We present Activity Analysis as a new method for the quantification of subjective reports of altered states of consciousness with regard to the indicated level of simulated motor activity. Empirical linguistic activity analysis was conducted with dream reports conceived immediately after EEG-controlled periods of hypnagogic hallucinations and REM-sleep in the sleep laboratory. Reports of REM-dreams exhibited a significantly higher level of simulated physical dreamer activity, while hypnagogic hallucinations appear to be experienced mostly from the point of passive observer. This study (...) lays the groundwork for clinical research on the level of simulated activity in pathologically altered states of subjective experience, for example in the REM-dreams of clinically depressed patients, or in intrusions and dreams of patients diagnosed with PTSD. (shrink)

In this article, we present results from an interdisciplinary research project aimed at assessing consciousness in dreams. For this purpose, we compared lucid dreams with normal non-lucid dreams from REM sleep. Both lucid and non-lucid dreams are an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness, giving valuable insights into the structure of conscious experience and its neural correlates during sleep. However, the precise differences between lucid and non-lucid dreams remain poorly understood. The construction of the Lucidity and Consciousness in (...) Dreams scale was based on theoretical considerations and empirical observations. Exploratory factor analysis of the data from the first survey identified eight factors that were validated in a second survey using confirmatory factor analysis: INSIGHT, CONTROL, THOUGHT, REALISM, MEMORY, DISSOCIATION, NEGATIVE EMOTION, and POSITIVE EMOTION. While all factors are involved in dream consciousness, realism and negative emotion do not differentiate between lucid and non-lucid dreams, suggesting that lucid insight is separable from both bizarreness in dreams and a change in the subjectively experienced realism of the dream. (shrink)

Ethical concerns regarding agricultural practices can be found to co-evolve with technological developments. This paper aims to create an understanding of ethics that is helpful in debating technological innovation by studying such a co-evolution process in detail: the development and adoption of the milking robot. Over the last decade an increasing number of milking robots, or automatic milking systems (AMS), has been adopted, especially in the Netherlands and a few other Western European countries. The appraisal of this new technology in (...) ethical terms has appeared to be a complicated matter. Compared to using a conventional milking parlor, the use of an AMS entails in several respects a different practice of dairy farming, the ethical implications and evaluation of which are not self-evident but are themselves part of a dynamic process. It has become clear that with its use, the entire practice of dairy farming has been reorganized around this new device. With a robot, cows must voluntarily present themselves to be milked, whereby an ethical norm of (individual) freedom for cows can be seen to emerge together with this new technology. But adopting a robot also implies changes in what is considered to be a good farmer and an appropriate relation between farmer and cow. Through interviews, attending “farmers’ network” meetings in the Netherlands, and studying professional literature and dedicated dairy farming web forums, this paper traces the way that ethical concerns are a dynamic part of this process of rearranging a variety of elements of the practice of dairy farming. (shrink)

Gegenwartig vorherrschenden tierethischen Diskursen wird ein theologisch eigenstandiges, verantwortungsethisches Konzept entgegengestellt, das einen Richtungswechsel intendiert: Die Frage stellt sich dann nicht mehr nach der Personalitat des Tiers als Individuum, sondern nach Begrundungszusammenhangen und Moglichkeiten zum Erhalt von Biodiversitat. Ziel ist es somit, Bewahrung der Schopfung in dem Mass zu gestalten, dass Okosysteme und genetische Varianz in moglichst grosser Zahl erhalten bleiben. Anschliessend wird nach bereichsethischen Konkretionen gefragt und aufgezeigt, wie auf Grundlage des zuvor entwickelten Ansatzes eine Urteilsbildung in verschiedenen Konfliktsituationen (...) moglich ist. Abschliessend wird die Arbeit im grosseren kulturwissenschaftlichen Kontext des "Animal Turn" verortet. (shrink)

