Legality, interdisciplinarity and the study of practice -- Re-thinkinking interdisciplinarity by re-reading hume -- Tainted love : the struggle over legality in international relations and international law -- The power of legality, legitimacy and the (im)possibility of interdisciplinary research -- Moving while standing still : law, politics and hard cases -- International law, Kelsen and the aberrant revolution : excavating the politics and practices of revolutionary legality in Rhodesia and beyond -- Juris dicere : custom as a matrix, custom as (...) a norm, and the role of judges and (their) ideology in custom making -- Multiple legalities and international criminal tribunals : juridical versus political legality -- Palestine's quest for statehood and the practice of the United Nations -- Regulatory legality : extraterritorial rule across domestic and international arenas -- Legality and lawfare in regime implementation -- Whose legality? Rule of law missions and the case of Kosovo -- Perspectives on the perils, promise, politics - and practice of interdisciplinarity. (shrink)

We used a multi-dimensional framework to assess current stereotypes of men and women. Specifically, we sought to determine (1) how men and women are characterized by male and female raters, (2) how men and women characterize themselves, and (3) the degree of convergence between self-characterizations and charcterizations of one’s gender group. In an experimental study, 628 U.S. male and female raters described men, women, or themselves on scales representing multiple dimensions of the two defining features of gender stereotypes, agency and (...) communality: assertiveness, independence, instrumental competence, leadership competence (agency dimensions), and concern for others, sociability and emotional sensitivity (communality dimensions). Results indicated that stereotypes about communality persist and were equally prevalent for male and female raters, but agency characterizations were more complex. Male raters generally descibed women as being less agentic than men and as less agentic than female raters described them. However, female raters differentiated among agency dimensions and described women as less assertive than men but as equally independent and leadership competent. Gender stereotypes also were evident in self-ratings, with female raters rating themselves as less agentic than male raters and male raters rating themselves as less communal than female raters, although there were exceptions (e.g., no differences in independence and sociability self-ratings for men and women). Comparisons of self-ratings and ratings of men and women in general indicated that women tended to characterize themselves in more stereotypic terms – as less assertive and less competent in leadership – than they characterized others in their gender group. Men, in contrast, characterized themselves in less stereotypic terms – as more communal. Overall, our results show that a focus on facets of agency and communality can provide deeper insights about stereotype content than a focus on overall agency and communality. (shrink)

Commercial food health branding is a challenging branch of marketing because it might, at the same time, promote healthy living and be commercially viable. However, the power to influence individuals’ health behavior and overall health status makes it crucial for marketing professionals to take into account the ethical dimensions of health branding: this article presents a conceptual analysis of potential ethical problems in health branding. The analysis focuses on ethical concerns related to the application of three health brand elements (functional (...) claims, process claims, and health symbols) as well as a number of general concerns that apply to health branding as such. Being a pioneering analysis, this article advances the academic understanding of health branding and provides practitioners with knowledge of important concerns to take into account when marketing health brands. (shrink)

Eating disorders (EDs) are characterized by marked cognitive distortions and maladaptive schemas. Cognitive models of EDs highlight the direct impact of cognitive dysfunctions on eating-related disturbances, insofar as specific cognitive contents such as thoughts about diet rules and food or loss of control may trigger disturbed eating behavior. Moreover, early maladaptive schemas that reflect perfectionist standards and relate to achievement and performance seem to be associated with disturbed eating, e.g. via their impact on situation-specific appraisals. However, so far, no study (...) has investigated these assumptions. Hence, the present study sought to demonstrate whether and how cognitive content exerts an impact on eating behavior in daily life, and whether maladaptive core schemas impact the occurrence of binge eating via dysfunctional ED cognitions in eating-related contexts. N = 29 females with Bulimia Nervosa (BN), n = 31 females with Binge Eating Disorder (BED) and n = 30 female controls without EDs (NC) participated in the study. All participants received a handheld computer for a 48-hour period to capture antecedents of disturbed eating behavior in daily life. Event-sampling (meals, binge eating, purging, stressful situations) and signal-sampling (five times a day) methods were applied. EMA included a short questionnaire to assess dysfunctional cognitions and level of craving and to capture information about situational contexts. Early maladaptive schemas were assessed using a short version of the Young Schema Questionnaire at baseline. The main results showed specific patterns of dysfunctional eating-related cognitions for BED and BN. Binge eating was predicted by thoughts about loss of control (positively) and dietary restraint (negatively). For meal situations, no significant differences between the two ED groups emerged. All three domains exerted indirect effects on craving via thoughts about ‘eating/loss of control’, whereas neither a direct nor an indirect effect emerged regarding thoughts about ‘dietary restraint’. These results fit well with previous studies and support cognitive models of EDs; schema therapeutic approaches may be a valuable contribution to enhance treatment of EDs. Further studies should explore whether the findings from emerging adulthood can be generalized to younger age groups. (shrink)

