Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 1-6.

It is well known that there has been a steady and significant underrepresentation of women in philosophy on different professional levels. Numerous hypotheses explaining this underrepresentation have been suggested, but empirical analyses are not yet extensive. In particular, studies of the phenomenon in different countries are nonexistent. In this paper, we present findings from an exploratory study in which we analyze the interests, abilities, beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and goals of bachelor’s students in a semester-long philosophy of science course at a (...) major German university. We furthermore make the first attempt to compare women-only learning environments with mixed-gender learning environments. Our results suggest that while there are generally some gender differences regarding interests, abilities, beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and goals of students in the classroom, most of the hypotheses we explore to explain dropout rates by gender differences cannot be supported. We conclude that possible factors leading to the underrepresentation of women in philosophy in Germany might be found in the social and institutional environment within which philosophy is taught. (shrink)

_Systematic public vaccination constitutes a tremendous health success, perhaps the greatest achievement of biomedicine so far. There is, however, room for improvement. Each year, 1.5 million deaths could be avoided with enhanced immunisation coverage. In recent years, many countries have introduced mandatory childhood vaccination programmes in an attempt to avoid deaths. In Norway, however, the vaccination programme has remained voluntary. Our childhood immunisation programme covers protection for twelve infectious diseases, and Norwegian children are systematically immunised from six weeks to sixteen (...) years of age. In this article, we address the question of whether our country, Norway, should make the childhood vaccination programme mandatory. This question has received considerable public attention in the media, yet surprisingly little academic discussion has followed. The aim of the article is to systematically discuss whether it is morally justified to introduce a mandatory childhood vaccination programme in Norway. Our discussion proceeds as follows: We begin by presenting relevant background information on the history of vaccines and the current Norwegian childhood vaccination programme. Next, we discuss what we consider to be the most central arguments against mandatory childhood vaccination: the argument from the standpoints of parental rights, bodily integrity, naturalness, mistrust, and immunisation coverage. After that, we examine the central arguments in favour of mandatory childhood vaccination from the standpoints of harm, herd immunity, and as a precautionary strategy. We conclude that there are convincing moral arguments in favour of adopting a policy of mandatory childhood vaccination in Norway._ _Keywords_: autonomy, harm principle, herd immunity, parental rights, precautionary approach. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 2 Seiten: 614-617.

The author endeavours to show two things: first, that Schrödingers (and Eckarts) demonstration in March (September) 1926 of the equivalence of matrix mechanics, as created by Heisenberg, Born, Jordan and Dirac in 1925, and wave mechanics, as created by Schrödinger in 1926, is not foolproof; and second, that it could not have been foolproof, because at the time matrix mechanics and wave mechanics were neither mathematically nor empirically equivalent. That they were is the Equivalence Myth. In order to make the (...) theories equivalent and to prove this, one has to leave the historical scene of 1926 and wait until 1932, when von Neumann finished his magisterial edifice. During the period 1926–1932 the original families of mathematical structures of matrix mechanics and of wave mechanics were stretched, parts were chopped off and novel structures were added. To Procrustean places we go, where we can demonstrate the mathematical, empirical and ontological equivalence of ‘the final versions of’ matrix mechanics and wave mechanics. -/- The present paper claims to be a comprehensive analysis of one of the pivotal papers in the history of quantum mechanics: Schrödingers equivalence paper. Since the analysis is performed from the perspective of Suppes structural view (‘semantic view’) of physical theories, the present paper can be regarded not only as a morsel of the internal history of quantum mechanics, but also as a morsel of applied philosophy of science. The paper is self-contained and presupposes only basic knowledge of quantum mechanics. For reasons of length, the paper is published in two parts; Part I appeared in the previous issue of this journal. Section 1 contains, besides an introduction, also the papers five claims and a preview of the arguments supporting these claims; so Part I, Section 1 may serve as a summary of the paper for those readers who are not interested in the detailed arguments. (shrink)

