This collection broadens the scientific discussion of modularity by bringing together experts from a variety of disciplines, including artificial life, ...

Presents German physicist Werner Heisenberg's 1958 text in which he discusses the philosophical implications and social consequences of quantum mechanics and other physical theories.

Ist Geschichtsdarstellung ein transparentes Fenster zu einer faktischen Vergangenheit? Oder verlieren Fakten ihre Verbindlichkeit zugunsten der Repräsentation? Der vorliegende Band weist einen vermittelnden Weg zwischen diesen Extremen. Jenseits der positivistisch verstandenen historischen Fakten sowie der infolge des linguistic turn häufig behaupteten Unzugänglichkeit und Unentscheidbarkeit der faktischen Vergangenheit wird die Geschichtsdarstellung selbst als das eigentlich Greifbare zur Geltung gebracht. Geschichte ist demnach in ihrer Darstellung zu suchen – unabhängig davon, ob es sich um historiographische Quellen, literarische Texte, Gemälde oder um Museen (...) als mediale Darstellungsräume handelt. Die Beiträge gehen einem breiten Spektrum unterschiedlicher Dimensionen von Geschichtsdarstellung nach. Medien, Methoden und Strategien bilden dabei die zentralen Koordinaten, anhand derer Geschichtsdarstellung mit ihren narrativen und bildlichen Ausdrucksformen exemplarisch erörtert wird. Mit Beiträgen von Wolfgang Frühwald, Werner Goez, Thomas Kirchner, Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Otto Gerhard Oexle, Antonios Rengakos, Hermann Schäfer, Jörg Schönert, Howard Weinbrot, Horst Wenzel und Gernot R. Wieland. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that some truths or facts don’t have a minimal full ground [see e.g. Fine ]. Every full ground of them contains a smaller full ground. In this paper I’ll propose a minimality constraint on immediate grounding and I’ll show that it doesn’t fall prey to the arguments that tell against an unqualified minimality constraint. Furthermore, the assumption that all cases of grounding can be understood in terms of immediate grounding will be defended. This assumption guarantees that (...) the proposed minimality constraint is significant for all cases of grounding. With its help one can get a clear grip on the relevance of grounding, a feature that will be put to use in the penultimate section. (shrink)

Computer-simulated scenarios have been part of psychological research on problem solving for more than 40 years. The shift in emphasis from simple toy problems to complex, more real-life oriented problems has been accompanied by discussions about the best ways to assess the process of solving complex problems. Psychometric issues such as reliable assessments and addressing correlations with other instruments have been in the foreground of these discussions and have left the content validity of complex problem solving in the background. In (...) this paper, we return the focus to content issues and address the important features that define complex problems. (shrink)

This volume has its already distant or1g1n in an inter national conference on Evolutionary Epistemology the editors organized at the University of Ghent in November 1984. This conference aimed to follow up the endeavor started at the ERISS (Epistemologically Relevant Internalist Sociology of Science) conference organized by Don Campbell and Alex Rosen berg at Cazenovia Lake, New York, in June 1981, whilst in jecting the gist of certain current continental intellectual developments into a debate whose focus, we thought, was in (...) danger of being narrowed too much, considering the still underdeveloped state of affairs in the field. Broadly speaking, evolutionary epistemology today con sists of two interrelated, yet qualitatively distinct inves tigative efforts. Both are drawing on Darwinian concepts, which may explain why many people have failed to discriminate them. One is the study of the evolution of the cognitive apparatus of living organisms, which is first and foremost the province of biologists and psychologists (H. C. Plotkin, Ed. , Learning, Development, and Culture: Essays in Evolu tionary Epistemology, New York, Wiley, 1984), although quite a few philosophers - professional or vocational - have also felt the need to express themselves on this vast subject (F. M. Wuketits, Ed. , Conce ts and Approaches in Evolutionary Epistemology, Dordrecht Boston, Reidel, 1984). The other approach deals with the evolution of science, and has been dominated hitherto by (allegedly) 'naturalized' philosophers; no book-length survey of this literature is available at present. (shrink)

Temporal loops in which two agents are involved in a circle of reactive attitudes create a puzzle concerning who harms whom. I argue that this puzzle, which has been developed by Stephen Kearns in a recent paper in this journal, should be solved by accepting that the situation involves normative indeterminacy. A supervaluationist treatment of this indeterminacy allows us to maintain that the normative supervenes on the non-normative and that the involved agents are in normatively symmetric situations. It further allows (...) to maintain that it is determinately the case that one agent wrongs the other just in case the latter does not wrong the former. I conclude by tentatively arguing that the indeterminacy involved should not be understood as semantic and that the puzzle provides us with a novel case of indeterminacy in reality. (shrink)

