The legal institute of whistleblowing as a tool for detecting wrong-doing, especially in large corporations, and at the same time as an institute of whistleblower protection is a matter of modern law and its wider use has been registered only in recent decades. However, some aspects of whistleblowing, in particular the protection of the public interest and the possibility for weaker parties to report offences to an official, can already be found in older law in many different countries. Moravian provincial (...) law was the main law on the territory of the Margraviate of Moravia, although there were other legal circuits (with regard to the personality of the law) paying quite a lot of attention to the issue of reporting offences to an official authority. This issue is connected not only with the police regulations for the protection of the country, but is also strongly reflected in the set of provisions concerning the serfs. (shrink)

What is the impact of mission on ethical business culture? This question was analyzed through a qualitative case study of a large nonprofit organization in the human services industry with a solid history of ethical business practices and consistent use of a values-based decision-making model. This research explored ethical decision making, ethical business culture, and congruence between enacted and espoused institutional values. Institutional values were identified, and the following pair of research questions was examined: To what extent were incongruent values (...) found between espoused and enacted values? To what extent did incongruent values impact the ethical business culture? Incongruent enacted values were present in the culture, but negative impact was diminished by a larger number of congruent enacted values. Additional findings revealed that an intense commitment to the mission by all employees was the common thread that wound throughout the organization’s ethical business culture and essentially abrogated the undesirable effects of incongruent and negative values. (shrink)

We present Activity Analysis as a new method for the quantification of subjective reports of altered states of consciousness with regard to the indicated level of simulated motor activity. Empirical linguistic activity analysis was conducted with dream reports conceived immediately after EEG-controlled periods of hypnagogic hallucinations and REM-sleep in the sleep laboratory. Reports of REM-dreams exhibited a significantly higher level of simulated physical dreamer activity, while hypnagogic hallucinations appear to be experienced mostly from the point of passive observer. This study (...) lays the groundwork for clinical research on the level of simulated activity in pathologically altered states of subjective experience, for example in the REM-dreams of clinically depressed patients, or in intrusions and dreams of patients diagnosed with PTSD. (shrink)

This short article represents a contribution to the debate on the motion “Social science is explanation, or it is nothing.” While in the format of parliamentary debating the contribution would fall on the side of the opposition, I will not be arguing against explanation as such. The work of explaining is in no way oppositional to or mutually exclusive with critique. Instead, my contribution will revolve around two arguments: one is that both critique and explanation exhibit characteristics we commonly attribute (...) to science; the other is that reserving the label of science for explanation draws a boundary around social sciences in ways that exclude many of the interesting things it does. Some of the examples include the sociological analysis of governmental approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic, or critical analysis of concepts such as “cancel culture” or “terrorism.” The conclusion is that explanation and critique are mutually supporting elements of science, and that combined they give us insights we cannot glean from either alone. (shrink)

For each vertex of a simple polygon P an integer valued weight is given. We consider the path p1, p2, ..., pk in P which is created according to the following strategy: p1 is a designated start vertex s and pi+1 is obtained by choosing the vertex with smallest weight among all vertices visible from pi and different from p1, p2, ..., pi. If there is no such vertex the path is finished. This path is called geometric lexicographic dead end (...) path. We shall prove the problem of determining whether a distinguished vertex t of P is on the geometric lexicographic dead end path or not to be P-complete. (shrink)

We consider the problem of quadrilaterizing an orthogonal polygon P, that is to decompose P into nonoverlapping convex quadrangles without adding new vertices. In this paper we present a CREW-algorithm for this problem which runs in O time using Θ processors if the rectangle decomposition of P is given, and Θ processors if not. Furthermore we will show that the latter result is optimal if the polygon is allowed to contain holes.