Every second-countable regular topological space X is metrizable. For a given “computable” topological space satisfying an axiom of computable regularity M. Schröder [10] has constructed a computable metric. In this article we study whether this metric space can be considered computationally as a subspace of some computable metric space [15]. While Schröder's construction is “pointless”, i. e., only sets of a countable base but no concrete points are known, for a computable metric space a concrete dense set of computable points (...) is needed. But there may be no computable points in X. By converging sequences of basis sets instead of Cauchy sequences of points we construct a metric completion of a space together with a canonical representation equation image, equation image. We show that there is a computable embedding of in with computable inverse. Finally, we construct a notation of a dense set of points in with computable mutual distances and prove that the Cauchy representation of the resulting computable metric space is equivalent to equation image. Therefore, every computably regular space has a computable homeomorphic embedding in a computable metric space, which topologically is its completion. By the way we prove a computable Urysohn lemma. (shrink)

Émile Durkheim zählt zu den Klassikern der Soziologie. Der Band greift erstmals unbekannte Rezeptionslinien Durkheims auf und zeigt ihn so in all seiner Komplexität und Aktualität: als Vorreiter einer transdisziplinären Sozialwissenschaft, als scharfsinnigen Theoretiker, als Denker des Materiellen und des Symbolischen. Neben ihm kommen auch seine Kollegen, Erben und zeitgenössischen Kritiker in den Blick. Dabei wird deutlich, dass Durkheims Werk nicht nur die Soziologie prägte, sondern auch der Ethnologie und der Philosophie grundlegende Impulse gab. Mit Beiträgen von Stéphane Baciocchi, Stefan (...) Beck, Tanja Bogusz, Heike Delitz, Emmanuel Désveaux, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Joachim Fischer, Marcel Fournier, Bruno Karsenti, Frédéric Keck, Wiebke Keim, Steven Lukes, Stephan Moebius, Lothar Peter, Devyani Prabhat, Anne W. Rawls, Thomas Scheffer, Michael Schillmeier, Robert Seyfert, Susan Stedman Jones und Jean Terrier. (shrink)

Social robots as companions play an increasingly important role in our everyday life. However, reaching the full potential of social robots and the interaction between humans and robots requires permanent collection and processing of personal data of users, e.g. video and audio data for image and speech recognition. In order to foster user acceptance, trust and to address legal requirements as the General Data Protection Regulation of the EU, privacy needs to be integrated in the design process of social robots. (...) The Privacy by Design approach by Cavoukian indicates the relevance of a privacy-respecting development and outlines seven abstract principle.In this paper two methods as a hands-on guideline to fulfill the principles are presented and discussed in the content of the Privacy by Design approach. Privacy risks of a typical robot scenario are identified, analyzed and solutions are proposed on the basis of theseven types of privacyand theprivacy protection goals. (shrink)

