historisch-systematische und zugleich praxisbezogene Einführung in die Naturphilosophie mit ihren wichtigsten Begriffen. Es nimmt den pluralen Charakter der Wahrnehmung von Natur in den philosophischen Blick und ist auch zum Selbststudium bestens geeignet.

Does motor behavior early in development have the same signatures of habituation, dishabituation, and Spencer-Thompson dishabituation known from infant perception and cognition? And do these signatures explain the choice preferences in A not B motor decision tasks? We provide new empirical evidence that gives an affirmative answer to the first question together with a unified neural dynamic model that gives an affirmative answer to the second question.In the perceptual and cognitive domains, habituation is the weakening of an orientation response to (...) a stimulus over perceptual experience. Switching to a novel stimulus leads to dishabituation, the re-establishment of the orientation response. In Spencer-Thompson dishabituation, the renewed orientation response transfers to the original stimulus. The change in orientation responses over perceptual experience explains infants' behavior in preferential looking tasks: Familiarity preference early during exposure and novelty preference late during exposure. In the motor domain, perseveration in the A not B task could be interpreted as a form of familiarity preference. There are hints that this preference reverses after enough experience with the familiar movement. We provide a unified account for habituation and patterns of preferential selection in which neural dynamic fields generate perceptual or motor representations. The build-up of activation in excitatory fields leads to familiarity preference, the build-up of activation in inhibitory fields leads to novelty preference. We show that the model accounts for the new experimental evidence for motor habituation, but is also compatible with earlier accounts for perceptual habituation and motor perseveration. We discuss how excitatory and inhibitory memory traces may regulate exploration and exploitation for both orientation to objects and motor behaviors. (shrink)

How does the human brain link relational concepts to perceptual experience? For example, a speaker may say “the cup to the left of the computer” to direct the listener's attention to one of two cups on a desk. We provide a neural dynamic account for both perceptual grounding, in which relational concepts enable the attentional selection of objects in the visual array, and for the generation of descriptions of the visual array using relational concepts. In the model, activation in neural (...) populations evolves dynamically under the influence of both inputs and strong interaction as formalized in dynamic field theory. Relational concepts are modeled as patterns of connectivity to perceptual representations. These generalize across the visual array through active coordinate transforms that center the representation of target objects in potential reference objects. How the model perceptually grounds or generates relational descriptions is probed in 104 simulations that systematically vary the spatial and movement relations employed, the number of feature dimensions used, and the number of matching and nonmatching objects. We explain how sequences of decisions emerge from the time‐ and state‐continuous neural dynamics, how relational hypotheses are generated and either accepted or rejected, followed by the selection of new objects or the generation of new relational hypotheses. Its neural realism distinguishes the model from information processing accounts, its capacity to autonomously generate sequences of processing steps distinguishes it from deep neural network accounts. The model points toward a neural dynamic theory of higher cognition. (shrink)

Its author was a Carthusian monk. Offered here is a translation, with annotation and an important introduction, of the four books on natural philosophy, the predecessor of modern science.

Wie ist es philosophisch zu erklären, dass Menschen frei und selbstbestimmt Entscheidungen treffen, die durch das klassische Begründungsmuster der Eigennützlichkeit und Selbsterhaltung unverständlich bleiben? Der Autor rekonstruiert und erweitert mit seiner neuartigen Konzeption - der autoeidetischen Struktur - Möglichkeitsbedingungen der praktischen Vernunft. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die eigene Existenz. Das Streben nach Selbsttreue bedingt das Wollen des Gesollten. Urteil und Praxis werden hierdurch nachvollziehbar zu Bedingungen gelingenden Lebens."--Publisher's website.

Die Pluralität theologischer Denkansätze wurde in jüngster Zeit mit einem Exklusivitätsanspruch von Teilen Analytischer Theologie konfrontiert. Vertreter*innen 'kontinentaler' Theologie sehen sich dadurch zu einem Metadiskurs über die Frage herausgefordert, wie Theologie heute grundsätzlich zu formatieren ist. In diesem Band treten Positionen zum ersten Mal in einen direkten argumentativen Austausch.

Gregor Betz explores the following questions: Where are the limits of economics, in particular the limits of economic foreknowledge? Are macroeconomic forecasts credible predictions or mere prophecies and what would this imply for the way economic policy decisions are taken? Is rational economic decision making possible without forecasting at all?

We give a construction of the square principle by means of forcing with finite conditions.