In Western discourse the dominant theme of the natural theory of knowledge but understanding of the subject is largely independent of the external world . Chinese traditional theory of knowledge can be called the theory of knowledge relationship, because they concerned the theme of relationships. This applies not only to negate the concept of an entity's overall theory of knowledge, but also for many advocates in understanding the subject and make a strict distinction between the object to understand the modern (...) theory. In this regard, traditional Chinese and Western knowledge to make a comparative analysis of the theory may be regarded as a solution to the nature of human understanding and perception of reality useful way certain fundamental questions. The complementary relation between reality and comprehension, between the given and recognition, as manifested in the context of elaborating fundamental epistemological paradigms, obliges us to address a humor of additional problems in connection with specific aspects of traditional organization and disciplinary functions, the semantic structures of texts, and, above all, their implicit axinlogical systems. The subject of the naturalistic epistemologies that prevailed in Western discourses was the external world , which was to a great extent independent from the subject of comprehension. Traditional Chinese theories of knowledge can be called relational epistemologies, because the subjects they refer to are relations. This applies not only to radical holistic epistemologies, which denied the notion of substance, but also to a number of contemporary theories which advocate a strict division between the subject and object of comprehension: In this respect, a comparative analysis of traditional Chinese and Western epistemological theories might, despite the general problematic of such cultural comparisons, prove to be a useful tool for resolving certain elementary questions about the nature of human comprehension and recognition of reality. (shrink)

Behaviour is central to many fields, but metatheoretical definitions specifying the most basic assumptions about what is considered behaviour and what is not are largely lacking. This transdisciplinary research explores the challenges in defining behaviour, highlighting anthropocentric biases and a frequent lack of differentiation from physiological and psychical phenomena. To meet these challenges, the article elaborates a metatheoretical definition of behaviour that is applicable across disciplines and that allows behaviours to be differentiated from other kinds of phenomena. This definition is (...) used to explore the phenomena of language and to scrutinise whether and under what conditions language can be considered behaviour and why. The metatheoretical concept of two different levels of meaning conveyed in human language is introduced, highlighting that language inherently relies on behaviours and that the content of what-is-being-said, in and of itself, can constitute behaviour under particular conditions. The analyses reveal the ways in which language meaningfully extends human's behavioural possibilities, pushing them far beyond anything enabled by non-language behaviours. These novel metatheoretical concepts can complement and expand on existing theories about behaviour and language and contribute a novel piece of theoretical explanation regarding the crucial role that language has played in human evolution. (shrink)

This book offers a thorough technical elaboration and philosophical defense of an objectivist informational interpretation of quantum mechanics according to which its novel content is located in its kinematical framework, that is, in how the theory describes systems independently of the specifics of their dynamics. -/- It will be of interest to researchers and students in the philosophy of physics and in theoretical physics with an interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Additionally, parts of the book may be used (...) as the basis for courses introducing non-physics majors to quantum mechanics, or for self-study by those outside of the university with an interest in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

This paper presents a proposal for the description of gesture phases derived from articulatory characteristics observable in their execution. Based on the results of an explorative study examining the execution of gesture phases of ten German speakers, the paper presents two sets of articulatory features, i.e., distinctive and additional features by which gesture phases are characterized from a context-independent and context-sensitive point of view. It will be shown that gesture phases show a particular distribution of the features, thus distinguishing one (...) phase from another. Furthermore, changes in the execution of phases in linear successions can be described by means of features. Contrary to other accounts, whose focus on gesture phases is primarily in relation to speech and/or adjacent phases, this proposal concentrates on the visible physical characteristics of gesture phases. (shrink)

The concept of dramatization represents a rhetorical and conceptual tension in Deleuze's philosophy in that it refers both to autopoietic ontological processes and to a critical philosophical method. Commentators are wont to refer to either one or the other, saying little about how or if these two fundamentally distinct usages can be thought together; that is what we aim to do here. By unravelling the conceptual transformations of the term, we can gain an appreciation for the double characterisation of dramatization (...) and its centrifugal nature. We begin with the hypothesis that dramatization is linked to actualisation in the first sense and counteractualisation in the second. The fundamental question that we would like to address is: how are these two views to be reconciled? Addressing this question leads us to the conclusion that dramatization becomes an ethical imperative for philosophical subjects to perform certain philosophical exercises, that is, to become worthy of the event. The particular philosophical exercise that is emphasised is the dramatization of a paradoxical thought of death. Ultimately, we suggest that dramatization can be galvanised for both an emancipatory politics and an ethico-aesthetic life practice. (shrink)