The paper presents a description of the foundations of Ludvik Bartelj’s philosophy. Bartelj, born in 1913, lives and writes philosophy and theology in Slovenia. He is a close follower of his teacher’s, France Weber/veber, ‘‘Gegenstandsphilosophie’’ [‘‘object-philosophy’’= OP]. He develops OP in some respects and also in some areas missing in Veber but even these innovations take as their point of departure Veberian ‘‘Gegenstandsphilosophie.’’ For Bartelj OP theory is the fundamental philosophic discipline and, finally, will embrace all real ‘‘objects.’’ OP itself (...) is grounded in the knowledge that objects receive their contents from Primeval Reality [Urwirklichkeit; Prastvarnost], i.e. from God. Bartelj also exploits the scholastic tradition and he intends to complement one of the two positions by means of the other. He divides the faculty of cognition into four species: Sense perception, ‘‘profound understanding’’ [Tiefenverstand; globinski razum], ‘‘peripheral understanding,’’ and feelings. Profound and peripheral understanding are intertwined indissolubly: Whereas profound understanding approaches objects in a non-conceptual way, peripheral understanding has the task to determine conceptually profound understanding’s cognition(s). By means of profound understanding the subject of cognition as well as its experiences are epistemically grasped. God, too, is the object of profound understanding, and knowledge of God directly emerges from the real empirical world. Profound understanding discovers that such ‘‘realities’’ are, according to their very nature, dependent on something else, i.e. their content(s) come(s) from a being independent by nature, which Bartelj calls ‘‘Primeval Reality’’ [Prastvarnost] or ‘‘God.’’. (shrink)

The paper presents a description of the foundations of Ludvik Barteljs philosophy. Bartelj, born in 1913, lives and writes philosophy and theology in Slovenia. He is a close follower of his teachers, France Weber/Veber, Gegenstandsphilosophie [object-philosophy= OP]. He develops OP in some respects and also in some areas missing in Veber but even these innovations take as their point of departure Veberian Gegenstandsphilosophie. For Bartelj OP theory is the fundamental philosophic discipline and, finally, will embrace all real objects. OP itself (...) is grounded in the knowledge that objects receive their contents from Primeval Reality [Urwirklichkeit; Prastvarnost], i.e. from God. Bartelj also exploits the scholastic tradition and he intends to complement one of the two positions by means of the other. He divides the faculty of cognition into four species: Sense perception, profound understanding [Tiefenverstand; globinski razum], peripheral understanding, and feelings. Profound and peripheral understanding are intertwined indissolubly: Whereas profound understanding approaches objects in a non-conceptual way, peripheral understanding has the task to determine conceptually profound understandings cognition(s). By means of profound understanding the subject of cognition as well as its experiences are epistemically grasped. God, too, is the object of profound understanding, and knowledge of God directly emerges from the real empirical world. Profound understanding discovers that such realities are, according to their very nature, dependent on something else, i.e. their content(s) come(s) from a being independent by nature, which Bartelj calls Primeval Reality [Prastvarnost] or God. (shrink)

The paper presents a description of the foundations of Ludvik Bartelj's philosophy. Bartelj, born in 1913, lives and writes philosophy and theology in Slovenia. He is a close follower of his teacher's, France Weber/Veber, "Gegenstandsphilosophie" ["object-philosophy" = OP]. He develops OP in some respects and also in some areas missing in Veber but even these innovations take as their point of departure Veberian "Gegenstandsphilosophie." For Bartelj OP theory is the fundamental philosophic discipline and, finally, will embrace all real "objects." OP (...) itself is grounded in the knowledge that objects receive their contents from Primeval Reality [Urwirklichkeit; Prastvarnost], i.e. from God. Bartelj also exploits the scholastic tradition and he intends to complement one of the two positions by means of the other. He divides the faculty of cognition into four species: Sense perception, "profound understanding" [Tiefenverstand; globinski razum], "peripheral understanding," and feelings. Profound and peripheral understanding are intertwined indissolubly: Whereas profound understanding approaches objects in a non-conceptual way, peripheral understanding has the task to determine conceptually profound understanding's cognition. By means of profound understanding the subject of cognition as well as its experiences are epistemically grasped. God, too, is the object of profound understanding, and knowledge of God directly emerges from the real empirical world. Profound understanding discovers that such "realities" are, according to their very nature, dependent on something else, i.e. their content come from a being independent by nature, which Bartelj calls "Primeval Reality" [Prastvarnost] or "God". (shrink)

In Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism , Robert B. Brandom puts forward a general method of formally representing relations between meaning and use (between vocabularies and practices-or-abilities) and shows how discursive intentionality can be understood as a pragmatically mediated semantic relation. In this context, the activity that pragmatically mediates the semantic relations characteristic of discursive intentionality is specified as a practice of discursive updating —a practice of rectifying commitments and removing incompatibilities. The aim of the paper is (...) to take a closer look at the practice of discursive updating and to show that the role of inconsistencies and disagreements in discursive practice can only be fully understood if the interactional dimension of updating processes is taken into account—i.e. if one looks at the explicitly social, interactional role of discursive updating in cases of disagreements between different subjects. (shrink)

Like Einstein's general theory of relativity is concerned with explaining the basics of an observable experience – i.e., gravity – most people take for granted that Chomsky's theory of generative grammar (GG) is concerned with the basic nature of language. This chapter highlights a mere subset of central constructs in GG, showing how they have featured prominently and thus shaped formal linguistic studies in multilingualism. Because multilingualism includes a wide range of nonmonolingual populations, the constructs are divided across child bilingualism (...) and adult third language for greater coverage. In the case of the former, the chapter examines how poverty of the stimulus has been investigated. Using the nascent field of L3/Ln acquisition as the backdrop, it discusses how the GG constructs of I‐language versus E‐language sit at the core of debates regarding the very notion of what linguistic transfer and mental representations should be taken to be. (shrink)

It has become commonplace in the theory of concepts to distinguish between questions about the structure and questions about the ontology of concepts. Structural questions concern the way concepts are composed of, or otherwise related to, other concepts (or non-conceptual constituents), while ontological questions concern the metaphysical nature of concepts: how concepts exist (if they exist); what kind of entities they are. A tacit assumption in discussions about the structure and ontology of concepts seems to be that structural and ontological (...) questions can be treated more or less independently of each other. Correspondingly, it might be assumed that one can rather arbitrarily combine structural analyses of concepts with any hypothesis about their ontological make-up. In this paper, we would like to question this assumption with regard to a particular recent development in the structural analysis of concepts, the so-called frame theory. As a matter of fact, most frame theorists adopt a subjectivist theory of concepts. Yet, subjectivism attracts philosophical criticisms, which originate mainly in the writings of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein. While Wittgenstein appreciated the cognitive dimension of concepts, he came to reject the subjectivist’s causal analysis of mental explanation and their ensuing reification of concepts as causally operative mental particulars. Instead, Wittgenstein suggested that concepts are socially imparted norms of classification and inference – i. e., abstractions from collective word-usages and other practices associated with categorizing and higher-order thinking, which may serve as instructions for individual agents on how to discriminate and interact with things of different kinds. Applying the Wittgensteinian critique of subjectivism to the frame analysis, the we not only find that the frame approach quite nicely dovetails with what the pragmatist has to say about concepts and categorization, insofar as frames seem particularly well-suited to depict the defeasible and context-dependent default character of our usual criteria for semantical understanding. Indeed, pragmatism, with its emphasis on the holistic, indeterminate and normative nature of our conceptual activities, seems able to explain why concepts are frames. This shows that there exist at least some interconnections between structural and ontological analyses, which must not be ignored, especially in interdisciplinary investigations on concepts. Even if frame theory is not strictly incompatible with a subjectivist ontology, it does license an abductive inference to a pragmatist ontology of concepts, as frames precisely formalize the insights into our actual conceptual practice that led Wittgenstein to develop his pragmatist view. (shrink)