Wo Meinungen aufeinanderprallen, um Verständnis geworben und Überzeugungsarbeit geleistet wird, sind Begründungen nicht weit. Für jede Überzeugung gibt es immer ein, zwei Gründe, die mit Gegengründen konfrontiert und, im Gegenzug, mit weiteren Überlegungen verteidigt werden usw. usf. Schnell sind wir verwirrt und drohen, ohne uns der "Grammatikregeln" vernünftigen Argumentierens zu besinnen, nicht mehr durchzublicken. Die Theorie dialektischer Strukturen leistet einen Beitrag zur Grammatik vernünftigen Argumentierens. Sie stellt Begriffe und Verfahren bereit, um Fragen, die sich angesichts einer komplexen Argumentation stellen können, (...) zu beantworten: Wie beziehen sich die einzelnen Argumente der Debatte aufeinander? Welche Positionen vertreten die verschiedenen Proponenten, und wie lassen sich diese bewerten? Wie gut ist die zentrale These der Kontroverse alles in allem begründet? Ist die und die Argumentationshandlung angesichts des Debattenstandes tatsächlich zweckmäßig und rational? Liegt hier eine zirkuläre - und damit fehlerhafte - Argumentation vor? Die klassische Logik, die sogenannte informal logic und argumentationstheoretische Ansätze der Künstlichen Intelligenz bilden Anknüpfungspunkte der Theorie dialektischer Strukturen. Exemplarisch werden die entwickelten argumentationstheoretischen Methoden zur Analyse umfangreicher philosophischer Kontroversen eingesetzt. (shrink)

The requirement of naturalness has long served as an influential constraint on model-building in theoretical particle physics. Yet there are many ways of understanding what, precisely, this requirement amounts to, from restrictions on the amount of fine-tuning that a model can exhibit, to prohibitions on sensitive dependence between physics at different scales, to the requirement that dimensionless parameters defining the Lagrangian of a theory all be of order one unless they are protected by a symmetry. This workshop aims to clarify (...) the relationships among these concepts of naturalness and their connection to the hierarchy problem, as well as to assess arguments for and against imposing various forms of naturalness as a requirement on particle physics model-building. (shrink)

Husserl’s theory of fulfilment conceives of empty acts, such as symbolic thought, and fulfilling acts, such as sensory perceptions, in a strict parallel. This parallelism is the basis for Husserl’s semantics, epistemology, and conception of truth. It also entails that any true proposition can be known in principle, which Church and Fitch have shown to explode into the claim that every proposition is _actually_ known. I assess this logical challenge and discuss a recent response by James Kinkaid. While Kinkaid’s proposal (...) saves one direction of the parallel for semantics, it gives up the parallelism for truth. I spell out a different response which meshes naturally with Husserl’s account of meaning. If the parallelism is restricted to a class of basic propositions, the truth of non-basic propositions can be defined inductively, without leading to the paradox. I then discuss objections that have been raised against a similar proposal by Dummett. The result is that exegetically plausible and popular interpretations of Husserl’s correlationism are indeed challenged by Church and Fitch. But when taking into account the ‘logical adumbration’ of propositional blindspots, truth and possible fulfilment can be connected without paradox. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop and defend an Attentional View of bodily awareness, on which attention is necessary for bodily awareness. The original formulation of the Attentional View is due to Marcel Kinsbourne. First, I will show that the Attentional View of bodily awareness as formulated by Kinsbourne is superior to other accounts in the literature for characterizing the relationship between attention and bodily awareness. Kinsbourne’s account is the only account in the literature so far which can (...) accommodate key neurological diseases such as personal neglect. Second, when I consider Kinsbourne’s view in more detail, I will argue that Kinsbourne’s Attentional View faces problems because it is too reductive. Kinsbourne deviates from the standard taxonomy on which there is a body schema and a body image. Instead he reduces the body image to the neural representation of the body in the somatosensory cortex, the body schema and attentional shifts. I will present two challenges to Kinsbourne’s view which demonstrate that Kinsbourne’s reduction of the body image is unsuccessful. Finally, I will present a revised version of the Attentional View that is both empirically adequate and philosophically satisfactory. (shrink)

Non-therapeutic performance enhancement in sport is a contentious issue for some time but the issue of therapeutic enhancements has only recently entered the sport vernacular. The purpose of therapeutic assistive devices so far is widely seen as lifting as impaired perceived people back to species-typical norms. However, ?therapeutic? body devices developed to mimic species-typical body structures and expected body functioning, as a side effect, increasingly allow the wearer to outperform the species-typical body in various functions. Unsurprisingly, then, this brings the (...) prospect of people labelled as impaired outperforming the so called non-impaired person in general and the paralympic athlete outperforming Olympic athletes. The ?cheetah? prosthetic legs worn by the South African Paralympic amputee Oscar Pistorius are one example of a ?therapeutic? device that might in the future outperform the species-typical body. Although it does not yet, it has already been labelled as a techno doping device. Others that already outperform are wheelchairs; however, they are rather invisible in the dispute around therapeutic enhancements and sport. This essay highlights various issues attached to this paradigm shift of the ability relationship between disabled and so called non-disabled people, Paralympic and Olympic athletes and what this might mean for Olympism and the Paralympic and Olympic Games. (shrink)

By means of multi-agent simulations, it investigates the truth and consensus-conduciveness of controversial debates. The book brings together research in formal epistemology and argumentation theory.

The dynamics of neural populations capture the laws of the mindThis paper focuses on the level of neural networks. Examining the case of recurrent neural networks, the paper argues that the dynamics of neural populations form a privileged level of explanation in cognitive science. According to Schöner, this level is privileged, because it enables cognitive scientists to discover the laws governing organisms’ cognition and behaviour.