We prove the following result which is due to the third author. Let [Formula: see text]. If [Formula: see text] determinacy and [Formula: see text] determinacy both hold true and there is no [Formula: see text]-definable [Formula: see text]-sequence of pairwise distinct reals, then [Formula: see text] exists and is [Formula: see text]-iterable. The proof yields that [Formula: see text] determinacy implies that [Formula: see text] exists and is [Formula: see text]-iterable for all reals [Formula: see text]. A consequence is (...) the Determinacy Transfer Theorem for arbitrary [Formula: see text], namely the statement that [Formula: see text] determinacy implies [Formula: see text] determinacy. (shrink)

In his 2009 PSA Recent Ph.D. Award winning contribution to the bi-annual PSA Conference at Pittsburgh in 2008, C. Wu ̈thrich mounted an argument against struc- turalism about space-time in the context of the General Theory of Relativity, to the effect that structuralists cannot discern space-time points. An “abysmal embarrass- ment” for the structuralist, Wu ̈thrich judged. Wu ̈thrich’s characterisation of space-time structuralism is however incorrect. We demonstrate how, on the basis of a correct char- acterisation of space-time structuralism, it (...) is possible to discern space-time points in the GTR-structures under consideration. Thus Wu ̈thrich’s argument crumbles. (shrink)

Die Geschichte der internationalen Beziehungen gehort derzeit zu den dynamischsten und innovativsten Feldern der deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft. Eine historische Teildisziplin, die lange Zeit als eher traditionell und konservativ galt, erweitert und erneuert sich. Diesen Prozess dokumentieren die Beitrage des vorliegenden Bandes. Sie leisten eine Bestandsaufnahme, entwickeln Perspektiven und reflektieren so die ganze Bandbreite einer modernen Geschichte der internationalen Beziehungen. Gepragt ist der Band durch den Dialog von Historikern, die sich mit unterschiedlicher Ausrichtung - politik-, wirtschafts-, sozial- oder kulturgeschichtlich - fur internationale (...) Geschichte interessieren. Das Spektrum der Beitrage reicht von der Erforschung von Globalisierungsprozessen uber Fragen des Kulturtransfers bis hin zu einer internationalen Politikgeschichte. (shrink)

At a time when the label "conservative" is indiscriminately applied to fundamentalists, populists, libertarians, fascists, and the advocates of one or another orthodoxy, this volume offers a nuanced and historically informed presentation of ...

Over the past years, in books and journals (this journal included), N. Maxwell launched a ferocious attack on B. C. van Fraassen’s view of science called Constructive Empiricism (CE). This attack has been totally ignored. Must we conclude from this silence that no defence is possible and that a fortiori Maxwell has buried CE once and for all? Or is the attack too obviously flawed as not to merit exposure? A careful dissection of Maxwell’s reasoning will make it clear that (...) neither is the case. This dissection includes an analysis of Maxwell’s ‘aberrance–argument’ (omnipresent in his many writings) for the claim that science implicitly and permanently accepts a substantial, metaphysical thesis about the universe, which then paves the way for his own metaphysical-realist hierarchy-view of science. This aberrance-claim, which Maxwell directs against a widely shared and harmful ideology of science called ‘Standard Empiricism’, generally has been ignored too, for more than a quarter of a century. Our conclusions will be that (i) Maxwell’s attacks on CE can be beaten off, and (ii) his ‘aberrance–arguments’ do not establish what Maxwell believes they establish, but (iii) we can draw a number of valuable lessons from these attacks about the nature of science and of the libertarian nature of CE. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty wrote prolifically throughout his life on psychology, aesthetics, and politics, on pedagogy, physics, and painting. Between his appointment to the Université de Lyon in 1945 and his sudden death in Paris in 1961—a copy of Descartes’ Dioptrique on the desk in front of him—the survey of courses he taught is dizzying in scope. For all its promise, however, the interdisciplinary nature of Merleau-Ponty’s work, and the abruptness of its end, raises the question of how these projects connect. The question (...) is encouraged by Merleau-Ponty’s own notes, which indicate that the book he was working on at the time of his death was meant to return to problems left “insoluble” in Phenomenology of Perception (VI 200). Did he hope this work would supersede the Phenomenology? to correct for its false start? to press on in the same direction? (shrink)

The text focus is to identify some of the fields where the Sartre’s thought offers theoretical resources for the contemporaneous debate about the cultural justice. To reach this goal, it is established which the Sartrean critics are to the abstract universality, beginning from the “Reflexiones sobre la cuestión judía” text.

