abstract: The first Christian missionaries arrived in Japan in the middle of the sixteenth century. They missionized quite a number of Japanese people but also angered many through their disrespectful behavior and destruction of temples and shrines. Less than 100 years later, Japan closed its borders, persecuted Christians, and banned Christianity in total. The reasons for this drastic step weren't solely political but also theological. Theological arguments concerning theism, eschatology, ethics, and theology of religion are found in official edicts, in (...) "disputes" between Christian missionaries and Buddhist scholars, as well as in theological treatise. One of the reoccurring arguments against Christianity includes the description of the arrogant behavior of the missionaries. According to the documents, they displayed an attitude of knowing everything concerning the world next to the ignorant Buddhists. This exclusivist mindset wasn't compatible with the order of Japan and the three teachings. In the eyes of the authorities, this doctrine secured peace and ensured domestic stability. Especially the Japanese and former Christian Fabian Fucan, as well as the Buddhist monk Suzuki Shōsan, adduce various Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist teachings against the charge of ignorance. Conversely, Fucan's writing, as well as the edicts, records of religious "disputes," and other treatises, include the accusation that Christianity does not contain any new doctrine advancing the local one. Moreover, it is stated that Christian salvation exclusivism suggests a powerless God, and the missionaries were described as hypocrites and liars, as they did not keep their commandments. (shrink)

Ästhetisches Erleben ist ein komplexes Zusammenspiel aus ineinandergreifenden Prozessen. Wahrnehmungsprozesse entschlüsseln die Struktur und regen an, sich über inhaltliche Aspekte Gedanken zu machen. Die Lerngeschichte eines Betrachters bestimmt dabei seine Seh- und Denkgewohnheiten. Motivation bestimmt, ob und wie lange der Rezipient sich auf das ästhetische Erleben einlassen will, und wie intensiv die daraus resultierenden Emotionen sind. Jede ästhetische Reaktion ist eine individuelle Mischung aus all diesen Prozessen, die sich gegenseitig hervorrufen und bedingen. Diese Arbeit entwickelt ein theoretisches Modell zur (...) Erklärung dieser komplexen, dynamischen Abläufe. Durch theoriegeleitete Einzelfallanalysen gelingt es, die verschiedenen beteiligten psychischen Prozesse und Strukturen in ihrem Zusammenwirken zu formalisieren. Aus diesem Modell lassen sich individuelle ästhetische Reaktionen erklären und prognostizieren. (shrink)

The institution of the family and its importance have recently received considerable attention from political theorists. Leading views maintain that the institution’s justification is grounded, at least in part, in the non-instrumental value of the parent-child relationship itself. Such views face the challenge of identifying a specific good in the parent-child relationship that can account for how adults acquire parental rights over a particular child—as opposed to general parental rights, which need not warrant a claim to parent one’s biological progeny. (...) I develop a view that meets this challenge. This Project View identifies the pursuit of a parental project as a distinctive non-instrumentally valuable good that provides a justification for the family and whose pursuit is necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of parental rights. This view grounds moral parenthood in a normative relation as opposed to a biological one, supports polyadic forms of parenting, and provides plausible guidance in cases of assisted reproduction. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the Transparency Thesis, the claim that by introspection one cannot become aware of one's experience. Recently, some authors have suggested that the Transparency Thesis is challenged by introspective states reached under mindfulness. We label this the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis. The present paper develops the hypothesis in important new ways. First, we motivate the hypothesis by drawing on recent clinical psychology and cognitive science of mindfulness. Secondly, we develop the hypothesis by describing the implied shift in experiential perspective, (...) the scope of introspectable qualities, and the level of skill. Thirdly, we defend the hypothesis against various philosophical arguments. We conclude that the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis is empirically and theoretically well motivated and supported. (shrink)