Critical accounts over the past years have focused on neoliberalism as a subject of knowledge; there has been a recently growing interest in neoliberalism as an object of knowledge. This article considers the theoretical, epistemological and political implications of the relationship between neoliberalism as an epistemic subject and neoliberalism as an epistemic object. It argues that the ‘gnossification’ of neoliberalism – framing it an epistemic project, and deriving implications for political engagement from this – avoids engaging with numerous ambiguous elements (...) of the production of knowledge. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘scholastic fallacy’ and Boltanski and Chiapello’s work in sociology of critique, the article lays out a framework for the study of the relationship between epistemic, moral, and political elements of critique of neoliberalism, including the conditions of its own production in contemporary academic contexts. (shrink)

In Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus volumes, revolution, social transformation, and the possibility of a new future are all linked to desire: minimally, to the freeing of desire from the false refuges of Oedipalization and its constructs of molar sexuality. Everywhere, they seek to uncover the potential of desire, sexuality, and love, asking us to consider that what we take to be the most personal is impersonal, how the most intimate is the collective and social. Thus, it calls us to rethink (...) our material and affective relations and reconceptualize the sphere of intimacy itself. I develop the concepts of delirium and revolutionary love, suggesting that we interpret these as perpetual processes of transformation and conjugation, initiating relations of intimacy and advocate for more nuanced, complex forms of subjectivity and to become more sensitive to the varying relational complexes within a given space. Revolutionary love gains its newness from both the extension of Deleuzian desire and from its return to several heritages of feminisms which have themselves been marginalized in the forward sweep of new materialist and posthumanist discussions. The point is to sharpen our focus on the conditions that produce certain social bodies, certain kinds of consciousness, and certain molar identities—not to deny the realities of the socius or reject subjectivity, but to move from a majoritarian to a minoritarian politics that widens our purview of what forces and desires exist within these spaces so that we may transform and build less fascistic, more attuned relational complexes. (shrink)

Conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) presents many opportunities in the psychotherapeutic landscape—such as therapeutic support for people with mental health problems and without access to care. The adoption of CAI poses many risks that need in-depth ethical scrutiny. The objective of this paper is to complement current research on the ethics of AI for mental health by proposing a holistic, ethical, and epistemic analysis of CAI adoption. First, we focus on the question of whether CAI is rather a tool or an (...) agent. This question serves as a framework for the subsequent ethical analysis of CAI focusing on topics of (self-) knowledge, (self-)understanding, and relationships. Second, we propose further conceptual and ethical analysis regarding human-AI interaction and argue that CAI cannot be considered as an equal partner in a conversation as is the case with a human therapist. Instead, CAI’s role in a conversation should be restricted to specific functions. (shrink)

Study of Inference (anumāna) according to the Nyāyabhūṣaṇa, an autocommentary by Bhāsarvajña, 10th century, on his Nyāyasāra, aphorism on Nyaya philosophy.

Dieses Buch fragt danach, wie Recht und Rechtsprechung, Staats- und Rechtstheorie sowie moderne Verhaltensökonomie die Rationalität und den Egoismus des Menschen begreifen und wie dies die Wahl staatlicher Steuerungsinstrumente beeinflusst. Das scheinbar neuartige Instrument Nudging wird mit Blick auf Umweltschutzinstrumente, die Regulierung des Tabakrauchens und der Organspende in den öffentlich-rechtlichen Handlungsformenkatalog eingeordnet, wobei verfassungsrechtliche Grenzen diskutiert werden. Zielgruppe sind die an der "Metaebene" des Rechts und der Verhaltenssteuerung interessierten Leserinnen und Leser. Der Inhalt Zeigt Möglichkeiten und verfassungsrechtliche Grenzen staatlicher Verhaltenssteuerung (...) auf Diskutiert das egoistisch-rationale Menschenbild aus Sicht der Staats- und Rechtstheorie Ordnet Nudging systematisch in die öffentlich-rechtliche Handlungsformenlehre ein Die AutorinJana Maruschke war zwischen März 2016 und Oktober 2021 wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Lehrstuhl für öffentliches Recht, Umwelt- und Technikrecht sowie Rechtstheorie von Prof. Dr. Andreas Fisahn an der Universität Bielefeld. In diesem Rahmen hat sie sich vor allem mit Fragen des Umwelt- und Staatsrechts befasst. Das Rechtsreferendariat am Landgericht Bielefeld hat sie mit dem 2. Staatsexamen im Juni 2023 erfolgreich abgeschlossen. (shrink)