In this original work of psychoanalytic theory, John Muller explores the formative power of signs and their impact on the mind, the body and subjectivity, giving special attention to work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Muller explores how Lacan's way of understanding experience through three dimensions--the real, the imaginary and the symbolic--can be useful both for thinking about cultural phenomena and for understanding the complexities involved in treating psychotic patients. (...) class='Hi'>Muller develops Lacan's perspective gradually, presenting it as distinctive approaches to data from a variety of sources, such as cognitive, social and developmental psychology, literature, history, art, and psychoanalytic treatment. The book's first four chapters present Muller's reading of selected data from child development research, psychology and linguistics, approximating a semiotic model of "normal" development. The following three chapters examine in a Lacanian framework the structural basis of psychotic stages as indicative of massive semiotic failure in development. The final chapters on human narcissism suggest reasons that "normal" development may be impossible. (shrink)

The link between leadership and mental health at the workplace is well established by prior research. However, most of the studies have addressed this relationship from a single-source perspective. The aim of this study was to examine how supervisor and employee ratings of health-oriented leadership correspond to each other and which sources are predictive for employee mental health. We assessed data within 99 teams containing 713 employees in 11 different companies in Southern Germany. Supervisors and their staff completed questionnaires on (...) the supervisors’ health-oriented staff-care dimensions awareness, value of health and health behavior and current mental distress. Hierarchical linear models revealed that supervisors’ self-ratings were significantly related to their employees’ ratings only on the health behavior dimension, but not on the health awareness and value of health dimensions. Also, supervisors rated themselves significantly higher on HoL compared to their employees. Employee ratings of HoL significantly predicted their own level of mental distress, whereas supervisor ratings of HoL did not predict employees’ mental distress at the team level. Supervisors’ self-ratings of HoL did not influence the relationship between employee ratings of HoL and their mental distress on an individual level. These results highlight the complex relationship between multisource assessments of HoL and employee mental health, emphasizing the importance of subjective perception for mental health. Future studies should investigate under which conditions supervisor and employee ratings correspond to each other and are predictive for mental health at the workplace. (shrink)

Donald Davidson famously held that only beliefs provide reasons for belief. Perceptual experiences, he held, are not even propositional attitudes, and thus doubly disqualified from being reason providers. John McDowell and others have tried to restore the intuitive reason-providing role of experience by suggesting that experiences do have contents. However, on McDowell’s account, experiences provide ‘reasons’ in a sense very different from the Davidsonian. In this paper, I argue that there is a better way of rescuing the reason-providing role of (...) experience: Construed as a (special) kind of belief, experience provides reasons for belief in precisely the Davidsonian sense. Moreover, the doxastic account of experience I suggest integrates naturally both with the Davidsonian picture of content determination and, consequently, with Davidsonian anti-skepticism. (shrink)

Est ici publiée une stèle inédite, composée de deux fragments découverts en 2012 et 2017 et portant sept catalogues militaires de la cité de Chorsiai en Béotie du Sud‑Ouest. Ces documents, gravés sans doute par le même lapicide, s’échelonnent, d’après la nouvelle chronologie des archontes fédéraux, entre 223/222 et ca. 194/193 av. J.‑C. On compte un nouvel archonte, Kalliklès, qui peut être daté de 196/195. L’analyse de ces documents est l’occasion d’une réflexion portant principalement sur deux points : d’une part, (...) les modalités d’application de la possible réforme militaire intervenue en Béotie dans le dernier quart du iiie s. malgré la présence d’éphèbes thyréaphores sous l’archonte Hippias I (221/220), alors que sous le même archonte à Aigosthènes ils sont classés parmi les peltophores ; d’autre part, le nombre de conscrits (entre un et sept) et la manière dont ce polisma contribuait, selon ses forces, à l’effort militaire du koinon béotien. (shrink)