Proponents of impure moral perception claim that, while there are perceptual moral experiences, these experiences epistemically depend on a priori moral knowledge. Proponents of pure moral perception claim that moral experiences can justify independently of substantive a priori moral knowledge. Some philosophers, most notably David Faraci, have argued that the pure view is mistaken, since moral perception requires previous moral background knowledge, and such knowledge could not itself be perceptual. I defend pure moral perception against this objection. I consider two (...) ways to understand the notion of “background knowledge” that is crucial to the objection. On a reading, the claim that background knowledge is necessary for moral perception is likely false. On a second and weaker reading, the claim is true, but the background knowledge in question could be perceptual, and thus compatible with pure moral perception. Thus, the objection fails. (shrink)

In this paper, we bring together research on complex problem solving with that on motivational psychology about goal setting. Complex problems require motivational effort because of their inherent difficulties. Goal Setting Theory has shown with simple tasks that high, specific performance goals lead to better performance outcome than do-your-best goals. However, in complex tasks, learning goals have proven more effective than performance goals. Based on the Zurich Resource Model, so-called motto-goals should activate a person’s resources through positive affect. It was (...) found that motto-goals are effective with unpleasant duties. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that motto-goals outperform learning and performance goals in the case of complex problems. A total of N = 123 subject participated in the experiment. In dependence of their goal condition, subjects developed a personal motto, learning, or performance goal. This goal was adapted for the computer-simulated complex scenario Tailorshop, where subjects worked as managers in a small fictional company. Other than expected, there was no main effect of goal condition for the management performance. An unexpected gender effect revealed better performance for men than women, pointing to a potential stereotype threat. As hypothesized, motto goals led to higher positive and lower negative affect than the other two goal types. Even though positive affect decreased and negative affect increased in all three groups during Tailorshop completion, participants with motto goals reported the lowest rates of negative affect. Exploratory analyses investigated the role of affect in complex problem solving via mediational analyses and the influence of goal type on perceived goal attainment. (shrink)

This is the second of two articles in which I reflect on “generalized Darwinism” as currently discussed in evolutionary economics. In the companion article (Callebaut, Biol Theory 6. doi: 10.1007/s13752-013-0086-2, 2011, this issue) I approached evolutionary economics from the naturalistic perspectives of evolutionary epistemology and the philosophy of biology, contrasted evolutionary economists’ cautious generalizations of Darwinism with “imperialistic” proposals to unify the behavioral sciences, and discussed the continued resistance to biological ideas in the social sciences. Here I assess Generalized Darwinism (...) as propounded by Geoffrey Hodgson, Thorbjørn Knudsen, and others, concentrating on the roles of theory and model building in science (and the roles of analogy and metaphor therein), generative replication, and the relation between selection and self-organization. I then point to advances in current biology that promise to be more fruitful as sources of inspiration for evolutionary economics than the project to generalize Darwinism in its current, “hardened Modern Synthesis” form; and I draw some conclusions. (shrink)

The question “How can humans learn efficiently to make decisions in a complex, dynamic, and uncertain environment” is still a very open question. We investigate what effects arise when feedback is given in a computer-simulated microworld that is controlled by participants. This has a direct impact on training simulators that are already in standard use in many professions, e.g., for flight simulators for pilots, and a potential impact on a better understanding of human decision making in general. Our study is (...) based on a benchmark microworld with an economic framing, the IWR Tailorshop. N=94 participants played four rounds of the microworld, each 10 months, via a web interface. We propose a new approach to quantify performance and learning, which is based on a mathematical model of the microworld and optimization. Six participant groups receive different kinds of feedback in a training phase, then results in a performance phase without feedback are analyzed. As a main result, feedback of optimal solutions in training rounds improved model knowledge, early learning, and performance, especially when this information is encoded in a graphical representation. (shrink)

Werner Heisenberg: Der Teil und das Ganze.

In contrast to the successful previous year, 2020 turned out to be difficult, not only for the earth’s population due to COVID-19 but also for JDDM with an unusually small sixth volume. Looking back at these two very different years back-to-back led us to some reflection: As the COVID-19 pandemic forcefully illustrates, dynamic decision-making with all its complications and uncertainty is a topic of high relevance for modern societies.

We explore the different meanings of “quantum uncertainty” contained in Heisenberg’s seminal paper from 1927, and also some of the precise definitions that were developed later. We recount the controversy about “Anschaulichkeit”, visualizability of the theory, which Heisenberg claims to resolve. Moreover, we consider Heisenberg’s programme of operational analysis of concepts, in which he sees himself as following Einstein. Heisenberg’s work is marked by the tensions between semiclassical arguments and the emerging modern quantum theory, between intuition and rigour, and between (...) shaky arguments and overarching claims. Nevertheless, the main message can be taken into the new quantum theory, and can be brought into the form of general theorems. They come in two kinds, not distinguished by Heisenberg. These are, on one hand, constraints on preparations, like the usual textbook uncertainty relation, and, on the other, constraints on joint measurability, including trade-offs between accuracy and disturbance. (shrink)

Clahsen's view on language is intimately linked with the Chomskian distinction between competence and performance. He uses performance to verify theoretical assumptions about the underlying structure of competence. Using mostly off-line tasks, he may fail to answer the question of how language is generated and perceived in natural situations.

