As the pre-eminent Enlightenment philosopher, Kant famously calls on all humans to make up their own minds, independently from the constraints imposed on them by others. Kant's focus, however, is on universal human reason, and he tells us little about what makes us individual persons. In this book, Katharina T. Kraus explores Kant's distinctive account of psychological personhood by unfolding how, according to Kant, we come to know ourselves as such persons. Drawing on Kant's Critical works and on his (...) Lectures and Reflections, Kraus develops the first textually comprehensive and systematically coherent account of our capacity for what Kant calls 'inner experience'. The novel view of self-knowledge and self-formation in Kant that she offers addresses present-day issues in philosophy of mind and will be relevant for contemporary philosophical debates. It will be of interest to scholars of the history of philosophy, as well as of philosophy of mind and psychology. (shrink)

Recent social‐psychological research suggests that a considerable amount of, for example, racial and gendered discrimination may be connected to implicit biases: mental processes beyond our direct control or endorsement, that influence our behaviour toward members of socially salient groups. In this article I seek to improve our understanding of the phenomenon of implicit bias, including its moral status, by examining it through the lens of a theory of discrimination. In doing so, I also suggest ways to improve this theory of (...) discrimination, by creating conceptual space for implicit bias discrimination. I explore two ways of distinguishing direct and indirect discrimination and spell out the resulting four different forms of discrimination. The resulting taxonomy provides some room for implicit bias discrimination. I also deal with four challenges to my proposal for capturing implicit bias within discrimination theory: the metaphysical challenge, the moral insignificance challenge, the causal connection challenge, and the challenge from irreducibly collective bias. (shrink)

The study examines how multinational organizations implement the concept of ethics and compliance programs into their businesses and the extent to which these programs were geared to the 2004 Amendments. The study explores the applicability of the 2004 Amendments and analyzes the instruments organizations use to successfully develop and maintain these programs. By including research from various fields, a theoretical framework was developed for implementing an ethics and compliance program that takes into account the 2004 Amendments.

In recent literature many theorists, including Eklund (2011), endorse or express sympathy towards the view that the evaluative content of thick terms is not asserted with utterances of sentences containing them but rather part of their secondary content. In this article we discuss a number of features of thick terms which speak against this view. We further argue that these features are not shared by another, recently much-discussed, class of hybrid evaluative terms, so-called slurs, and that the evaluative contents of (...) these might thus very well be secondary. (shrink)

ExcerptThis article compares two fairly recent autobiographical works about the experiences of two highly publicized global disasters: Josef Haslinger's Phi Phi Island: Ein Bericht (2004) and Kathrin Röggla's really ground zero: 11. september und folgendes (2001). Röggla was in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. Haslinger was a victim of the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, where he vacationed with his family. Both tell stories that are at once intensely personal, relating threats to the narrator's very existence, and decidedly public, as (...) the events in question were broadcast around the world and subject to prolific media commentary and overwhelming visual representation. (shrink)

It has recently been pointed out that the cloudiness of the concept of authenticity as well as inflated ideologies of the ‘true self’ provide good reasons to criticize theories and ideals of authenticity. Nevertheless, there are also good reasons to defend an ethical ideal of authenticity, not least because of its critical and oppositional force, which is directed against experiences of self-abandonment and self-alienation. I will argue for an elaborated ethical ideal of authenticity: the ambitious ideal of a continuous self-reflective (...) process of ‘self-authentication’. For this purpose, the ideal of being authentic in expressing and unfolding one’s individual personality and characteristics will be combined with the ideal of being ‘an authentic person’ - whereby ‘a person’ is to be understood in a Kantian sense as an autonomous person who is reasonable and morally responsible. (shrink)