The theory of branching space-times, put forward by Belnap, considers indeterminism as local in space and time. In the axiomatic foundations of that theory, so-called choice points mark the points at which the possible future can turn out in different ways. Working under the assumption of choice points is suitable for many applications, but has an unwelcome topological consequence that makes it difficult to employ branching space-times to represent a range of possible physical space-times. Therefore it is interesting to develop (...) a branching space-times theory without choice points. This is what we set out to do in this paper, providing new foundations for branching space-times in terms of choice sets rather than choice points. After motivating and developing the resulting theory in formal detail, we show that it is possible to translate structures of one style into structures of the other style and vice versa. This result shows that the underlying idea of indeterminism as the branching of spatio-temporal histories is robust with respect to different implementations, making a choice between them a matter of expediency rather than of principle. (shrink)

The Digital Dictionary of Buddhism [DDB] (http://buddhism-dict.net/ddb), now on the Web for more than 15 years, has become a primary reference work for the field of Buddhist Studies. Containing over 53,000 entries, it is subscribed to by more than 30 university libraries (http://www.buddhism-dict.net/ddb/subscribing_libraries.html), and supported by the contributions of over 70 specialists, many of these recognized leaders in the field. It can perhaps be described as example of the type of web resource that has reached a degree of status and (...) sustainability such that it has been able to grow and thrive as a collaborativelydeveloped online reference—despite having little funding or the support of a major organization or team of programmers—in the age where such resources are so readily washed away by the combination of Wikipedia and Google. Thus, the field of Buddhist Studies has its own reliable, scholarly-edited, fully documented and responsible resource that has developed a center of gravity sufficient for it to continue to grow as the resource that specialists turn to first without hesitation, and to which they may contribute knowing that they will be clearly accredited, and that what they write will not be deleted or changed in the following moment by, for example, a junior high school student. Recently, the technical advisor to the DDB, Michael Beddow, has completed a full overhaul of the supporting structure of the DDB and CJKV-E dictionaries, which will include a broad range of enhanced functions, both internal to the dictionary and in terms of interoperation with other lexicons and web corpora. This presentation will start off with a demonstration of the most advanced functions of the DDB, to be followed by a brief overview of its technical framework (P5-influenced XML, delivered through XSL and Perl). We will then outline the key factors of the management of the DDB that we believe have most directly contributed to its success. (shrink)

:Behavioural public policy has come under fire by critics who claim that it is illiberal. Some authors recently suggest that there is a type of BPP – boosting – that is not as vulnerable to this normative critique. Our paper challenges this claim: there's no non-circular way to draw the distinction between nudge and boost that would make the normative difference required to infer the permissibility of a policy intervention from its type-membership. We consider two strategies: paradigmatic examples and causal (...) mechanisms. We conclude by sketching some suggestions about the right way to approach the normative issues. (shrink)

In National Socialist Germany Jewish academicians and professional staff were initially deprived of their rights and marginalised, later they were chased down and murdered. With regard to those, who were able to escape the National Socialist realm of power, one can speak of a forced migration of academicians that reached a dimension which until now was unknown. A greater number of different academic as well as non-academic occupational groups have been examined in the past few years in connection with their (...) influence on scientific as well as social developments within the context of immigration. In this context Palestine, later Israel, occupies a special position. There exists a deficiency in research for the occupational group of physicians with regard to overindividual studies, which will be the focus of this analysis. There is no question about their part not only in the establishment of medical care structures in Palestine as well as the design and diversification of the Israeli health care system, but also in the international significance of Israeli developments in medicine and life sciences in the second half of the twentieth century. This study will examine members of a Zionist grouping that had exhibited Zionist engagement already before their flight from Europe. The objective of this examination is to determine the substantial contribution of Zionist physicians in designing the medical structures in the country. (shrink)