A plethora of ethical issues in livestock agriculture has emerged to public attention in recent decades, of which environmental and animal welfare concerns are but two, albeit prominent, themes. For livestock agriculture to be considered sustainable, somehow these interconnected themes need to be addressed. Ethical debate on these issues has been extensive, but mostly started from and focused on single issues. The views of farmers in these debates have been largely absent, or merely figured as interests, instead of being considered (...) morally worthwhile themselves. In this paper the relevance for ethical debates of the ways farmers discuss and engage with moral concerns is explored. The variety of norms that figure in contemporary farming practices is sketched in its multifarious complexity, illustrated by ethnographic fieldwork, and systematized in terms of “orders of worth.” Reviewing the practical arguments and commitments of farmers within this framework reveals that farming practices are subject to mixed motives, in which an amalgam of types of concerns play a role. Recognition of the peculiarly entangled nature of the ethics of farming practices could counter the tendency in policy making, technological innovation, and ethical thought to compartmentalize our moral landscape. Understanding farming practice as the integration of a mosaic of concerns in the light of a variety of moral experiences would foster public appreciation of positions of farmers in debates on improving the sustainability and societal acceptability of livestock agriculture. (shrink)

This article is the editors’ introduction to the transcript of a lecture that Harold Garfinkel delivered to a seminar in 1993. Garfinkel extensively discusses the relevance of Aron Gurwitsch’s phenomenological treatment of Gestalt theory for ethnomethodology. Garfinkel uses the term “misreading” to signal a respecification of Gurwitsch’s phenomenological investigations, and particularly his conceptions of contextures, functional significations, and phenomenal fields, so that they become compatible with detailed observations and descriptions of social actions and interactions performed in situ. Garfinkel begins with (...) Gurwitsch’s demonstrations with line drawings and other abstract examples, and suggests how they can be used to suggest original procedures for investigating the vicissitudes of embodied practical actions in the lifeworld. This introduction to the lecture aims to provide some background on the scope of Gurwitsch’s phenomenological critique and elaboration of Gestalt theory and Garfinkel’s “misreading” of it in terms of his own conceptions of indexicality and accountability, and ethnomethodological investigations of the production of social order. (shrink)

In this paper we study the termination behavior of Russell’s description elimination rewrite system. We discuss certain claims made by Kripke (2005) in his paper concerning the possible nontermination of elimination of descriptions.

Next SectionBy discussing a novel paradigm, it is shown that the likeliness of an operator to trigger an intervention effect in a wh-in-situ question is determined by the logical properties of that operator (contra Beck 1996a, 2006, for instance). A new empirical generalization accounting for the differences between operators in their ability to cause intervention and improving on existing analyses is suggested. This generalization is fully predictive and allows one to not have to list in the lexicon whether an intervener (...) is problematic or not. It is implemented as a formal condition on wh-questions in a version of Hamblin 1973's/Karttunen 1977's question semantics that makes crucial use of Chierchia 2006's domain alternatives. (shrink)

Working parents in are struggling to balance the demands of their occupation with those of childcare and homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, studies show that women are shouldering more of the burden and reporting greater levels of psychological distress, anxiety, and depression relative to men. However, research has yet to show that increases in psychological symptoms are linked to changes in stress during the pandemic. Herein, we conduct a small-N study to explore the associations between stress and psychological symptoms (...) during the pandemic among mothers using structural equation modeling, namely latent change score models. Thirty-three mothers completed questionnaires reporting current anxious and depressive symptoms, as well as stressful life experiences prior to-versus during the pandemic. Women endorsed significantly more stressful events during the pandemic, relative to the pre-pandemic period. Additionally, 58% of mothers scored as moderate-to-high risk for developing a stress-related physical illness in the near future because of their pandemic-level stress. Depressive symptoms were associated with the degree of change in life stress, whereas anxiety symptoms were more related to pre-pandemic levels of stress. The present study preliminarily sheds light on the nuanced antecedents to mothers’ experiences of anxious and depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although further work is needed in larger, more diverse samples of mothers, this study highlights the potential need for appropriate policies, and prevention and intervention programs to ameliorate the effects of pandemics on mothers’ mental health. (shrink)

This paper studies the influence of agency conflicts on the irreversibility effect. Using a dynamic variant of the static Baron and Myerson :911–930, 1982) adverse selection model, we characterize under which circumstances the irreversibility effect arises in the presence and absence of an agency conflict. In particular, we find that in the presence of an agency conflict the irreversibility effect arises in more circumstances than in the standard first-best analysis that abstracts from agency problems.

