Installation art is one of the most important and provocative developments in the visual arts during the last half century and has become a key focus of artists and of contemporary museums. It is also seen as particularly challenging or even disliked by many viewers, and—due to its unique in situ, immersive setting—is equally regarded as difficult or even beyond the grasp of present methods in empirical aesthetic psychology. In this paper, we introduce an exploratory study with installation art, utilizing (...) a collection of techniques to capture the eclectic, the embodied, and often the emotionally-charged viewing experience. We present results from an investigation of two pieces, both part of Olafur Eliasson’s exhibition “Baroque, Baroque” held at the Belvedere museum in Vienna. These were assessed by pre- and post-viewing questionnaires focusing on emotion, meaning-making, and appraisals, in tandem with mobile eye tracking to consider viewers’ attention to both installed artworks and/or to the museum environment. The data showed differences in participants’ emotional states, appraisals, and visual exploration, which together paint a picture of the aesthetic reactions to the works. These differences also showed how viewers’ appraisal strategies, meaning making, and physical actions facilitated relatively more or less deep engagement with, and enjoyment of, the art. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for museum studies, art education, and theory in empirical aesthetics. (shrink)

The transfer of tasks with sometimes far-reaching implications to autonomous systems raises a number of ethical questions. In addition to fundamental questions about the moral agency of these systems, behavioral issues arise. We investigate the empirically accessible question of whether the imposition of harm by an agent is systematically judged differently when the agent is artificial and not human. The results of a laboratory experiment suggest that decision-makers can actually avoid punishment more easily by delegating to machines than by delegating (...) to other people. Our results imply that the availability of artificial agents could provide stronger incentives for decision-makers to delegate sensitive decisions. (shrink)

We study logic translations from an abstract perspective, without any commitment to the structure of sentences and the nature of logical entailment, which also means that we cover both proof- theoretic and model-theoretic entailment. We show how logic translations induce notions of logical expressiveness, consistency strength and sublogic, leading to an explanation of paradoxes that have been described in the literature. Connectives and quantifiers, although not present in the definition of logic and logic translation, can be recovered by their abstract (...) properties and are preserved and reflected by translations under suitable conditions. (shrink)

Richard Rorty is rightly considered one of the most interesting authors in the field of intellectual pursuits. This vague formulation also indicates that Rorty’s thinking and writing cannot simply be classified as philosophy, although by and large they seem to be part and parcel of the pragmatist tradition. For Rorty clearly confronts a number of traditional problems of philosophy, even when he suggest getting rid of the problem by redescribing the issue or changing the perspective. There is...