"Hungarian Cubes" proposes an aesthetical typology of the ornamentation of cubic houses from the 1960s 70s in Hungary. The book is based on the artistic project Magyar Kocka Hungarian Cube, which German-Hungarian artist Katharina Roters is pursuing since 2005. The origins of the Hungarian Cube, a standardized type of residential house, date back to the 1920s, when the cube as prototype of a radically functional design first appeared in plans for single-family homes in Budapest s suburbs and also in (...) social housing projects. During Hungary s communist era after WW II, many villages were rebuilt on uniform schemes of single-family homes and the "Magyar Kocka "or "Kadar Kocka, " as they were also named after Hungary s communist president Janos Kadar became ubiquitous. A unique characteristic of this housing type is the ornamental decoration of its facades. The facade thereby became an opportunity of both individual and collective expression within uniformity. The ornament is not merely an aesthetic sign. It rather creates meaningful identity and distinguishes the appearance of entire dwellings across the country. Often this individualized ornament can also be read as an act of subversion against the pressure of conformity in the socialist system. Katharina Roters has been investigating and documenting this previously neglected ornamental phenomenon since 2005 from an artistic point of view. The houses are shown in her images cleaned of all surplus information, fences and railings, antennas, road signs, electric power lines. Only by this deletion of additions to each house the project can reach beyond a merely archival nature and the photograph becomes a document of aesthetic typology. The book combines the serial composition of Roters s images with essays on various aspects of this architectural phenomenon. ". (shrink)

Katharina Dück widmet sich in diesem Buch dem umfangreichen Doktrinenschatz des Begriffs „Materia prima“ im Spannungsfeld von Theorie und wiederholbarer Praxis in deutschsprachigen alchemisch-naturkundlichen Sachschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts. Sie trägt damit neue Aspekte zur Debatte des Materialismus in der Frühen Neuzeit bei. Untersucht werden Texte sogenannter Meisterdenker als auch Zeugnisse derer, die bisher wenig berücksichtigt wurden. Dem Corpus Paracelsicum und der Strömung des Paracelsismus wird besondere Beachtung gezollt. Drei rasterartig umrissene Grundmuster, denen die „Materia prima“-Vorstellungen zugeordnet sind, werden ausführlich (...) vorgestellt und dabei Kontinuitäten sowie Transformationen von vorhandenen Materie-Konzepten festgestellt.​. (shrink)

La question du sexe des résidents du site de Qumrân a longtemps été ignorée, comme s’il allait de soi qu’une telle communauté ne pouvait compter que des hommes. Longtemps aussi les spécialistes ont raisonné en utilisant uniquement les textes des manuscrits trouvés dans les grottes de la mer Morte comme si les données matérielles fournies par les fouilles du site archéologique de Qumrân ne pouvaient leur être associées. Cet article entend analyser les raisons pour lesquelles les chercheurs ont pu affirmer (...) que les femmes étaient a priori exclues de Qumran. Il entend également montrer comment les objets produits par les fouilles prouvent, au contraire, une présence de femmes sur le site. (shrink)

In cultures with left-right-script, agentic behavior is mentally represented as following a left-to-right trajectory, an effect referred to as the Spatial Agency Bias. In this research, we investigated whether spatial representations of activities are universal across activities by analyzing the opposite concepts of “attack” and “defense”. Both behaviors involve similar actions but may differ in perceived agency. Moreover “defense” is necessarily always a response to an attack and may therefore be represented by a trajectory in the opposite direction. Two studies (...) found the classic SAB for activities representing attacking but a reduction and reversal for activities involving defense. Although the spatial representation of defense on the right was much weaker and less unequivocal than that of attack on the left, the results suggest that the spatial representations of defense and attack are located in different positions. Apparently not all actors and all activities are spatially represented on the left with a left-to-right trajectory but position and direction depend on the perceived agency. Directions for future research and applications of our findings are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:...

Much has been written about the value of law, mostly in ideational terms. In this article, I draw attention to law’s pecuniary value. Law, I argue, is the very stuff from which many wealth generating, or capital, assets are made, foremost among them intangible assets that account for most of the private wealth today. For law to serve as a fountain of wealth, it must be backed by state power, and indeed, sovereign states have been more than willing to offer (...) a helping hand. They have found intellectual support in neoclassical economics and in its off-spring, law and economics, theoretical approaches that have sought to ground law in the scientific analysis of the economy, in efficiency rather than in justice. In doing so, they have averted their eyes from the fact that the most critical source for wealth, that is law, is itself of the state and should be subject to social norms enshrined in our constitutions, not abstract welfarism. (shrink)