Among the niftiest arguments for scientific anti-realism is the ‘pessimistic induction’ (also sometimes called ‘the disastrous historical meta-induction’). Although various versions of this argument differ in their details (see, for example, Poincare 1952: 160, Putnam 1978: 25, and Laudan 1981), the argument generally begins by recalling the many scientific theories that posit unobservable entities and that at one time or another were widely accepted. The anti-realist then argues that when these old theories were accepted, the evidence for them was quite (...) persuasive – roughly as compelling as our current evidence is for our best scientific theories positing various unobservable entities. Nevertheless, the anti-realist argues, most of these old theories turned out to be incorrect in the unobservables they posited. Therefore, the anti-realist concludes that with regard to the theories we currently accept, we should believe that probably, most of them are likewise incorrect in the unobservable entities they posit. (This argument appeals to what our best current theories say about unobservables in order to show that the entities posited by some earlier theory are not real. So the argument takes the form of a reductio of the view that the apparent success of some scientific theory justifies our believing in its accuracy regarding unobservables.) Of course, this argument has been criticized on many grounds. Some have argued, for instance, that the scientific theories we currently accept are much better supported than were earlier scientific theories at the time they were accepted. In addition, some have argued that many scientific theories accepted justly in the past were in fact accurate.. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSpatial cueing paradigms are popular tools to assess human attention to emotional stimuli, but different variants of these paradigms differ in what participants’ primary task is. In one variant, participants indicate the location of the target, whereas in the other they indicate the shape of the target. In the present paper we test the idea that although these two variants produce seemingly comparable cue validity effects on response times, they rest on different underlying processes. Across four studies using both variants (...) and manipulating the motivational relevance of cue content, diffusion model analyses revealed that cue validity effects in location tasks are primarily driven by response biases, whereas the same effect rests on delay due to attention to the cue in identification tasks. Based on this, we predict and empirically support that a symmetrical distribution of valid and invalid cues would reduce cue validity... (shrink)

Why should science be so interested in discovering whether p is a law over and above whether p is true? The answer may involve the laws' relation to counterfactuals: p is a law iff p would still have obtained under any counterfactual supposition that is consistent with the laws. But unless we already understand why science is especially concerned with the laws, we cannot explain why science is especially interested in what would have happened under those counterfactual suppositions consistent with (...) the laws. It is argued that the laws form the only non-trivially "stable" set, where "stability" is invariance under a certain range of counterfactual suppositions not itself defined by reference to the laws. It is then explained why science should be so interested in identifying a non-trivially "stable" set: because of stability's relation to the best set of "inductive strategies". (shrink)

Scientific realism is the view that one can be justified in believing, of some theory about unobservable entities, that the entities it posits are real and accurately described by the theory, in the same sense as one can be justified in believing that the theory’s empirical predictions are accurate, and that so to believe is what it means for a scientist to “accept” that theory, because the goal of science is to describe reality, even its unobservable features. The first part (...) is an epistemic claim, whereas the second concerns the rational reconstruction of scientific practice. Together they suggest that evidence justifying scientific acceptance of a theory justifies belief that the unobservable entities it posits are real and as the theory purports them to be. Anti-realism denies ; it holds that claims about unobservables are either unjustified or justified in a different sense from predictions of observations. It also denies ; it maintains that in her scientific work, as rationally reconstructed, a scientist who accepts a claim about unobservables believes that it yields accurate predictions of observables, not that it describes unobservables. (shrink)

Very little has been done to find out what corporations have done to build ethical values into their organizations. In this report on a survey of 1984 Fortune 1000 industrial and service companies the Center for Business Ethics reveals some facts regarding codes of ethics, ethics committees, social audits, ethics training programs, boards of directors, and other areas where corporations might institutionalize ethics. Based on the survey, the Center for Business Ethics is convinced that corporations are beginning to take steps (...) to institutionalize ethics, while recognizing that in most cases more specific mechanisms and strategies need to be implemented to make their ethics efforts truly effective. (shrink)