Definition of the problem In Germany, there is currently a significant gap in the care of persons affected by obesity due to the absence of a standardized therapy path, regional variations in health services, and case-by-case decisions for approval. This situation prompts the discussion of integrating digital obesity applications into the existing care framework. Arguments The analysis presents an ethical reflection on the use of digital health applications for obesity treatment, examining their suitability for this complex chronic condition, which has (...) multifactorial causes and a heterogeneous patient group. We evaluate the social, advisory, and organizational aspects required to meet the diverse needs of those affected. The study highlights key ethical challenges such as avoiding stigmatization and discrimination, acknowledging the diversity of patient groups, and integrating holistic therapeutic approaches. The article also emphasizes the importance of participatory research methods to incorporate the perspectives and experiences of patients systematically. Conclusion Digital health applications hold potential to significantly improve obesity care in Germany, especially in regions with limited access to traditional therapy options. Successful implementation, however, requires careful ethical reflection and empirical research. It is crucial that these applications address the diversity and complexity of the patient population and their specific needs, which will contribute to a reduction of the care gap. (shrink)

Socially engaged art presents social situations to be understood, experienced, and evaluated as works of art while they simultaneously retain everyday non-art functionality. This article begins with an account of the definitional and evaluative concerns that socially engaged art engenders, outlining the debates around the relative importance of ethical and aesthetic values that result from this unsettled relationship between art and non-art. Based on this account, I argue that all socially engaged art requires successful performative bids that declare the work (...) to be art and that it is possible to identify the felicity conditions in which these bids are likely to be successful, as well as the perlocutionary effects that occur when a situation is categorized as art. I apply this analytic framework in a discussion and comparison of pieces by Santiago Sierra and Mierle Laderman Ukeles, demonstrating how this framework facilitates assessments that account for the works as art, while interrogating and evaluating the ethics of their categorization as art. (shrink)

O objeto da discussão se propõe a buscar na origem do pensamento conservador do XIX e na sua relação com a teologia neoescolástica à chave interpretativa da renovação eclesial e teológica proporcionada pelo Concilio Vaticano II. A vinculação entre teologia e dogmática católica e sua relação com o pensamento conservador pretendem assegurar o retorno a um ideal da cristandade através de uma oposição cerrada com uma filosofia combativa e uma teologia dogmática “antimodernista”. Por um lado, o pensamento conservador alcança seu (...) declínio e permanece a margem diante do surgimento do novo proporcionado pelo Concilio e por outro lado, a desconexão da teologia de toda a cristandade, permite uma renovação da metodologia dogmática católica. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. The author looks at two themes in the writings of four African scholars: E. Bolaji Idowu, John Mbiti, Okot p’Bitek and Kwame Appiah. She surveys their ideas about the existence of truth and of a High God. For each theme, she outlines the significance of each author’s work. In the conclusion the coherence between both themes is shown with the help of two varieties of philosophical positions and aesthetic styles, notably: modern-ism and postmodernism She shows why Idowu and Mbiti (...) should be categorized as mod-ernist. She argues that Okot p’Bitek’s view of God-as-dead shows him to be a modernist and why his deconstruction of the work of previous scholars also makes him a postmod-ernist avant la lettre. Finally, she argues that Appiah’s postmodern vision on the non-existence of one single truth has been conducive to his vision on identity as a bricolage of traditional and modern elements of culture. KEY WORDS. African religion, Appiah (Kwame), discourse, High God, Idowu (Bolaji), Mbiti (John), modernism, Okot p’Bitek, postmodernism, truth. (shrink)

L’histoire du couple formé par Amélie et Frédéric Ozanam n’est pas une page blanche : Frédéric Ozanam est l’un des fondateurs des sociétés de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, associations de patronage qui ont contribué à façonner le paysage charitable de Paris au xixe siècle. Cette notoriété a contribué, ces dernières années, à porter l’attention sur la place et l’influence d’Amélie Ozanam, sa femme, dans les activités charitables et intellectuelles de cette figure du catholicisme « romantique », pour...

This paper aims at bringing together two debates in metaphysics that so far have been kept separate: the debate about determinism vs. indeterminism as de re modality on the one hand, and the debate about persistence on the other hand. Both debates significantly involve talk of things. We will show that working out a proper semantics for singular terms and an accompanying theory of things, motivated by considerations of quantified modal logic, can significantly further the persistence debate. We will use (...) our semantic framework to give an argument in support of the endurantist position as the best theory of persistence. (shrink)