The new series of 'Studies on Ethics and Science' complements the Yearbook for Ethics and Science edited since 1995 by the Institute for Science and Ethics in Bonn and published by de Gruyter. The monographs and collected volumes in the series cover the same subjects as the Yearbook, namely outstanding and innovative contributions to the investigation of ethical questions connected with modern science and its development. Particular interest is directed towards ethical questions in medicine and the biological sciences.

In 1878, as a consequence of an international Balkan summit in Berlin, Austria–Hungary was given permission to occupy the troubled Ottoman provinces Bosnia and Hercegovina. A gory invasion campaign ensued, followed by four decades of civil administration. Finally, the territories were annexated by the Habsburg Monarchy in 1908 as an appendix of sorts, which almost caused the premature outbreak of a great war in Europe. This article will sketch the background for this last – and lethal – expansion of the (...) empire and pursue the research questions of (a) whether this constitutes a case of colonialism within Europe and (b) what its repercussions were, critically challenging the alleged ‘civilising mission’ that would legitimise the whole undertaking. (shrink)

Hallucinatory states are experienced not only in connection with drugs and psychopathologies but occur naturally and spontaneously across the human circadian cycle: Our nightly dreams bring multimodal experiences in the absence of adequate external stimuli. The current study proposes a new, tighter measure of these hallucinatory states: Sleep onset, REM sleep, and non-REM sleep are shown to differ with regard to motor imagery indicating interactions with a rich imaginative world, and cognitive agency that could enable sleepers to recognize their hallucinatory (...) state. Mentation reports from the different states were analysed quantitatively with regard to two grammatical–semantic constructs, motor agency and cognitive agency. The present results support earlier physiological and psychological evidence in revealing a decline in cognitive functions and an increase in simulated interactions with a hallucinatory world, en route to normal REM sleep. This leads us to introduce the hypothesis that REM sleep, which exhibits remarkably high levels of sensorimotor processes, may have evolved to serve as a virtual laboratory for the development and rehearsal of embodied cognition. The new measure of hallucinatory states presented here may also hold implications for the study of executive functions and cognitions, which might be interesting, for example, for the investigation of lucid dreaming. (shrink)

Foucaults Werk hat nicht nur die Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften entscheidend beeinflusst. Das Handbuch gibt einen systematischen Überblick über Foucaults Leben und Werk. Es stellt die Kontexte dar, aus denen heraus seine Werke entstanden sind und erklärt Grundbegriffe des Foucault‘schen Denkens wie Archiv, Biopolitik, Diskurs, Dispositiv, Genealogie, Körper und Macht. Mit einem umfangreichen Kapitel zur Rezeption in den verschiedenen Disziplinen. Für die 2. Auflage wurde das Handbuch durchgesehen und aktualisiert sowie um neue Artikel zu Foucaults journalistischen und medizingeschichtlichen Arbeiten sowie zu (...) seinen Vorlesungen über das Wahrsprechen und zur Ödipus-Thematik erweitert. Außerdem setzt sich ein Beitrag ausführlich mit dem 2018 posthum erschienenen vierten Band der Geschichte der Sexualität auseinander. (shrink)

It has always been a mantra of Habsburg history that Austria-Hungary never had colonies. This article investigates why Bosnia-Herzegovina can be regarded as such indeed, developing a check list of factors from critical colonial history, showing that it is a Eurocentric view actually that prevents us from recognizing colonialism on European soil.