This book develops a textually grounded reconstruction of Kant’s argument in the Metaphysical Deduction. The argument proceeds in three steps, developing, first, a concept of judgment on which to base the table of logical functions, next a concept of synthesis of intuition that explains the content of the categories, and finally a concept of the understanding on which the categories belong a priori to the same capacity through which we judge. -/- The investigation presented here is an argumentative reconstruction of (...) Kant’s text. The text in question is the "Guiding Thread to the Discovery of all Pure Concepts of the Understanding" in both the 1781 (A) and 1787 (B) editions of the Critique of Pure Reason (A64-83/B89-113). To illuminate Kant’s considerations in this chapter, the reconstruction also draws on passages from elsewhere in the Critique, from Kant’s writings after the Critique, as well as notes from his Nachlass and student transcriptions of lectures he held during and subsequent to writing the Critique. Four passages, in particular, are of central importance: (i) the retrospective description of the task of the Metaphysical Deduction at B159, (ii) the retrospective description of the procedure of the "Guiding Thread" at A299/B355f., (iii) the section "On the A Priori Grounds for the Possibility of Experience" in the A-edition Transcendental Deduction of the Categories (A95-110), and (iv) §§15-21 in the B-edition Transcendental Deduction (B128-148). -/- The present interpretation of the Metaphysical Deduction thus emerges from a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the "Guiding Thread" that draws on related passages from the indicated portion of Kant’s corpus and, especially, on the aforementioned four passages from the Critique. Viewing these texts together and in a specific relation to one another suggests a reading which leaves little room for doubt. This sort of textually sensitive but charitable reconstruction helps to bring out the enduring force and interest of Kant’s philosophical position. [For Dennis Schulting's review for "Kantian Review" see under "External Links" below.] -/- -- -/- Wie hier durch textnahe und argumentative Rekonstruktion erstmals gezeigt wird, entwickelt Kant in der Metaphysischen Deduktion in drei Schritten: (i) einen Begriff des Urteils, auf dem die Tafel logischer Funktionen beruht; (ii) einen Begriff der Synthesis der Anschauung, der die Inhalte der Kategorien erklärt; und (iii) einen Begriff des Verstandes, demzufolge die Kategorien a priori zu demselben Vermögen gehören, durch das wir auch urteilen. -/- Die vorliegende Untersuchung ist eine argumentative Rekonstruktion von Kants Text. Der rekonstruierte Text ist der „Leitfaden der Entdeckung aller reinen Verstandesbegriffe" auf A 64 bis 83 / B 89 bis 113 der Kritik der reinen Vernunft in ihren beiden Auflagen von 1781 (A) und 1787 (B). Zudem werden andere, für ein Verständnis der Überlegungen in diesem Kapitel erforderliche oder zumindest erhellende Textstellen aus der Kritik herangezogen; aus Schriften, die Kant nach der Kritik geschrieben hat; sowie schließlich aus Kants Nachlass-Notizen und aus Nachschriften zu seinen Vorlesungen jeweils seit der Entstehungszeit der Kritik. Von entscheidender Bedeutung sind dabei vor allem vier weitere Passagen der Kritik selbst: i) die rückblickende Beschreibung der Aufgabe der Metaphysischen Deduktion auf B 159, ii) die rückblickende Beschreibung des Vorgehens im „Leitfaden" auf A 299/B 355 f., iii) der Abschnitt „Von den Gründen a priori zur Möglichkeit der Erfahrung" auf A 95 bis 110 der Transzendentalen Deduktion der Kategorien in der ersten Auflage und schließlich iv) die §§ 15 bis 21 auf B 128 bis 148 der Transzendentalen Deduktion der Kategorien in der zweiten Auflage der Kritik. -/- Vor dem Hintergrund einer umfassenden und detaillierten Analyse des „Leitfadens", bei Hinzuziehung verwandter Stellen aus dem umgrenzten Textbestand und nicht zuletzt bei Berücksichtigung des Verhältnisses des „Leitfadens" zu den genannten vier Passagen der Kritik legt sich eine Interpretation der Metaphysischen Deduktion nahe, die sich nur schwer bestreiten lässt, sobald diese Texte einmal gemeinsam betrachtet und auf eine bestimmte Weise zueinander ins Verhältnis gesetzt werden. Dabei kann eine durchgehend wohlwollende, argumentative Rekonstruktion dazu beitragen, auch die philosophische Überzeugungskraft der Position Kants deutlich zu machen. [Für Dennis Schultings Rezension für "Kantian Review" siehe unten unter "External Links".]. (shrink)

The book then discusses another group of issues ("whether it is, what it is, how and why it is"), which determined the argumentation, the axiomatic ordering of the sciences, and concludes with a demonstration on the basis of concrete ...

The Making of the Economy uses Husserl's critique of formalism in natural science in The Crisis of the European Sciences work as the template for an analogous critique of formalism in economic science. The historical narrative focuses on the emergence of formal economic analysis out of a series of successive life-worlds, or concrete historical situations. This generates new substantive understanding of both the historical material and the current discourse of crisis surrounding economics. It will appeal to historians and philosophers of (...) economics, as well as scholars of history, philosophy, and sociology. (shrink)

Through an analysis of the eighteenth-century debate about luxury, Wahnbaeck traces the shaping of a new language of political economy. By charting not only the development of political economy in Italy, but the methods of transmission of the ideas at the heart of this debate, the author argues that the focus on economic thought is characteristic of the Italian enlightenment at large. Ultimately, these methods were responsible for the development of very distinct 'cultures of enlightenment' across the Italian peninsula.

