German; one contribution each in English and French.

Since the introduction of photography by commercial studio photographers and the colonial state in Kenya, this global medium has been intensely debated and contested among Muslims on the cosmopolitan East African coast. This book does not only explore the making, circulation, and consumption of popular photographs, but also the other side, their rejection and obliteration, an essential aspect of a medium's history that should not be neglected. It deals with various »social spaces of refusal« in the local Muslim milieu and (...) in that of »traditional« spirit mediums in which visibility was contested in various and creative ways. It focuses on the »aesthetics of withdrawal«: the various ways and techniques that process the photographic act as well as the photographic image to theatricalize the surface of the image in new ways by veiling, masking, and concealing. In a fragmented historical perspective, Heike Behrend seeks to complement, decenter, and counter the history of photography as it has been told by the West and to narrate another history beginning with preceding local media such as textiles and spirit possession. (shrink)

The bias paradox emerges out of a tension between objectivism and relativism.If one rejects a certain the conception objectivity as absolute impartiality and value-neutrality (i.e., if all views are biased), how, then, can one hold that some epistemic perspectives are better than others? This is a problem that has been most explicitly dealt with in feminist epistemology, but it is not unique to feminist perspectives. In this paper, I wish to clearly lay out the nature of the paradox and the (...) various attempts to avoid it. I also intend to show why it is a problem for any epistemological view that rejects absolute objectivity. Finally, I wish to briefly outline a possible solution to the paradox, a solution that requires recognizing that rationality necessarily requires both objective and subjective elements. (shrink)

Beyond “A Lecture on Ethics,” Wittgenstein says little on the topic of ethics, despite professing a great respect for ethics. I argue that while Wittgenstein ceases to speak of ethics, his account fits equally within his Tractarian and post-Tractarian writing. On both accounts of language, ethics remains nonsense, but it is not insignificant nonsense. However, because Wittgenstein holds ethics to concern absolute values that are in principle inexpressible, his anti-theoretical conception of ethics fails to offer guidance in how one ought (...) to live. That is, ethics ultimately cannot be show unless it can, in some sense, be said. (shrink)

What constitutes our number concept? What makes it possible for us to employ numbers the way we do; which mental faculties contribute to our grasp of numbers? What do we share with other species, and what is specific to humans? How does our language faculty come into the picture? This 2003 book addresses these questions and discusses the relationship between numerical thinking and the human language faculty, providing psychological, linguistic and philosophical perspectives on number, its evolution and its development in (...) children. Heike Wiese argues that language as a human faculty plays a crucial role in the emergence of systematic numerical thinking. She characterises number sequences as powerful and highly flexible mental tools that are unique to humans and shows that it is language that enables us to go beyond the perception of numerosity and to develop such mental tools. (shrink)

Sociologists who use in-depth interview methods have become sensitized to the ways that race-ethnicity and class can form barriers to rapport with respondents, but the question of gender has been largely unexamined. This article compares data from two independently conducted in-depth interview studies of male nurses: one by a female researcher and one by a male researcher. Observed differences in how the men in the samples framed their responses to questions in the two studies are discussed. It is argued that (...) in-depth interviewers can and should become sensitized to respondents' negotiation of the gendered context of the interaction, but the existing proscriptions against cross-gender research are challenged. (shrink)

In this article, we develop the concept of Transparency by Design that serves as practical guidance in helping promote the beneficial functions of transparency while mitigating its challenges in automated-decision making environments. With the rise of artificial intelligence and the ability of AI systems to make automated and self-learned decisions, a call for transparency of how such systems reach decisions has echoed within academic and policy circles. The term transparency, however, relates to multiple concepts, fulfills many functions, and holds different (...) promises that struggle to be realized in concrete applications. Indeed, the complexity of transparency for ADM shows tension between transparency as a normative ideal and its translation to practical application. To address this tension, we first conduct a review of transparency, analyzing its challenges and limitations concerning automated decision-making practices. We then look at the lessons learned from the development of Privacy by Design, as a basis for developing the Transparency by Design principles. Finally, we propose a set of nine principles to cover relevant contextual, technical, informational, and stakeholder-sensitive considerations. Transparency by Design is a model that helps organizations design transparent AI systems, by integrating these principles in a step-by-step manner and as an ex-ante value, not as an afterthought. (shrink)

We discuss other recent studies on the acquisition of the German plural that do not support the dual-mechanism model. The attested overgeneralizations are not by default only, nor completely random, but predictable from subregularities based on the grammatical gender and the phonology of the noun. In addition, the dual-mechanism model creates a number of problems for acquisition (theory) rather than solving existing ones.