Robots are widely expected—and pushed—to transform open-field agriculture, but these visions remain wedded to optimizing monocultural farming systems. Meanwhile there is little pull for automation from ecology-based, diversified farming realms. Noting this gap, we here explore the potential for robots to foster an agroecological approach to crop production. The research was situated in The Netherlands within the case of _pixel cropping_, a nascent farming method in which multiple food and service crops are planted together in diverse assemblages employing agroecological practices (...) such as intercropping and biological pest control. Around this case we engaged with a variety of specialists in discussion groups, workshops, and design challenges to explore the potential of field robots to meet the multifaceted demands of highly diverse agroecological cropping systems. This generated a spectrum of imaginations for how automated tools might—or might not—be appropriately used, ranging from fully automated visions, to collaborative scenarios, to fully analogue prototypes. We found that automating agroecological cropping systems requires finding ways to imbue the ethos of agroecology into designed tools, thereby seeking to overcome tensions between production aims and other forms of social and ecological care. We conclude that a rethinking of automation is necessary for agroecological contexts: not as a blueprint for replacing humans, but making room for analogue and hybrid forms of agricultural work. These findings highlight a need for design processes which include a diversity of actors, involve iterative design cycles, and incorporate feedback between designers, practitioners, tools, and cropping systems. (shrink)

Das Werk "Metaphysicae systema methodicum" des Steinfurter Gymnasialprofessors Clemens Timpler (1563/64-1618) war, als es 1604 erstmals erschien, das erste Lehrbuch der Metaphysik aus protestantischer Feder und schon damit vor allem in Form und Stil, aber auch dem Inhalt nach wegweisend für die gesamte deutsche Schulphilosophie. Fest verwurzelt in der Tradition des Aristoteles und seiner thomistischen Auslegung und in stetem Bezug auf Suarez' seinerzeit gerade erschienene "Disputationes metaphysicae", entwickelt Timpler eine Lehre von erstaunlicher Eigenständigkeit, die akademisch umfassend rezipiert und intensiv (...) diskutiert wurde. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass sie auch Wolff nicht unbekannt gewesen sein wird, insbesondere wenn man etwa Timplers Bestimmungen der Philosophie und der Metaphysik, der Modalitäten und der Willensfreiheit betrachtet. The Metaphysicae systema methodicum by the Steinfurt professor Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1618) was, when it first appeared in 1604, the first textbook of metaphysics by a Protestant author, and was thus already a groundbreaking work of German academic philosophy, primarily in form and style but also in content. Firmly rooted in the tradition of Aristotle and the thomistic interpretation of his works, and making constant reference to Suarez’s recently-published Disputationes metaphysicae, Timpler developed a theory of astonishing originality, which was widely absorbed and intensively discussed in academic circles. It follows that the work would not have been unknown to Wolff, especially in view of Timpler’s designations of philosophy and metaphysics, modalities and freedom of will. (shrink)

The presence of contrastive focus on pronouns interpreted as bound variables is puzzling. Bound variables do not refer, and it is therefore unclear how two of them can be made to contrast with each other. It is argued that this is a problem for both alternative-based accounts such as Rooth’s (Nat Lang Semantics 1:75–116, 1992) and givenness-based ones such as Schwarzschild’s (Nat Lang Semantics 7:141–177, 1999). The present paper shows that previous approaches to this puzzle face an empirical problem, namely (...) the co-occurrence of additive too and focus on bound pronouns. Our account is based on the idea that the alternatives introduced by focused bound pronouns denote individuals. Putting forward the novel concept of compositional reconstruction, we show that a suitably modified Roothian analysis of focus licensing allows us to get bound pronouns to contrast with other bound pronouns. The reason for this is that the number of potential alternatives increases. We also suggest a modification of Rooth’s ~-operator: contrastiveness becomes a requirement of the operator, which is modelled as a definedness condition. It is argued that in the case of focused bound pronouns a ~-operator is necessarily inserted in the scope of the quantifier. If this is on the right track, it follows that the phenomenon of focused bound pronouns warrants both an operator interpreting focus as well as a semantic value for the contribution of focus. Any givenness-based analysis must include these two ingredients as well; we suggest a way in which this can be implemented more or less straightforwardly. (shrink)

I. Allgemeine Betrachtungen.--II. Die Erfahrung.--III. Kausalität, Hypothesen.--IV. Fortsetzung.--V. Naturwissenschaftliche prinzipe.--VI. Die Erkenntnis.