Kant’s Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories justifies their apriority, i.e. that their contents originate in the understanding itself, while the Transcendental Deduction justifies their objectivity, both in that they purport to represent objects of experience and that they do so successfully. The apriority of the categories, as explained in terms of acts of synthesis required for having sensible intuitions of objects, is justified by establishing their generic identity with logical functions of judgment, i.e. acts of judgment required for referring concepts (...) to objects. The objective purport of the categories is justified by establishing that sensible intuitions fall under them. To finally justify that the categories represent successfully, i.e. that the objects of our intuitions fall under them, it is established that the representations of space and time do, namely by showing that the features addressed in their Metaphysical Expositions, too, are to be explained in terms of acts of synthesis. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant develops a metametaphysical view concerning the domain and source of a distinctively metaphysical cognition of objects of experience, which is given in terms of an analysis of our representational capacity for thought, namely, the understanding, regarding its sub-capacities and their constitutive abilities and acts. In the Analytic of Concepts, more precisely, in the Metaphysical and Subjective Deductions of the Categories, Kant develops an elaborate account of the content and formation of those metaphysical concepts (...) of an object in general through which there is genuine philosophical cognition of objects of experience, namely, the categories. Relating the Analytic of Concepts to the Doctrine of Method, I give a detailed reconstruction of this account in contrast to both empirical and mathematical concepts. I do so by establishing, for the first time (in English) that and how the representational contents of the categories, as general representations of objects, derive from fundamental abilities and acts of a synthesis of an empirical intuition that the understanding contributes to experiences of objects, which thus yield the original contents of the categories. In particular, I argue that the threefold synthesis of the fundamental act-types of the apprehension, reproduction, and recognition of a manifold of sense-impressions, presented in the A-Deduction, holds the key to understanding the origin of the categories, or concepts of an object in general, investigated in their Metaphysical Deduction. It turns out that the threefold synthesis, as it is exercised regarding a manifold of sense-impressions in an empirical intuition of an object, can indeed account for the representational contents of the categories of Quality (apprehension), Quantity (reproduction), Relation (recognition), and Modality (relating to the object through a manifold of sense-impressions). In this sense, the categories are “concepts of synthesis” (A80/B106) or “concepts of the synthesis of possible sensations” (A723/B751). (shrink)

The Canadian thinker George Grant offers a critique of modernity that tries to come to terms with the challenge of Heidegger to Plato. Against philosophical approaches which claim that any kind of metaphyics is obsolete and should be overcome, Grant attempted to think through what the rejection of metaphysics by important modern forms of philosophy means. Grant’s thought looked back to Plato for a conception of justice that he felt was endangered in the modern world. In particular, his philosophical thinking (...) could be said to engage the various forms of pragmatism that he regarded as emblematic of modernity’s emphasis on making and creating in contrast to the older virtue of contemplation. However, the ontological concern about the priority of conetmplation over action was, forGrant, also connected to problem of justice. Could one defend an understanding of justice that gives to man what is his due while accepting the pragmatism of modern philosophy? And does pragmatism succeed in eliminiating the question conerning God from the concerns of the philosopher? (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of mass migration and the conditions of hybridization for early 21st century Western societies in texts dealing with migrantexperiences. The novel Goodbye Lucille (2007) by the Afro-cosmopolitan writer Segun Afolabi will be explored with respect to the crucial problem of an ethics and politics of belonging, related to the recent controversies surrounding multiculturalism and issues of migration. This text deals with the “in-between world” of migrants and negotiates questions of identity, alienation and belonging in a (...) so-called transcultural/transnational context. The issues raised in Segun Afolabi's fiction are addressed by employing the ways of thinking developed in political philosophy, including recent phenomenological attempts to theorize the notion of “home” and “belonging” (e.g., by Karen Joisten, but also Martin Heidegger) in order to deal with the complexities of the issue. The question, “What constitutes the good life for the individual and the political community?”, needs to be considered by taking into account the current plurality of approaches to forging identitiesin the political sphere as well. The subtlety of literary accounts of this phenomenon – literature may indeed be one of the best diagnostic instrument for studying a society – sheds light, I suggest, on the conditions of politically relevant identity formations. A close reading of literary texts such as those by Afolabi offers an important contribution to a realistic, and therefore complex and complicating, account of our overall situation in the Western world with respect to the politics of belonging. (shrink)