“Partout et nulle part”. L’ambiguïté explorée à partir de la phénoménologie et de la danseOn ménage ici, à l’aide du concept d’ambiguïté, une rencontre entre le théâtre dansé de Pina Bausch et la phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty. Le concept d’ambiguïté est au centre de la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty, qu’on a d’ailleurs pu considérer comme une « philosophie de l’ambiguïté ». Néanmoins, le concept phénoménologique d’ambiguïté n’a pas encore été discuté dans la littérature secondaire. Cette étude distingue plusieurs sens de l’ambiguïté dans (...) la Phénoménologie de la perception, avant de se tourner vers la différence entre bonne et mauvaise ambiguïté, telle que Merleau-Ponty a pu la proposer.Il apparaîtra que la chorégraphie de Pina Bausch et la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty sont deux voies d’approche complémentaires des différentes dimensions de l’ambiguïté :les dimensions corporelle, spatiale et culturelle. L’étude montre que l’approche merleau-pontienne de l’ambiguïté et l’approche par Pina Bausch du théâtre dansé parviennent toutes deux à instaurer un type de communication humaine ne s’évanouissant ni dans un relativisme vide ni dans un universalisme formel : « Ce qu’il faut comprendre, c’est que je suis présent ici et maintenant et, pour la même raison, présent ailleurs et toujours, et aussi que je m’absente d’ici et de maintenant, ainsi que de tout lieu et de tout temps. L’ambiguïté n’est pas une imperfection de la conscience ou de l’existence, c’est leur définition même » (PhP).“Ovunque e in nessun luogo”. Esplorare l’ambiguità con la fenomenologia e la danzaProponiamo qui, sul filo del concetto di ambiguità, un incontro tra il teatro danza di Pina Bausch e la fenomenologia di Merleau-Ponty. Il concetto fenomenologico di ambiguità, pur non essendo stato veramente discusso nella letteratura critica, risulta centrale nella filosofia di Merleau-Ponty, che è stata appunto definita filosofia dell’ambiguità.Questo saggio individua i diversi significati di ambiguità contenuti in Fenomenologia della percezione, prima di rivolgersi alla differenza tra buona e cattiva ambiguità, così come viene proposta da Merleau-Ponty.Si scoprirà come il lavoro coreografi co di Pina Bausch e la filosofia merleaupontiana siano due modi complementari di approcciare le diverse dimensioni dell’ambiguità: ambiguità corporea, ambiguità spaziale, ambiguità culturale. Il saggio sostiene infatti la tesi che l’approccio merleaupontiano all’ambiguità e l’approccio di Pina Bausch al teatro-danza trovino entrambi delle modalità per stabilire un tipo di comunicazione umana che riesca a non collassare né in un vuoto relativismo né in un universalismo formalistico: “Dobbiamo comprendere che la medesima ragione mi rende presente qui ed ora e presente altrove e sempre, assente da qui e da ora e assente da ogni luogo e da ogni tempo. Questa ambiguità non è un’imperfezione della coscienza o dell’esistenza, ma ne è una definizione” (Fenomenologia della percezione). (shrink)