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari carve out an image of thought and a path for philosophy that is connected to the figure of the cosmic artisan. This article situates the artisan in relation to both past and future, comparing this figure to that of the artist in the work of another great philosopher who desired to bring forth a new beginning for philosophy, Martin Heidegger. After discussing multiple ways that Deleuze and Guattari's thought is world-destroying in terms of (...) past ontological and epistemological commitments, the article considers the cosmic artisan/philosopher's diagrammatic role in light of the technological-scientific advancements within the field of quantum physics. Through these elaborations, it becomes clear that Deleuze and Guattari are articulating the need for a new sensibility – to the imperceptible, the virtual, the compossible and the molecular. Deleuze and Guattari's noological nomadism opens a way forward, where world-destroying becomes linked to creation, and the figure of modernity becomes the possibility of a new relation to the earth – a cosmic earth. (shrink)

We present one of the first quantitative studies on auditory verbal experiences and auditory verbal agency voices or characters”) in healthy participants across states of consciousness. Tools of quantitative linguistic analysis were used to measure participants’ implicit knowledge of auditory verbal experiences and auditory verbal agencies, displayed in mentation reports from four different states. Analysis was conducted on a total of 569 mentation reports from rapid eye movement sleep, non-REM sleep, sleep onset, and waking. Physiology was controlled with the nightcap (...) sleep–wake mentation monitoring system. Sleep-onset hallucinations, traditionally at the focus of scientific attention on auditory verbal hallucinations, showed the lowest degree of VE and VA, whereas REM sleep showed the highest degrees. Degrees of different linguistic-pragmatic aspects of VE and VA likewise depend on the physiological states. The quantity and pragmatics of VE and VA are a function of the physiologically distinct state of consciousness in which they are conceived. (shrink)

The search for knowledge has been the driving force behind mankind's existence since the dawn of civilization, and different cultures have developed their own theories of knowledge. _Searching for the Way: Theory of Knowledge in Premodern and Modern China_ deals with the analyses and interpretations of modern Chinese philosophical discourses, especially those concerning theories of knowledge. The author looks at how contemporary Chinese philosophy is awakening from a long slumber and substantiates the hypothesis that this new awakening is fully prepared (...) for fruitful confrontations with the new challenges presented by a globalized world. The study of 20th-century Chinese philosophy has not been the subject of any extensive and systematic discussion in neither the West in general nor in Western Sinology in particular. Hence, this book will be of immense interest to those who are interested in the emerging fields of comparative philosophy, Chinese studies and theology. (shrink)

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The vast majority of studies on affective processes in reading focus on single words. The most robust finding is a processing advantage for positively valenced words, which has been replicated in the rare studies investigating effects of affective features of words during sentence or story comprehension. Here we were interested in how the different valences of words in a sentence influence its processing and supralexical affective evaluation. Using a sentence verification task we investigated how comprehension of simple declarative sentences containing (...) a noun and an adjective depends on the valences of both words. The results are in line with the assumed general processing advantage for positive words. We also observed a clear interaction effect, as can be expected from the affective priming literature: sentences with emotionally congruent words (e.g., The grandpa is clever) were verified faster than sentences containing emotionally incongruent words (e.g., The grandpa is lonely). The priming effect was most prominent for sentences with positive words suggesting that both, early processing as well as later meaning integration and situation model construction, is modulated by affective processing. In a second rating task we investigated how the emotion potential of supralexical units depends on word valence. The simplest hypothesis predicts that the supralexical affective structure is a linear combination of the valences of the nouns and adjectives (Bestgen, 1994 ). Overall, our results do not support this: The observed clear interaction effect on ratings indicate that especially negative adjectives dominated supralexical evaluation, i.e., a sort of negativity bias in sentence evaluation. Future models of sentence processing thus should take interactive affective effects into account. (shrink)