The article Do translocal networks matter for agricultural innovation? A case study on advice sharing in small scale farming communities in Northeast Thailand, written by Till Rockenbauch, Patrick Sakdapolrak and Harald Sterly, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 10 April 2019 without open access.

ArgumentIn the decades following World War II, the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics came to represent new technical standards that informed most advances in economic theory. The public emergence of this community was manifest at a conference held in June 1949 titledActivity Analysis of Production and Allocation. New ideas in optimization theory, linked to linear programming, developed from the conference's papers. The authors’ history of this event situates the Cowles Commission among the institutions of postwar science in-between National Laboratories (...) and the supreme discipline of Cold War academia, mathematics. Although the conference created the conditions under which economics, as a discipline, would transform itself, the participants themselves had little concern for the intellectual battles that had defined prewar university economics departments. The authors argue that the conference signaled the birth of a new intellectual culture in economic science based on shared scientific norms and techniques un-interrogated by conflicting notions of the meaning of either science or economics. (shrink)

This article turns towards the spatial life of ‘digital infrastructures’, i.e. code, protocols, standards, and data formats that are hidden from view in everyday applications of computational technologies. It does so by drawing on the version control system Git as a case study, and telling the story of its initial development in order to reconstruct the circumstances and technical considerations surrounding its conception. This account engages with computational infrastructures on their own terms by adopting the figure of the ‘stack’ to (...) frame a technically informed analysis, and exploring its implications for a different kind of geographic inquiry. Drawing on topology as employed by Law and Mol, attention is given to the multiplicity of spatialities and temporalities enrolled in digital infrastructures in general, and Git specifically. Along the lines of the case study and by reading it against other literatures, this notion of topology is expanded to include the material performation of fundamentally arbitrary, more-than-human topologies, as well as their nested articulation, translation and negotiation within digital infrastructures. (shrink)

The German Democratic Republic was in existence for 41 years. A single generation spent its whole professional life there – namely those born in the early 1930s who carried this state’s hopes. With Karl Mannheim’s notion of generations as a unit in the sociology of knowledge in mind, this article describes this generation’s typical experiences from the point of view of a particularly telling group: economists at the Humboldt University of Berlin. I present their socialization in Nazi Germany, their formative (...) years in the aftermath of the Second World War that led to their choice of a politically driven profession, their studies during the first years of the GDR, when Stalinism was still the dominating dogma, and their commitment to a state career when writing their dissertations and habilitations. Ready to shoulder Honecker’s regime, their daily lives as professors were characterized by continuing attempts to reform teaching and research. In 1989 the ultimate reform transpired, and it encompassed the end of the state as well as of their professional careers. This narrative historicizes, on an experiential level, a tension often noted in GDR research, that between the ideological and productive functions of knowledge in socialism, that is, between loyalty and relevance. (shrink)

Ziel dieser Studie ist es, die Bedingungen der Möglichkeit einer objektiven und zugleich kritischen Theorie der Gesellschaft darzustellen. Als Grundlagen dienen dem Autor Kants theoretische und praktische Philosophie, insbesondere das Verhältnis der Natur- und Freiheitsbegriffe in dessen drei Kritiken. Die Diskussion der theoretischen Konzeption von Horkheimers und Adornos Kritischer Theorie vor dem Hintergrund der Philosophie Kants führt in Richtung einer Theorie der Gesellschaft, die beiden Forderungen gerecht wird: der nach Objektivität sowie der nach der Möglichkeit einer moralischen Beurteilung des Gegenstandes (...) der Theorie. (shrink)