“Partout et nulle part”. L’ambiguïté explorée à partir de la phénoménologie et de la danseOn ménage ici, à l’aide du concept d’ambiguïté, une rencontre entre le théâtre dansé de Pina Bausch et la phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty. Le concept d’ambiguïté est au centre de la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty, qu’on a d’ailleurs pu considérer comme une « philosophie de l’ambiguïté ». Néanmoins, le concept phénoménologique d’ambiguïté n’a pas encore été discuté dans la littérature secondaire. Cette étude distingue plusieurs sens de l’ambiguïté dans (...) la Phénoménologie de la perception, avant de se tourner vers la différence entre bonne et mauvaise ambiguïté, telle que Merleau-Ponty a pu la proposer.Il apparaîtra que la chorégraphie de Pina Bausch et la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty sont deux voies d’approche complémentaires des différentes dimensions de l’ambiguïté :les dimensions corporelle, spatiale et culturelle. L’étude montre que l’approche merleau-pontienne de l’ambiguïté et l’approche par Pina Bausch du théâtre dansé parviennent toutes deux à instaurer un type de communication humaine ne s’évanouissant ni dans un relativisme vide ni dans un universalisme formel : « Ce qu’il faut comprendre, c’est que je suis présent ici et maintenant et, pour la même raison, présent ailleurs et toujours, et aussi que je m’absente d’ici et de maintenant, ainsi que de tout lieu et de tout temps. L’ambiguïté n’est pas une imperfection de la conscience ou de l’existence, c’est leur définition même » (PhP).“Ovunque e in nessun luogo”. Esplorare l’ambiguità con la fenomenologia e la danzaProponiamo qui, sul filo del concetto di ambiguità, un incontro tra il teatro danza di Pina Bausch e la fenomenologia di Merleau-Ponty. Il concetto fenomenologico di ambiguità, pur non essendo stato veramente discusso nella letteratura critica, risulta centrale nella filosofia di Merleau-Ponty, che è stata appunto definita filosofia dell’ambiguità.Questo saggio individua i diversi significati di ambiguità contenuti in Fenomenologia della percezione, prima di rivolgersi alla differenza tra buona e cattiva ambiguità, così come viene proposta da Merleau-Ponty.Si scoprirà come il lavoro coreografi co di Pina Bausch e la filosofia merleaupontiana siano due modi complementari di approcciare le diverse dimensioni dell’ambiguità: ambiguità corporea, ambiguità spaziale, ambiguità culturale. Il saggio sostiene infatti la tesi che l’approccio merleaupontiano all’ambiguità e l’approccio di Pina Bausch al teatro-danza trovino entrambi delle modalità per stabilire un tipo di comunicazione umana che riesca a non collassare né in un vuoto relativismo né in un universalismo formalistico: “Dobbiamo comprendere che la medesima ragione mi rende presente qui ed ora e presente altrove e sempre, assente da qui e da ora e assente da ogni luogo e da ogni tempo. Questa ambiguità non è un’imperfezione della coscienza o dell’esistenza, ma ne è una definizione” (Fenomenologia della percezione). (shrink)

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many nations to shut-down schools and universities, catapulting teachers and students into a new, challenging situation of 100% distance learning. To explore how the shift to full distance learning represented a break with previous teaching, we asked Austrian students (n = 874, 65% female, 34% male) which digital media they used before and during the first Corona lockdown, as well as which tools they wanted to use in the future. Students additionally reported on their (...) attitudes and experiences with online learning. Results showed that students used certain tools, such as video, audio, e-assessments, and web conferencing systems, much more often during lockdown than they had before. Their use of classic digital media, such as e-mail, social communication tools, such as chat or online forums, and other interactive tools, such as wikis or educational games, hardly changed at all. Their attitudes toward multimedia learning were positively related to their media use. In their open responses (n = 137), students identified advantages of online learning (flexibility and self-directed learning), as well as disadvantages (limited social interaction) and challenges (motivation and self-discipline). As a group, they also expressed a clear preference for a balanced combination of online- and offline teaching in the future. However, individual students did prefer fully online or offline learning modes, depending on their personal circumstances and educational goals. We view this as a call to researchers and educators alike to explore ways in which the advantages of online and face-to-face learning can best be combined to meet the changed needs and expectations of organizations, students, and teachers in a future “after Corona.”. (shrink)

Continued confinement of those most vulnerable to COVID-19—e.g., the elderly, those with chronic diseases and other risk factors—is presented as an uncontroversial measure when planning exit strategies from lockdown measures. Policies for deconfinement assume that these persons will remain confined even when others will not. This, however, could last quite a long time, and for some this could mean that they will remain in confinement for the rest of their lives.In a policy brief on ethical, legal, and social issues of (...) transition strategies, the Swiss national COVID-19 science task force stated that:Specific interventions should target the risks associated with isolation... (shrink)