This chapter presents arguments positing that there is an important sense in which it takes more than all of the actual kinds to make a world, contrary to the popular saying that goes “it takes all kinds to make a world.” In a variety of ways, the various species of elementary particles are ideal cases of natural kinds since each belongs to exactly one of these natural kinds and it essentially belongs to that kind. There exists perfect uniformities within each (...) species and sharp distinctions between the species with respect to certain properties. Some of these properties are essential and suffice to give necessary and adequate conditions for species-membership, while others derive from the fundamental properties via exceptionless uniformities with no ceteris paribus escape clauses. (shrink)

Mainstream nursing history often positions itself in opposition to philosophy and many nursing historians are reticent of theorizing. In the quest to illuminate the lives of nurses and women current historical approaches are driven by reformist aspirations but are based on the conception that nursing or caring is basically good and the timelessness of universal values. This has the effect of essentialising political categories of identity such as class, race and gender. This kind of history is about affirmation rather than (...) friction and about the conservation of memory and musealization. In contrast, we will focus on how we imagine nursing history could be used as a philosophical, critical perspective to challenge the ongoing transformations of our societies. Existing reality must be confronted with strangeness and the historically different can assume the function of this counterpart, meaning present and past must continuously be set in relation to each other. Thus, critical history is always the history of the present but not merely the pre‐history of the present – critique must rather present different realities and different certainties. In this paper, we use this approach to discuss the implementation of the nursing process (NP) in Germany. The nursing process appears to be a technology that helped to set up an infrastructure ‐ or assemblage ‐ to transform nursing interventions into a commodity exchangable between consumers and nurses in a free market. In our theoretical perspective, we argue that NP was a step in the realization of the German ordoliberal program, a specific variety of neoliberalism. In order to implement market‐orientation in the healthcare system it was necessary to transform hospitals into calculable spaces and to make all performances in the hospital calculable. This radically transformed not just the systems, but the ways in which nurses and patients conveived of themselves. (shrink)

Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) is one of the most prominent theories employed in deep parsing of natural language. Many linguistic theories are arguably best formalized in extensions of modal or dynamic logic (Keller, Feature logics, infinitary descriptions and grammar, 1993; Kracht, Linguistics Philos 18:401–458, 1995; Moss and Tiede, In: Blackburn, van Benthem, and Wolther (eds.) Handbook of modal logic, 2006), and HPSG seems to be no exception. Adequate extensions of dynamic logic have not been studied in detail, however; the (...) most important aspect is the reference to sets of substructures. In this paper, an adequate extension is identified, and some important results are established: Satisfiability is highly undecidable, and model checking is shown to be in EXPTIME and PSPACE-hard. A fragment with polynomial time model checking procedures is identified; it is shown to cover considerable fragments of HPSG. (shrink)

Digital duplicates reduce the scarcity of individuals and thus may impact their instrumental and intrinsic value. I here expand upon this idea by introducing the notion of collective scarcity, which pertains to the limitations faced by social groups in maintaining their size, cohesion and function.

With the rise and public accessibility of AI-enabled decision-support systems, individuals outsource increasingly more of their decisions, even those that carry ethical dimensions. Considering this trend, scholars have highlighted that uncritical deference to these systems would be problematic and consequently called for investigations of the impact of pertinent technology on humans’ ethical decision-making. To this end, this article conducts a systematic review of existing scholarship and derives an integrated framework that demonstrates how intelligent decision-support systems (IDSSs) shape humans’ ethical decision-making. (...) In particular, we identify resulting consequences on an individual level (i.e., deliberation enhancement, motivation enhancement, autonomy enhancement and action enhancement) and on a societal level (i.e., moral deskilling, restricted moral progress and moral responsibility gaps). We carve out two distinct methods/operation types (i.e., processoriented and outcome-oriented navigation) that decision-support systems can deploy and postulate that these determine to what extent the previously stated consequences materialize. Overall, this study holds important theoretical and practical implications by establishing clarity in the conceptions, underlying mechanisms and (directions of) influences that can be expected when using particular IDSSs for ethical decisions. (shrink)