In Virtue, Piety and the Law Katharina Ivanyi examines Birgivī Meḥmed Efendī's (d. 981/1573) al-Ṭarīqa al-muḥammadiyya, a major work of pietist exhortation and advice, composed by the sixteenth-century Ottoman jurist, Ḥadīth scholar and grammarian, who would articulate a style of religiosity that had considerable reformist appeal into modern times. Linking the cultivation of individual virtue to questions of wider political, social and economic concern, Birgivīplayed a significant role in the negotiation and articulation of early modern Ottoman Ḥanafīpiety. Birgivī's deep (...) mistrust of the passions of the human soul led him to prescribe a regime of self-surveillance and control that was only matched in rigor by his likewise exacting interpretation of the law in matters of everyday life, as much as in state practices, such as the cash waqf, Ottoman land tenure and taxation. (shrink)

Verschwörungstheorien verbreiten sich im Netz wie Lauffeuer und sind schon lange kein Randphänomen mehr. Katharina Nocun und Pia Lamberty beschreiben, wie sich Menschen aus der Mitte der Gesellschaft durch Verschwörungstheorien radikalisieren und die Demokratie als Ganzes ablehnen. Welche Rolle spielen neue Medien in diesem Prozess? Wie schnell wird jeder von uns zu einem Verschwörungstheoretiker? Und wie können wir verdrehte Fakten aufdecken und uns vor Meinungsmache schützen?

If circumstances were always simple and all arguers were always exclusively concerned with cognitive improvement, arguments would probably always be cooperative. However, we have other goals and there are other arguers, so in practice the default seems to be adversarial argumentation. We naturally inhabit the heuristically helpful but cooperation-inhibiting roles of proponents and opponents. We can, however, opt for more cooperative roles. The resources of virtue argumentation theory are used to explain when proactive cooperation is permissible, advisable, and even mandatory (...) – and also when it is not. (shrink)

Scholars increasingly argue that entrepreneurs and their small- and medium-sized enterprises should play a central role in reducing the rate and magnitude of climate change. However, evidence suggests that while some entrepreneurs recognize their crucial role in addressing climate change, most do not. Why some entrepreneurs nevertheless concern themselves with climate change has largely been overlooked. Some initial work in this area tentatively suggests that these entrepreneurs may engage with climate change because of their personal values, which either focus on (...) financial or socio-ecological reasons, or a combination of both. Yet, it is unclear if all for-profit entrepreneurs engage with climate change for the same reasons, or if indeed their motivations vary across business types. Over a period of four years, we examined entrepreneurs’ motivations to engage with climate change through a variety of qualitative research methods. Our findings illustrate how entrepreneurs who address climate change have motivations specific to their business activity/industry and level of maturity. In each instance, we link these motivations to distinct conceptualizations of time and place. We contend that, through a more differentiated understanding of entrepreneurial motivations, policy-makers can draft climate change-related policies tailored to entrepreneurial needs. Policies could both increase the number of entrepreneurs who already engage in climate change mitigation and leverage the impact of those entrepreneurs already mitigating climate change. (shrink)

This article advocates a new interpretation ofinner experience– the experience that one has of one’s empirical-psychological features ‘from within’ – in Kant. It argues that for Kant inner experience is the empirical cognition of mental states, but not that of a persistent mental substance. The schema of persistence is thereby substituted with the regulative idea of the soul. This view is shown to be superior to two opposed interpretations: the parity view that regards inner experience as empirical cognition of a (...) mental object on a par with outer experience and the disparity view that denies altogether that inner experience is empirical cognition. (shrink)

German medical students are not sufficiently introduced to the ethical principles and pitfalls of scientific work. Therefore, a compulsory course on good scientific practice has been developed and implemented into the curriculum of medical students, with the goal to foster scientific integrity and prevent scientific misconduct. Students’ knowledge and attitudes towards GSP were evaluated by a pre-post-teaching questionnaire survey. Most participants initially had startling knowledge gaps in the field. Moreover, they were not acquainted with core institutions on GSP, the office (...) of ombudsperson and the nationally binding guidelines on GSP. The pre-post-teaching comparison showed statistically significant improvement in all areas tested; moreover, after the course participants confided more trust in GSP institutions. Applying ethical rules into practice can be challenging; therefore, students need to learn to work independently with guidelines on GSP and should be introduced to institutions providing further guidance. As our study has shown, students are very willing to pursue a scientific career based on integrity and honesty, however, they lack the knowledge how to do so. In light of our results, we therefore recommend to integrate courses on GSP already at an early time into the mandatory curriculum of medical students. (shrink)