Our aim in this survey article is to provide an accessible overview of some key results and questions in the theory of judgment aggregation. We omit proofs and technical details, focusing instead on concepts and underlying ideas.

By looking back to the early days of network building within the Internet, Clemens Apprich looks at how those pioneer projects have shaped new forms of media and social practices, and critically engages with current discourses about the weal and woe of the Internet.

This article contains four criticisms against Jacques Rancière's philosophy of education, insofar as his philosophy is written in his work The Ignorant Schoolmaster. In the first criticism, Rancière's presupposition of equality of intelligence would be framed as a truth claim and to the extent that it can be treated as such, Rancière's argument contains a number of defects. The second criticism underscores the distinction between inequality of intelligence and inequality of knowledge Rancière confuses. The third criticism concerns the contradiction between (...) what Rancière has written and what he practiced and also the weakness of the defense provided by his supporters on this point. Fourth, Rancière's redefinition of “emancipation” as verification of the equality of intelligence turns out to strip away the very idea of emancipation of what makes it meaningful for many people. Abstrak: Tulisan ini berisi empat kritik terhadap filsafat pendidikan Jacques Rancière sebagaimana tertuang dalam karyanya The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Dalam kritik pertama, pengandaian kesetaraan akal budi Rancière akan dikemas sebagai klaim kebenaran dan sejauh itu dapat diperlakukan sebagai klaim kebenaran, argumen Rancière mengandung sejumlah kecacatan. Kritik kedua menggarisbawahi perbedaan antara ketidaksetaraan akal budi dan ketidaksetaraan pengetahuan yang dirancukan Rancière. Kritik ketiga berkaitan dengan adanya kontradiksi antara apa yang Rancière tuliskan dan apa yang ia praktikkan serta kelemahan pendukung Rancière dalam membela butir ini. Keempat, pendefinisian ulang Rancière atas “emansipasi” sebagai verifikasi atas kesetaraan akal budi justru melucuti ide emansipasi dari apa yang membuatnya bagi banyak orang berarti. (shrink)

In the context of a global pandemic that started in 2020, the Chilean higher education institution Universidad Andrés Bello faced the challenge of giving continuity to its already established blended program for English courses while also starting the implementation of a high-stakes certification assessment for its students using the Test of English for International Communication Bridge. This study sought to evaluate how much of a mediating factor online teaching presence could be in the context of test preparation within a language (...) course in aspects related to autonomous learning and perceived learning outcomes. A mixed-methods approach was used. It included a survey applied to 1,642 eligible students of the English program. These quantitative data were complemented with students’ comments and teacher interviews. After triangulating quantitative and qualitative data, teaching presence was clearly perceived to be a relevant aspect of the online experience in the studied courses. However, both students’ and teachers’ voices evidenced pervasive challenges and tensions that hinder the potentially transformative benefits that online learning is expected to bring about. (shrink)

The influence of movement skill on action representations and identification of agency was investigated. Point-light displays were created of highly skilled gestures of thirteen orchestral conductors in visual, auditory, and audiovisual versions and compared to two control conditions . In subsequent experimental sessions, participants indicated whether displays presented them or other conductors, whether the soundtrack contained their or others’ musical interpretations, and rated the quality and emotional content of the gestures. Self-recognition was more accurate in conditions presenting highly skilled conducting (...) movements as compared to other displays. Participants judged the quality of their own movements to be better than those of others, independently of whether or not they recognized movement agency. Emotional content was perceived accurately across conditions both for own and others’ actions. These results point to the influence of dynamical characteristics of motor skill, rather than merely type of movement or emotional content, on action representations and self-other identification. (shrink)