The theoretical work of European and American structuralism has produced a number of important elements which have resulted in (especially with respect to certain new, fundamental approaches in semantics, philosophy and methodology) essential shifts in the modes of thinking in the humanities, and in the cultural and social sciences. Despite these shifts, Western discourses have still not produced any integral, coherent structural model of epistemology. The present article intends to show that such a model can be found in the pan-structural (...) epistemology of the modern Chinese philosopher Zhang Dongsun (1886?1973), and that the crucial, theoretical underpinnings of such models were developed much earlier in the history of Chinese thought, given that the bases of a structural approach to comprehension had already been established in ancient Chinese philosophy. This paradigmatic foundation (the concept li) was further developed and elaborated by various Chinese philosophers in later centuries as a crucial feature of the classical Chinese logic of binary analogies. The article also points out that the central binary concept of the Neo-Confucian tradition (i.e. the concept of structure and creativity; li and qi) has generally been interpreted as a dualism of idea and matter by Euro-American sinologists. However, such interpretations have overlooked an important feature of traditional, structurally determined Chinese onto-epistemology. (shrink)

This essay facilitates a critical dialogue between Freud’s early “cathartic method” and Fanon’s notion of a “neurotic situation.” Although Fanon does not explicitly develop this concept as a counterpoint to the Freudian understanding of neurosis, we can nevertheless glean from his work a robust understanding of the kind of psycho-political suffering it designates. To be in a “neurotic situation,” I argue, is to experience neurotic symptoms that are idiosyncratic to oneself and yet also a reflection of social and political structures (...) of oppression that affect all members of an oppressed group. It is a situation that contains both idiosyncratic psychic disturbance and non-idiosyncratic political truth. As such, addressing a neurotic situation requires overcoming the strict separation between therapy and consciousness-raising that some activists espouse. Specifically, in a neurotic situation, therapy and emancipatory consciousness-raising come to shape and condition each other’s objectives: an emancipatory consciousness becomes a condition for the therapeutic alleviation of neurotic symptoms, and therapeutic relief for neurotic symptoms becomes part of what it is like to attain an emancipatory consciousness in a neurotic situation. (shrink)

Freedom of Religion, Institution of Conscientious Objection and Political Practice in Post-Communist Slovakia1 The example of Slovakia is used to show how one of the post-socialist countries failed in fulfilling the demanding task of securing freedom of religious belief (including the right to conscientious objection) and, at the same time, securing all other human rights. An analysis of the methods used for changing the policies of pluralism and neutrality of the state into a policy of discrimination (e.g. concerning the registration (...) duty for churches) was carried out, followed by an analysis of a mechanism used for guaranteeing freedom of conscience of the members of the Catholic Church (the so-called Vatican Treaty). The treaty violates the prohibition of discrimination against women, because it makes it more difficult for them to have access to some health care services. Our hypothesis states that the hurriedly introduced right to conscientious objection is misused in this context as a means of regulating the politics of reproduction. In general, the re-Catholisation of the Slovak Republic follows two aims—to help in the fight for votes in the elections (because 70 % of Slovaks declare their religion to be Catholic), and to improve demographic development in the Slovak Republic (declared to be catastrophic by the Catholic Church), through hindering free access to abortions. (shrink)

The paper deals with the Lower East Side as a site of memory in children's literature in the United States. Contemporary children's books depict the Lower East Side in migration narratives about Eastern European Jews who came to America around the turn of the last century. They do so both verbally and visually by incorporating an often reproduced photograph that has come to symbolize the imaginary place. The Lower East Side is a Jewish site of immigrant poverty, crowded tenement houses, (...) and sweat shops. In the examples given, it is used to dismantle the image of the Goldeneh Medina. (shrink)

In the final decades of the 20th century, the majority of modern Sinophone scholars believed that Confucianism was an outdated and obsolete ideology that was not only unsuitable for the development...