In this note we argue that Lars von Trier’s movie Dogville can be viewed as an illustration of a simple economy where one agent has only her body as initial endowment. The movie illustrates some interesting comparative statics of equilibrium allocations. It shows how life would be like in a world where, in the absence of constitutional or legal constraints, economic forces reign freely and raises some fundamental issues of voluntary exchange versus force that apply to a number of contentious (...) issues in public debate. JEL codes: A20, D30, D51, D63, F13. Keywords: Dogville, general equilibrium, welfare theorems, comparative statics, international trade, child labor, prostitution, economics education. (shrink)

Poetisierende Musikbeschreibungen werden von der Wissenschaft, von Musikern und Konzertbesuchern heute mehr belächelt als ernst genommen. Durch das Ansprechen von Einbildungskraft und Gefühl haben sie aber eine Unmittelbarkeit, die der kompositionstechnischen Analyse in der Regel fehlt. Die Wurzeln einer metaphorischen Musikbeschreibung um die Wende zum 19. Jahrhundert sind dabei gleichermaßen historisch wie systematisch zu fassen. Zahlreiche Zitate aus den Fachzeitschriften bis zur Jahrhundertmitte dokumentieren die Herausbildung eines festumrissenen Bildervorrats, um musikalische Eindrücke zur Sprache zu bringen. Der kreative Umgang mit Beschreibungskonventionen (...) ist für die Musikkritiken von E.T.A. Hoffmann, Adolf Bernhard Marx, Ludwig Rellstab und vor allem Robert Schumann kennzeichnend. (shrink)

We show that it is independent whether club $\kappa $ -Miller forcing preserves $\kappa ^{++}$. We show that under $\kappa ^{ \kappa $, club $\kappa $ -Miller forcing collapses $\kappa ^{<\kappa }$ to $\kappa $. Answering a question by Brendle, Brooke-Taylor, Friedman and Montoya, we show that the iteration of ultrafilter $\kappa $ -Miller forcing does not have the Laver property.

In The Virtue of Feminist Rationality the author develops a specifically feminist account of rationality, an account which treats reason as a virtue concept. Contrary to some feminists claims that reason is inherently and irredeemably masculine, Heikes argues that the coherence of feminism demands a rational ground and that feminists must be willing to challenge the masculine connotations that have been historically linked to reason. While acknowledging contemporary philosophy’s vehement rejections of Enlightenment accounts of rationality, the author develops an understanding (...) of rationality that relies on premodern roots that circumscribe the concept much less narrowly. As Heikes argues, a virtue account of rationality not only rejects many of what feminists hold to the be most objectionable aspects of philosophical accounts of reason, it is also capable of bridging the divide between several deeply ingrained philosophical dichotomies. Because philosophical dichotomies become most deeply polarized and entrenched during the modern era, the undermining of modern assumptions concerning reason and rationality also undermines the polarizing thinking that has defined rationality for the past several centuries. -/- . (shrink)

The article explores the underlying reasons for patients’ self‐perception of being a burden (SPB) in family settings, including its impact on relationships when wishes to die (WTD) are expressed. In a prospective, interview‐based study of WTD in patients with advanced cancer and non‐cancer disease (organ failure, degenerative neurological disease, and frailty) SPB was an important emerging theme. In a sub‐analysis we examined (a) the facets of SPB, (b) correlations between SPB and WTD, and (c) SPB as a relational phenomenon. We (...) analyzed 248 interviews with 62 patients, their family caregivers, and professionals using grounded theory and interpretive phenomenological analysis. SPB appeared as important empathic concern in care situations. Patients expressed many sorts of concerns for others, but also perceived an altered self‐understanding that did not meet mutual expectations within relationships. In SPB associated with WTD three constellations were found: (a) WTD to unburden others; (b) patients decided against hastening death to prevent being a further burden to others (in these cases, the SPB counteracted the wish to die); and (c) both wishes for and against dying were sustained by SPB. These patients often felt paralyzed and suffered deeply. Family caregivers felt emotionally touched by SPB and tried to unburden patients by caring and compassion. We concluded that the impact of SPB on a WTD and the various meanings the facets of SPB have in balancing relationships need to be worked out individually. An early palliative and narrative approach is warranted. (shrink)

We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, (...) -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike. (shrink)

The article takes Helmuth Plessner’s Political Anthropology from 1931 as a postfoundationalist theory of society avant la lettre - which is very similar to the later works of Claude Lefort, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe. Or, the article takes Plessner’s essay as an ‘ontology’ of the Political. After introducing remarks on the historical debates, in which Plessner aimed to intervene, his theory of the Political is reconstructed, within the three categories of ‘unfathomability’, of the constitutive outside, and of the vulnerability (...) of the human body. In a third and last step, Plessner’s most central and most problematic category for the Political - the ‘popular existence’ - is discussed: The ‘people’ is made visible as being a key notion of postfoundational theories of modern democracy, for it is - beneath the ‘Individual’ - one of the imaginary foundations, one of the foundational outsides of a democratically instituted collective. (shrink)

Heikes challenges Enlightenment rationality's tendency to be an achievement concept which excludes non-whites and non-males. She examines post-Cartesian criticisms of modernism, and pre-modern efforts to address the functional diversity of human cognition, arguing that such approaches offer a rationality that is diverse and morally substantive.