The development of new effective but expensive medical treatments leads to discussions about whether and how such treatments should be funded in solidarity-based healthcare systems. Solidarity is often seen as an elusive concept; it appears to be used to refer to different sets of concerns, and its interrelations with the concept of justice are not well understood. This paper provides a conceptual analysis of the concept of solidarity as it is used in discussions on the allocation of healthcare resources and (...) the funding of expensive treatments. It contributes to the clarification of the concept of solidarity by identifying in the literature and discussing four uses of the concept: (1) assisting patients in need, (2) upholding the solidarity-based healthcare system, (3) willingness to contribute and (4) promoting equality. It distinguishes normative and descriptive uses of the concept and outlines the overlap and differences between solidarity and justice. Our analysis shows that the various uses of the concept of solidarity point to different, even conflicting, ethical stances on whether and how access to effective, expensive treatments should be provided. We conclude that the concept of solidarity has a role to play in discussions on the accessibility and funding of newly approved medical treatments. It requires, for instance, that healthcare policies promote and maintain both societal willingness to contribute to the care of others and the value of providing care to vulnerable patients through public funding. (shrink)

When reassessing the role of Debreu's axiomatic method in economics, one has to explain both its success and unpopularity; one has to explain the "bright shadow" Debreu cast on the discipline: sheltering, threatening, and difficult to pin down. Debreu himself did not expect to have such an influence. Before he received the Bank of Sweden Prize in 1983 he had never openly engaged with the methodology or politics of mathematical economics. When in several speeches he later rigorously distinguished mathematical form (...) from economic content and claimed this as the virtue of mathematical economics, he did both: he defended mathematical reasoning against the theoretical innovations since the 1970s and expressed remorse for having promised too much because it cannot support claims about economic content. The analysis of this twofold role of Debreu's axiomatic method raises issues of the social and political responsibility of economists over and above standard epistemic issues. (shrink)

Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) offers an ‘infra-language’ of the social that allows one to trace social relations very dynamically, while at the same time dissolving human agency, thus providing a flat and de-centred way into sociology. However, ANT struggles with its theoretical design that may lead us to reduce agency to causation and to conceptualize actor-networks as homogeneous ontologies of force. This article proposes to regard ANT’s inability to conceptualize reflexivity and the interrelatedness of different ontologies as the fundamental problem of the (...) theory. Drawing on Günther, it offers an ‘infra-language’ of reflexive relations while maintaining ANT’s de-centred approach. This would enable us to conceptualize actor-networks as non-homogeneous, dynamic and connecting different societal rationales while maintaining the main strengths of ANT. (shrink)

In recent decades, the focus in autism research progressively expanded. It presently offers extensive material on sensorimotor disturbances as well as on perceptive-cognitive preferences of people with autism. The present article proposes not only a critical interpretation of the common theoretical framework in autism research but also focuses on certain experiences common to some people with autism and which can be appropriately understood by phenomenology. What I will call “hypnotic experiences” in autism are moments in which some individuals withdraw into (...) intense sensorial and perceptive experiences. Following their examples, I use the term “hypnosis” primarily to describe a trance state in which the individuals become highly alert to and awake for an experience of a totally new kind. Through a close analysis of autobiographical writings from people with autism I defend the idea that the particularity of hypnotic experiences in autism consists in a certain qualitative shift within experience itself: what changes, in the hypnotic moments, is the way a person with autism relates to his/her own bodily experiences. If this qualitative shift is indeed difficult to account for within a reifying and intellectualist research perspective, phenomenology offers a large conceptual framework for understanding it. Phenomenology, and precisely, phenomenological psychopathology, will thus emerge as a major device in accounting for such “hypnotic experiences”. The argument mainly draws on the twofold structure of experience which is traditionally used in phenomenological research: it claims that in hypnotic experience people with autism are inclined to focus on non-reified “sensings”, “perceivings” and “movings”, and thus leave aside the object itself and any intentional reification of it. Finally, I will claim that this restriction to mere non-reified sensings might lead to a completely new conception of self and world. In the hypnotic experiences of autism, neither the subject nor the object come to a full-blown and independent existence. A thorough phenomenological analysis of hypnotic experience in autism therefore also has to face the question of a corresponding ontology of these experiences. (shrink)