Schon seit ihrer Gr ndung in den 1970er-Jahren ist die Reihe Germanistische Linguistik (RGL) exponiertes Forum des Faches, dessen Namen sie im Titel f hrt. Hinsichtlich der thematischen Breite (Sprachebenen, Variet ten, Kommunikationsformen, Epochen), der Forschungsperspektiven (Theorie und Empirie, Grundlagenforschung und Anwendung, Inter- und Transdisziplinarit t) und des methodologischen Spektrums ist die Reihe offen angelegt. Das Aufgreifen neuer Trends hat in ihr ebenso Platz wie das Fortf hren von Bew hrtem. Die Publikationsformen reichen von Monographien und Sammelb nden bis zu (...) W rterb chern. Wissenschaftlicher Beirat (ab November 2011): Prof. Dr. Karin Donhauser (Berlin) Prof. Dr. Stephan Elspa (Augsburg) Prof. Dr. Helmuth Feilke (Gie en) Prof. Dr. J rg Fleischer (Marburg) Prof. Dr. Stephan Habscheid (Siegen) Prof. Dr. R diger Harnisch (Passau). (shrink)

Von theologischer wir philosophischer Seite wird bisweilen gefordert, Vergebung müsse unbedingt sein. Darüber hinaus wird bei Psychotherapeuten die therapeutische Wirkung der Vergebung betont, so dass Vergebung im Eigeninteresse der gekränkten oder geschädigten Personen zu liegen scheint. Dabei werden Gesichtspunkte der Gerechtigkeit und der Prävention und der Selbstachtung des Opfers übersehen, wie die im Artikel aufgezeigten Vorbehalte deutlich machen können. Dabei kommt speziell die Perspektive der Geschädigten, der Opfer stärker in den Blick. Außerdem sind die einschlägigen Mahnungen im Neuen Testament, die (...) die Unbedingtheit der Forderung nach Vergebung zu bestätigen scheinen, bei genauer Betrachtung durchaus differenzierter. (shrink)

The article examines the extent to which the scope for social design of responsibility regimes is limited by pre-positive boundaries. A distinction is made between purely performative, purely constitutive and normative attributions of responsibility. It is argued that statements about pre-positive responsibilities in a broad area are only possible depending on specific normative-ethical theories. Nevertheless, the article attempts to defend both an outer limit of possible attributions of responsibility and a minimum content of any plausible ethics of responsibility. The outer (...) limit is characterised by the principle 'ultra posse nemo obligatur', the minimum content results from a reflection on the general normative preconditions of each specific attribution of responsibility. This reflection also allows for some tentative considerations regarding the interpretation of processes of transnationalisation. (shrink)

A growing number of small fashion entrepreneurs seek to offer an alternative to the mainstream fashion industry, which, in its obsession with novelty and growth, often ignores the costs to society and the environment. There is a need to develop a deeper understanding of how these fashion entrepreneurs may be agents for change in their industry. Using rich data from an in-depth study of 27 UK-based entrepreneurs, we offer such analysis, drawing on a novel framework that combines MacIntyre’s virtue ethics (...) scheme and Jonas’s responsibility imperative. We identify key virtues—passionate commitment, authenticity, humility, sharing and empowering, and temperance—which shape the entrepreneurs’ practices in line with their accepted and perceived responsibility for sustainability. These virtues shape the entrepreneurial processes that seek an active negotiation and harmonisation of sustainability and the demands of business. In particular, we pay attention to the different ways in which fashion entrepreneurs take responsibility for sustainability which ranges from a ‘growth for impact’ strategy to staying small and seeking impact through influence and replication. Conclusions are drawn on conceptualising the varieties of ‘postgrowth entrepreneurship’ that aligns the virtues of a deep-rooted sense of responsibility with business goals. This shows what can be possible and prefigures an alternative fashion industry. (shrink)

COVID-19 did not disappear in the third year (2022) of the global pandemic. On the contrary, the number of infected people several times exceeded the highs of previous years, but the greater morbidity was not accompanied by a relatively comparable number of deaths. Some studies showed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus impact, e.g. in CEE EU countries, characterizes the seasonal intensity as temperatures fall or rise in relative humidity. All researchers agree that the number of COVID-19-infected people is only an estimate (...) based on the volume of tests performed and that the true numbers are usually much higher. The implementation of spatial interaction modeling could potentially aid in the control of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the inherently spatial nature of its diffusion. The gravity models used in this investigation to simulate the regional spread of the COVID-19 epidemic are based methodologically on previous empirical studies. The proposed methodology uses techniques for modeling spatial interactions due to the epidemics described above, which are a direct result of the number of contacts between individuals. The COVID-19 pandemic can be studied regionally using spatial diffusion methods as well as population potential models (spatial interaction models) and visualized using geographic information system software. Empirical verification and geovisualizations are based on available recent population and pandemic statistics that are possible to acquire from national health services. Methodologically, this type of modeling and simulation aimed at reconstructing a factual situation can be defined as abductive chorological inferring. (shrink)