This is an abstract of the paper accepted for publication in \Acta Uni- versitatis Wratislaviensis", series \Prace Filozoczne { Logika". The paper was presented at the 25th Conference for the History of Logic, Krakow, October 5-7, 1979.

Although the research on compassion is growing, there is a lack of knowledge about how non-expert people perceive compassion. Therefore, the aim of the study was to explore compassion from the perspective of non-experts. Our sample consisted of 56 non-expert participants in 10 focus groups and we conducted a Consensual Qualitative Research analysis with two members of a core team and one auditor. In general, compassion was described as a mixture of non-specified positive emotions and specified negative emotions. Compassion was (...) related to empathy. In terms of behaviours, compassion was revealed to help, support, favour, mental closeness, and interest. Compassion is displayed mainly to people close to us in situations of suffering. However, people tend to evaluate beforehand whether the situation and person deserve compassion. Moreover, people are cautious about being exploited through compassion. To sum up, our findings support a multidimensional definition of compassion. (shrink)

Critics of Aristotelian accounts of practical reasoning, in teaching and in other contexts, criticise phronesis for its rigidity and lack of imagination. This paper argues that phantasia, or imagination, helps us to develop a richer account of Aristotle’s phronesis. Two senses of phantasia, as producing images and as an interpretive faculty, are proposed here to be importantly involved in phronesis. By producing images that help in the selection of an end goal, and by having an interpretive faculty that helps to (...) compare competing possibilities, phantasia plays a crucial role in the practical reasoning process of phronesis. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether it is possible to develop theoretical methods to reconcile absolute principles on the one hand and relative tenets on the other. I will look at this question through the lens of classical Chinese logic and, more concretely, through the elaborations of the Chinese logician Hui Shi on this relationship. The examination of this problem proceeds from a general introduction of the basic framework of semantically determined classical Chinese logic, through an illumination of Hui (...) Shi’s specific contributions to the field, to a tentative explanation of his conception of the nature of the relation between absoluteness and relativity, embedded in more general structures of his thought and illustrated by his interpretation of the possibility of unifying identity and difference. (shrink)

This paper explores the problem of racial privilege in US American feminist thought. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s analysis of ethics, particularly her ideas of epistemic discontinuity and teleopoietic reading, I argue that a specific kind of ethical openness can help feminist social-political philosophy better negotiate the legacy of white privilege. Spivak’s work calls for a reconsideration and reworking of the subject who theorizes. Her analysis of ethics suggests that racially privileged feminists must be able to confront their own complicity in (...) order to engage in political critique less likely to recreate historical patterns of racial domination and exclusion. (shrink)

The aim of our research is to explore how Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are represented in the Slovak media. Data consisted of text documents from the Newton media database. Search criteria included TV, radio, print and web sources that mentioned the words “Alzheimer” and “dementia” between 2015 and 2018. A thematic discourse analysis was applied in order to identify the themes and their mutual semantic relations. The analysis was focused primarily on the headlines (n = 227). The results show that (...) the biomedical perspective currently dominates at the expense of a socio-psychological one. Persons with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are represented as tragic cases and victims of a cruel disease. Responsibility for care and prevention is individualized. Our findings suggest that a new perspective is needed. Such an approach should recognize the dignity and humanity of persons with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia despite their cognitive deficits and respect their socio-psychological needs. (shrink)

Starting from the observation that in morally questionable situations managers tend to act in accordance with a so-called political utilitarianism, this paper seeks to answer the question: why is it important for managers to behave morally? It argues that managers should adopt the deontological notion of self-respect and respect for others as a basic presumption, bearing in mind management’s central role of dealing with people. It is suggested that this is especially so in transition economies. By adopting a deontological perspective, (...) organisations could benefit significantly, although this should not be the primary motivation for acting on this basis. (shrink)