Mit der Renaissance der Metaphysik in den letzten Jahren hat sich auch die Reflexion auf ihre Grundlagen intensiviert. Die auf Kant zurückgehende Frage nach der Möglichkeit der Metaphysik jedoch, so scheint es, bleibt in diesen Auseinandersetzungen dennoch weitgehend außen vor. Zwar steht diese Frage im Hintergrund, wenn zum Beispiel darüber diskutiert wird, ob wir das Unternehmen der Metaphysik realistisch oder nicht-realistisch auffassen sollten. Nach einer unmittelbaren Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage jedoch, unter welchen Bedingungen realistisch verstandene Metaphysik möglich ist, suchen wir (...) meist vergebens. -/- Realistisch verstandene Metaphysik untersucht die allgemeinste Form der Welt (oder Realität, Wirklichkeit usw.). Wie ist eine solche Untersuchung möglich? Metaphysik, die auch ihre eigene Möglichkeit zum Thema macht, ist eine dem Anspruch nach kritische Metaphysik. Wir glauben, dass Metaphysik nur dann ihre eigene Möglichkeit thematisiert, und also den Anspruch erhebt, kritisch zu sein, wenn sie in ihrer Untersuchung der Form der Welt auch eine Untersuchung der allgemeinsten Form des Denkens ist. Ohne eine Untersuchung der Form, die Denken als Denken der Welt aufweist, kommt die Frage nach der Möglichkeit der Metaphysik, nach der Möglichkeit des Denkens der Form der Welt also, gar nicht erst in den Blick. Nur, wenn das Verhältnis der Form des Denkens und der Form der Welt Gegenstand der Überlegung ist, kann Metaphysik den Anspruch erheben, kritisch zu sein. Wie wir dieses Verhältnis genauer zu beschreiben und verstehen haben, muss Gegenstand der Auseinandersetzung über ein angemessenes Verständnis kritischer Metaphysik sein. Einer solchen Auseinandersetzung soll hier Raum gegeben werden. Der vorliegende Schwerpunkt ist der Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme kritischer Metaphysik in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsphilosophie. Wir verstehen ihn als eine Plattform der Auseinandersetzung darüber, wie der Anspruch, kritische Metaphysik zu betreiben, überzeugend erfüllt werden kann – als eine Plattform der Auseinandersetzung über ein angemessenes Verständnis kritischer Metaphysik also. (shrink)

The present paper reflects on hallucination and delusion in schizophrenia from a phenomenological perspective. The paper’s aim is to understand the relationship between these two symptoms within the theoretical paradigm of schizophrenia as a self-disorder. The paper draws on fundamental insights from contemporary phenomenological research by Louis A. Sass, Josef Parnas and Thomas Fuchs. The argument begins with current definitions of hallucination and schizophrenia in the DSM-5. I will critically illuminate these definitions by key thinkers of phenomenological psychopathology (or close (...) to it), such as Karl Jaspers, Eugène Minkowski, Henri Ey and Merleau-Ponty. The paper’s main challenge is to understand hallucination and delusion beyond their respective alignment with perception (as though hallucination would simply be a perception without an object to perceptive) or false belief (as if delusion would simply be an absurd conviction). (shrink)

Jean Dieudonné, the spokesman of the group of French mathematicians named Bourbaki, called mathematics the music of reason. This metaphor invites a phenomenological account of the affective, in contrast to the epistemic and discursive, nature of mathematics: What constitutes its charm? Mathematical reasoning is described as a perceptual experience, which in Husserl’s late philosophy would be a case of passive synthesis. Like a melody, a mathematical proof is manifest in an affective identity of a temporal object. Rather than an exercise (...) for its own sake, this account sheds a different light on both the epistemic limitation of mathematical science, and the discursive problem of social responsibility in mathematics – two issues at the heart of Husserl’s critique of science as well as of mid-20th century mathematics, for which Nicolas Bourbaki stands as a monument of rigor. (shrink)