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten gilt mit Fug und Recht als der selbstandigste aller Wolffianer. Doch hat man kaum je systematisch untersucht, worin - uber die Begrundung der Asthetik hinaus - seine denkerische Originalitat besteht. Im vorliegenden Band wird der fur Kant wichtigste Schulautor als Erkenntnistheoretiker, Psychologe und Moralphilosoph erstmals prononciert aus dem Schatten Wolffs herausgeholt. Nach der jungsten Pionierubersetzung der Metaphysica ins Deutsche folgt hier eine interpretatorisch wegweisende Detailstudie zu philosophischen Schlusselthemen des fruhvollendeten Hochaufklarers - gerade recht zu den anstehenden Jubilaen. (...) Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten is regarded justifiably as the most independent of all Wolffians. Up to now however there have been very few systematic studies examining his intellectual originality, apart from his founding of aesthetics. In this volume, the author who was most important for Kant during his school years finally steps out of Wolff's shadow and is revealed to be an epistemologist, a psychologist and moral philosopher. After the recent translation of the Metaphysica into German, a pioneering achievement, what follows here is an interpretively groundbreaking detailed study of the key philosophical subjects of the philosopher of the High Enlightenment, just in time for the current anniversaries. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is a research field that has grown rapidly and attracted considerable attention. Most prominently, it has been labelled the ‘engineering of biology’. While other attempts to label the field have been also pursued, the program of engineering can be considered the core of the field’s disciplinary program, of its identity. This article addresses the success of the ‘engineering program’ in synthetic biology and argues that its success can partly be explained by distinct practices of persuasion that aim at (...) persuading scientific, but also non-scientific audiences. The article explores two different modes of persuasion:, building tools as heuristic models and posing visionary claims. Objects such as the toggle switch or the synthetic oscillator in synthetic biology can more adequately be described as heuristic models of engineering instead of simply as prototypes of ‘tools’. Posing visionary claims can be also understood as a persuasion practice, since the claims are used to construct the societal relevance of the field. Drawing upon Michel Callon’s ‘sociology of translation’, I argue that both practices of persuasion aim at ‘enrolling’ entities into the disciplinary identity. The article is based on the textual analysis of rhetorical practices in three synthetic biology review articles which are considered seminal for the history of the field. (shrink)

This paper is meant to show why the introduction of probation in the capital punishment act of the new Code of Criminal Law is a change we should appreciate. This change will expectedly lead Indonesia to be a nation that de facto no longer employs capital punishment. This is a desirable consequence given that, in my view, capital punishment cannot be ethically justified. In this paper, I will show why arguments in defense of capital punishment by appealing to the deterrence (...) effect, the risk of recidivism, the sense of justice, and the principle of retributive justice do not stand up to scrutiny. The irreversible nature of capital punishment further points to the unjustifiability of this form of punishment. Abstrak Tulisan ini hendak menunjukkan mengapa diintroduksikannya masa percobaan dalam pasal hukuman mati KUHP terbaru merupakan perubahan yang layak diapresiasi. Perubahan tersebut berpotensi mengantar Indonesia menjadi negara yang de facto tidak lagi menerapkan hukuman mati. Menurut penulis, konsekuensi semacam ini layak disambut baik lantaran hukuman mati itu sendiri secara etis tidak dapat dibenarkan. Dalam tulisan ini, penulis akan menunjukkan mengapa argumen-argumen yang ditujukan untuk menjustifikasi hukuman mati dengan merujuk pada efek jera, risiko residivis, rasa keadilan, dan prinsip keadilan retributif tidak dapat dipertahankan. Sifat hukuman mati yang tidak membuka ruang bagi koreksi yang berarti juga meneguhkan tidak dapat dibenarkannya bentuk hukuman tersebut. Kata-kata Kunci: hukuman mati, KUHP, efek jera, keadilan retributif, ruang koreksi. (shrink)