Katharina D. Giesel befasst sich mit den Fragen, was in den verschiedensten Sozialwissenschaften unter Leitbildern verstanden wird, wie diese Kategorie konzeptionell in Forschungs- und Handlungskonzepte eingebunden wird und inwiefern ...

A realist view of numbers often rests on the following thesis: statements like ‘The number of moons of Jupiter is four’ are identity statements in which the copula is flanked by singular terms whose semantic function consists in referring to a number (henceforth: Identity). On the basis of Identity the realists argue that the assertive use of such statements commits us to numbers. Recently, some anti-realists have disputed this argument. According to them, Identity is false, and, thus, we may deny (...) that the relevant statements commit us to numbers. The present paper argues that the correct linguistic analysis of the relevant number statements supports the anti-realist view that Identity is false. However, as will further be shown, pace the anti-realist, this analysis does not establish that such statements do not commit us to numbers after all. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that ‘good care’ in residential nursing homes is enacted through different care practices that are either inspired by a ‘professional logic of care’ that aims for justice and non-maleficence in the professional treatment of residents, or by a ‘relational logic of care’, which attends to the relational quality and the meaning of interpersonal connectedness in people’s lives. Rather than favoring one care logic over the other, this paper indicates how important aspects of care are constantly (...) negotiated between different care practices. Based on the intricate everyday negotiations observed during an ethnographic field study at an elderly nursing home in Germany, the paper puts forth the argument that care is always a matter of tinkering with different, sometimes competing ‘goods’. This tinkering process, which unfolds through ‘intuitive deliberation’, ‘situated assessment’ and ‘affective juggling’ is then theorized along the conceptualization of a ‘practical ethics of care’: an ethics which makes no a priori judgments of what may be considered as good or bad care, but instead calls for momentary judgments that are pliable across changing situations. (shrink)

Wie denkt Friedrich Schleiermacher, mit dem man zuerst die Bestimmung von Frömmigkeit als Gefühl der schlechthinnigen Abhängigkeit verbindet, die Freiheit des Subjekts? Um diese Frage zu beantworten, untersucht Katharina Gutekunst die relevanten Werke aus allen Schaffensperioden Schleiermachers: die Jugendschriften, die Monologen, die Erwählungsschrift, die Glaubenslehre und die Vorlesungen zu Psychologie, Philosophischer Ethik und Dialektik. Die Rekonstruktion und Diskussion der Freiheitstheorie Schleiermachers erfolgt dabei im Horizont der aktuellen Debatte um die Willensfreiheit in der analytischen Philosophie. So wird deutlich, dass Schleiermacher (...) eine kompatibilistische Theorie vertritt, die auch die ontologischen und metaphysischen Begründungszusammenhänge von Freiheit reflektiert. (shrink)

This article presents a new measure for intimate partner violence, the Gendered Violence in Partnerships Scale. The scale was developed in the Middle East with the aim to contribute to the global perspective on IPV by providing a contextual assessment tool for partner violence against women in violent-torn settings embedded in a patriarchal social structure. In an effort to generate a scale including IPV items relevant to the women of the population, a pragmatic step-wise procedure, with focus group discussions and (...) expert panels, was performed. The study’s analyses resulted in an 18-item checklist featuring four subscales of the GVPS that are based on a new typology of male-to-female partner violence presenting an alternative to the commonly used classification by type of abuse. Therein, dominating behaviors, existential threats, impulsive aggression, and aggravated physical assault were identified as reflective of the lived realities of women in the war-torn Middle East, which was confirmed in factor analysis. The scale’s psychometric properties were assessed with data from 1,009 displaced women in Iraq, and associations with measures of psychopathology were determined. Implications for IPV assessment and prevention possibilities in humanitarian contexts and beyond are discussed. (shrink)