Die Metapher ist ein Grundbegriff der Designtheorie, der oftmals ohne hinreichende Bestimmung zu einem Gestaltungsprinzip ausformuliert wird. In der Designrhetorik ist die Metapher eine Figur der persuasiven Kommunikation; in Theorien des Designprozesses und gestalterischen Denkens wird sie hingegen als zentraler Aspekt der Kreativität und Erkenntnis angeführt; im Interfacedesign ist sie das konstitutive Element zur benutzerfreundlichen grafischen Aufbereitung der Computerprogramme. Der Beitrag stellt die verschiedenen theoretischen Grundlagen der Metapher in den jeweiligen Designdiskursen vor, um ihre Disparitäten und Gemeinplätze auszuweisen. Ziel ist (...) es dabei, die weitreichenden und bislang kaum ausgearbeiteten philosophischen Implikationen der designtheoretischen Begründung der Metapher aufzudecken. In der Analyse praxisorientierter Designtheorien werden die rhetorische, innovative, erkenntnistheoretische und ontologische Funktion der Metapher begründet. Die Ausarbeitung dieser verschiedenen Funktionen, so die zentrale These, eröffnet eine neue Perspektive auf grundlegende Fragen einer Philosophie des Designs. In dieser Hinsicht wird abschließend für die allgemein pragmatische Funktion der Metapher im Design argumentiert, um zwischen praxisorientierter Forschung, Ästhetik und auch Metapherntheorie zu vermitteln. (shrink)

The development of new effective but expensive medical treatments leads to discussions about whether and how such treatments should be funded in solidarity-based healthcare systems. Solidarity is often seen as an elusive concept; it appears to be used to refer to different sets of concerns, and its interrelations with the concept of justice are not well understood. This paper provides a conceptual analysis of the concept of solidarity as it is used in discussions on the allocation of healthcare resources and (...) the funding of expensive treatments. It contributes to the clarification of the concept of solidarity by identifying in the literature and discussing four uses of the concept: (1) assisting patients in need, (2) upholding the solidarity-based healthcare system, (3) willingness to contribute and (4) promoting equality. It distinguishes normative and descriptive uses of the concept and outlines the overlap and differences between solidarity and justice. Our analysis shows that the various uses of the concept of solidarity point to different, even conflicting, ethical stances on whether and how access to effective, expensive treatments should be provided. We conclude that the concept of solidarity has a role to play in discussions on the accessibility and funding of newly approved medical treatments. It requires, for instance, that healthcare policies promote and maintain both societal willingness to contribute to the care of others and the value of providing care to vulnerable patients through public funding. (shrink)

La quatrième de couverture indique : "Cet ouvrage se propose d'analyser l'idée de justice chez Montesquieu et de donner une nouvelle interprétation de la puissance de juger dans "L'Esprit des lois". Il montre comment Montesquieu analyse le droit et le pouvoir dans leurs manifestations hégémoniques ou plurielles. Lorsque Montesquieu s'interroge sur le dépositaire de la puissance de juger, sur la structure et l'évolution juridique à l'intérieur de l'Etat, il ne le fait pas de manière indépendante de sa réflexion sur le (...) droit guerre, la conquête, le commerce ou les colonies. C'est ainsi que dans l'oeuvre de Montesquieu les conditions de la liberté et de la justice dépassent toujours le cadre national et sont créées en interaction avec d'autres peuples et sociétés.". (shrink)

Despite important methodological differences, French neo-structuralist thinkers, such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, have two points in common: they offer a systematic interpretation of the philosophical concept of representation, and they elaborate a sub-representational philosophical thinking beyond the validity of self-identical terms. This paper will investigate the relationship between both of these aspects of their philosophies. The aim is to understand how, under the umbrella term of “representation”, French thinkers put into question very basic epistemic assumptions, such (...) as identity, simplicity, unity, subjectivity, objectivity, etc. This paper seeks to understand to which extent the critique of representation leads to a fundamental investigation of the epistemological assumptions of Western thought. (shrink)