The history of philosophy is in many ways a history of how we understand rationality. However, philosophers have historically adopted a fairly narrow approach toward rationality, focusing almost exclusively on issues of structure and the justification of beliefs. In this essay, I argue that considerations of reflective equilibrium should lead philosophers to take into account the empirical features of rationality. After all, our philosophical understanding of rationality must ultimately reflect these features or risk failure. I consider what specific lessons philosophers (...) might take from anthropology and psychology. Anthropology highlights cultural features of rationality which philosophers have tended to overlook, while psychology indicates that philosophers may be correct in emphasizing the importance of the self. Including such wider empirical considerations in their reflections, philosophers are forced to consider our more ordinary use of the concept of rationality, which often looks far different and requires a broader characterization than philosophical analysis allows. Shifting the focus in these ways allows us to re-focus what questions philosophy can ask about the nature of rationality. (shrink)

Philosophy today is undergoing a transformation away from modernism. The problem is that it is far from clear what this transformation is moving toward. I examine the transition from the premodern to the modern philosophical world and contrast it with our current situation. While the moderns were clear in their rejection of Aristotelian scholasticism and sure of their methods, in our own time we are neither clear about the extent to which we reject modernism nor our methodology moving forward. I (...) argue that the uncertainty of the postmodern philosophical world is, in an important sense, a necessary consequence of the rejection of modernism itself. (shrink)

Despite decades of management and conservation efforts, we have seen only limited success in rebuilding marine life and restoring ocean ecosystems from human-inflicted damage on a global scale. I suggest that we need to harness both our emotional and rational sides to create a more powerful movement to heal the ocean and rebuild its abundance and diversity. Love and compassion fuel our desire and urge for change and provide a compass that can guide our actions. Science and knowledge provide ways (...) for collecting and interpreting data and information that can enhance our understanding and support our decisions and actions. Combining our emotional and rational sides can inspire our thinking and transform our actions in new, creative ways. In order to affect wide-ranging and long-lasting change, love and knowledge need to work together to transform our collective relationship with the ocean. (shrink)

There are inequalities between cardinal characteristics of the continuum that are true in any model of ZFC, but without a Borel morphism proving the inequality. We answer some questions from Blass [1].

Fields for Innovative Future Research in History of Science – A Historian of Technology's Perspective. The observations at hand present a historian of technology's perspective and sketch three fields for innovative future research: (past) ‘futures’ and future scenarios in themselves; the challenges as imposed by recent developments in science, technology, and society (e.g. digitization, climate change); and the twisting and flipping of established perspectives (e.g. by focusing on ‘failed’ or ‘old’ science and technology and their declension). Moreover, historians of science, (...) technology, and medicine should participate in emerging transdisciplinary fields such as Environmental Humanities. (shrink)

What social effects does atent architecture have, in which mode of collective existence do nomadic societies such as the Tuareg live? And what kind of fictionally instituted society is accompanied by an architecture that pro duces a non-gestalt of the collective – such as the buried houses in the Chinese Loess? Such analyses show the social positivity of architecture; and they show ex negativo, which kind of social life goes along with immobile constructions.

Feminist philosophy is highly critical of Cartesian, and more broadly Enlightenment, conceptions of rationality. However, feminist philosophers typically fail to address contemporary theories of rationality and to consider how more current thoeories address feminist concerns. I argue that, contrary to their protestations, feminists are “obsessing over an outdated conception of reason” and that even the most suspect of “malestream” philosophers express an understanding of rationality that is closer to feminist concerns than Cartesian ones. I begin by briefly examining key features (...) of Cartesian rationality and discuss how these features are largely rejected by contemporary philosophy and cognitve science. I then discuss how the philosophical accounts of Robert Nozick and Robert Audi refelect this rejection of Cartesian rationality. Finally, I discuss how the views of Nozick and Audi are in line with many feminist concerns, and I argue that feminists need to take seriously some theory of rationality. (shrink)

Epistemologists debate the nature of epistemic responsibility. Rarely do they consider the implications of this debate on assigning responsibility for undesirable beliefs such as racist and sexist ones. Contrary to our natural tendency to believe and to act as if we are responsible for holding undesirable beliefs, empirical evidence indicates that beliefs such as implicit biases are not only unconsciously held but are intractably held. That is, even when we become consciously aware of our biases, we have enormous difficulty changing (...) them and believing differently than we do. This paper considers five responses to epistemic involuntarism. It considers how each response provides or fails to provide a principled means for holding individuals epistemically responsible for their undesirable beliefs. The involuntaristic nature of at least some beliefs seems obvious, but, in the end, we can choose to cultivate epistemic virtues that can influence these beliefs. (shrink)