Das Ziel einer so genannten Personalisierten Medizin ist es, verfügbare oder neue Interventionen zielgerichteter einzusetzen, um so ihren Nutzen zu optimieren. Mit dieser Zielsetzung sind an eine Prüfung der Zielerreichung die gleichen Anforderungen zu stellen wie an jede andere Intervention. Der Nutzen ist durch aussagefähige Studien, typischerweise also prospektive, kontrollierte Interventionsstudien, zu belegen. Dort, wo es um den Kern personalisierter Medizin, nämlich die Verbindung von Diagnostik und Behandlung geht, ist genau diese Verbindung in Form einer statistischen Wechselwirkung zu belegen. Enrichment-Designs (...) allein beantworten diese Frage nicht. Die Bewertung von Methoden der personalisierten Medizin ist problemlos in das Konzept evidenzbasierter Medizin einzubinden. (shrink)

Storytelling, art and craft can be considered aesthetic expressions of identities. Kalahari identities are not fixed, but fluid. Research with present-day Kalahari People regarding their artistic expression and places where it has been, and is still, practised highlights that these expressions are informed by spirituality. This article explores this idea via two Kalahari case studies: Water Stories recorded in the Upington, Kakamas area, as well as research on a specific rock engraving site at Biesje Poort near Kakamas. The importance of (...) the Kalahari People’s spiritual beliefs as reflected in these case studies and its significance regarding their identities and influence on social change and/or community development projects is discussed. The article thus highlights ways in which spirituality can be considered in relation to social change projects that are characterised by partnerships between local community, non-government and tertiary education representatives and researchers and that highlight storytelling as an integral part of people’s spirituality. (shrink)

“Moral imagination” is the capacity to register that one’s perspective on a decision-making situation is limited, and to imagine alternative perspectives that reveal new considerations or approaches. We have developed a Moral Imagination approach that aims to drive a culture of responsible innovation, ethical awareness, deliberation, decision-making, and commitment in organizations developing new technologies. We here present a case study that illustrates one key aspect of our approach – the technomoral scenario – as we have applied it in our work (...) with product and engineering teams. Technomoral scenarios are fictional narratives that raise ethical issues surrounding the interaction between emerging technologies and society. Through facilitated role-playing and discussion, participants are prompted to examine their own intentions, articulate justifications for actions, and consider the impact of decisions on various stakeholders. This process helps developers to re-envision their choices and responsibilities, ultimately contributing to a culture of responsible innovation. (shrink)

Certain strands of contemporary media theory are concerned with the ways in which computational environments exploit the ‘missing half-second’ of human perception and thereby influence, control or exploit humans at an affective level. The ‘technological unconscious’ of our times is often understood to work at this affective level, and high-frequency trading is regularly provided as a primary illustrative example of the contagious dynamics it produces. We challenge and complicate this account of the relation between consciousness, affect and media technologies by (...) drawing on the recent work of N. Katherine Hayles and by focusing in detail on the ways in which the ‘costs of consciousness’ are accounted for and negotiated in high-frequency trading. We suggest that traders actively develop modes of awareness accounting for the costs of consciousness, and that the necessary ‘stupidity’ of high-frequency trading algorithms as well as competition pose limits to the full automation of financial markets. (shrink)

The paper defines focus games for satisfiability of linear time temporal logic with past operators. The games are defined in such a way that a complete axiomatisation can easily be obtained from the game rules.

Let K be a family of structures, closed under isomorphism, in a fixed computable language. We consider effective lists of structures from K such that every structure in K is isomorphic to exactly one structure on the list. Such a list is called a computable classification of K, up to isomorphism. Using the technique of Friedberg enumeration, we show that there is a computable classification of the family of computable algebraic fields and that with a 0'-oracle, we can obtain similar (...) classifications of the families of computable equivalence structures and of computable finite-branching trees. However, there is no computable classification of the latter, nor of the family of computable torsion-free abelian groups of rank 1, even though these families are both closely allied with computable algebraic fields. (shrink)