In this article, I propose four considerations that might frame a history of economic consciousness from the pre-modern oikonomia to the modern economy. Before the economy dominated attention in the public sphere, economic consciousness was pre-discursive. Only once economic concerns were being dealt with, discursive practices were possible. Thus economic practices, for most parts of human history, have been considered a condition rather than a locus of culture. As soon as economic affairs enter the discursive sphere, they cause problems of (...) trust and nourish a culture of suspicion. This is manifest specifically in the pre-eminence of ad-hominem arguments. Modern economic knowledge results from a set of strategies that avoid, rather than deal with, this mistrust. This is apparent from the tendency of economic knowledge to be formal. The notion of the economy as an anonymous social structure emerges from this intellectual avoidance. The problem of the ideology of economic knowledge is less that of hidden interests but that economists cannot assume social responsibility without losing their face as scientists and indeed reinforce the culture of mistrust inherent in modern economic discourse. (shrink)

Recent research on agricultural innovation has outlined social networks’ role in diffusing agricultural knowledge; however, so far, it has broadly neglected the socio-spatial dimensions of innovation processes. Against this backdrop, we apply a spatially explicit translocal network perspective in order to investigate the role of migration-related translocal networks for adaptive change in a small-scale farming community in Northeast Thailand. By means of formal social network analysis we map the socio-spatial patterns of advice sharing regarding changes in sugarcane and rice farming (...) over a period of five years. We find that, in translocally connected and mobile rural communities, a substantial share of advice originates from translocal levels. Translocal advice is dominantly provided through weak and formal ties with extension agencies and shared by few highly central larger-scale farmers within sparse local networks. This draws the picture of top-down translocal innovation flows driven by extension agencies and brokered through elite farmers. A closer look on institutional context and key actors of particular changes, however, suggests the potential of migration-related translocal networks and migration experience in fostering bottom-up innovations. Migration-related innovations transfers can promote adaptive capacity also among less favorably connected actors, especially if changes are geared towards limited household resources and are compatible with social practices of small-scale farming. We conclude that a translocal network perspective is instructive for research and extension interested in leveraging more inclusive agricultural innovation. (shrink)

The effect of prism adaptation on movement is typically reduced when the movement at test (prisms off) differs on some dimension from the movement at training (prisms on). Some adaptation is latent, however, and only revealed through further testing in which the movement at training is fully reinstated. Applying a nonlinear attractor dynamic model (Frank, Blau, & Turvey, 2009) to available data (Blau, Stephen, Carello, & Turvey, 2009), we provide evidence for a causal link between the latent (or secondary) aftereffect (...) and an additive force term that is known to account for symmetry breaking. The evidence is discussed in respect to the hypothesis that recalibration aftereffects reflect memory principles (encoding specificity, transfer-appropriate processing) oriented to time-translation invariance—when later testing conserves the conditions of earlier training. Forgetting or reduced adaptation effects follow from the loss of this invariance and are reversed by its reinstatement. (shrink)

This article discusses German and European climate policy, inquiring mainly whether the ambitious goals the EU has set itself can be achieved via the instruments presently employed for the purpose and whether these instruments are efficient. In particular we discuss shortcomings of the European emission trading system, we further level criticism at energy policy measures, notably subsidization for renewable energy sources and the overlap with emissions trading. Further we argue that while 20% reduction of CO2 is feasible at a reasonable (...) cost, derived targets such as a share of 20% of renewable energy and 20% efficiency increase is expensive and not necessary. Finally, we scrutinize the latest climate-protection package proposed by Germany’s environment minister. (shrink)

This article reviews the academic literature that emerged under value sensitive design. It investigates those VSD projects that employed the tripartite methodology, examining the use of VSD methodological elements, and illustrating common practices and identifying shortcomings. The article provides advice for VSD researchers on how to complete and enhance their methodological approach as the research community moves forward.