Women’s capacity to reproduce varies over the life span, and developmental goals such as family formation are age-graded and shaped by social norms about the appropriate age for completing specific developmental tasks. Thus, a woman’s age may be linked to her ideas about what an ideal partner should be like. With the goals of replicating and extending prior research, in this study we examined the role of age in women’s partner preferences across the globe. We investigated associations of age with (...) ideal long-term partner preferences in a cross-cultural sample of 17,254 single (i.e., unpartnered) heterosexual women, ages 18 to 67, from 147 countries. Data were collected via an online questionnaire, the Ideal Partner Survey. Confirming our preregistered hypotheses, we found no or only negligible age effects on preferences for kindness-supportiveness, attractiveness, financial security-successfulness, or education-intelligence. Age was, however, positively associated with preferences for confidence-assertiveness. Consistent with family formation goals, age was associated with an ideal partner’s parenting intentions (high until approximately age 30, then decreasing afterward). Age range deemed acceptable (and in particular, the discrepancy between one’s own age and the minimum ideal age of a partner) increased with age. This latter pattern also replicated in exploratory analyses based on subsamples of lesbian and bisexual women. In summary, age has a limited impact on partner preferences. Of the attributes investigated, only preference for confidence-assertiveness was linked with age. However, age range deemed acceptable and an ideal partner’s parenting intention, a dimension mostly neglected in earlier research, substantially vary with age. (shrink)

BackgroundThe UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the reformed guardianship law in Germany, require that persons with a disability, including people with dementia in Alzheimer’s disease (PwAD), are supported in making self-determined decisions. This support is achieved through communication. While content-related communication is a deficit of PwAD, relational aspects of communication are a resource. Research in supported decision-making (SDM) has investigated the effectiveness of different content-related support strategies for PwAD but has only succeeded in improving understanding, (...) which, although one criterion of capacity to consent, is not sufficient to ensure overall capacity to consent. The aim of the ‘spatial intervention study’ of the DECIDE project is to examine an innovative resource-oriented SDM approach that focuses on relational aspects. We hypothesise that talking to PwAD in their familiar home setting (as opposed to a clinical setting) will reduce the complexity of the decision-making process and enhance overall capacity to consent. MethodsPeople with a suspected or confirmed diagnosis of dementia in Alzheimer’s disease will be recruited from two memory clinics (N = 80). We will use a randomised crossover design to investigate the intervention effect of the decision-making place on capacity to consent. Besides reasoning capacity, which is part of overall capacity to consent and will be the primary outcome, various secondary outcomes (e.g., other aspects of capacity to consent, subjective task complexity, decisional conflict) and suspected moderating or mediating variables (e.g., meaning of home, demographic characteristics) will be assessed.DiscussionThe results of the study will be used to develop a new SDM strategy that is based on relational resources for PwAD. If a change in location achieves the anticipated improvement in capacity to consent, future research should focus on implementing this SDM strategy in a cost-effective manner in clinical practice.Trial registration: DRKS00030799. (shrink)

Symptom Checker Applications (SCA) are mobile applications often designed for the end-user to assist with symptom assessment and self-triage. SCA are meant to provide the user with easily accessible information about their own health conditions. However, SCA raise questions regarding ethical, legal, and social aspects (ELSA), for example, regarding fair access to this new technology. The aim of this scoping review is to identify the ELSA of SCA in the scientific literature. A scoping review was conducted to identify the ELSA (...) of SCA. Ten databases (e.g., Web of Science and PubMed) were used. Studies on SCA that address ELSA, written in English or German, were included in the review. The ELSA of SCA were extracted and synthesized using qualitative content analysis. A total of 25,061 references were identified, of which 39 were included in the analysis. The identified aspects were allotted to three main categories: (1) Technology; (2) Individual Level; and (3) Healthcare system. The results show that there are controversial debates in the literature on the ethical and social challenges of SCA usage. Furthermore, the debates are characterised by a lack of a specific legal perspective and empirical data. The review provides an overview on the spectrum of ELSA regarding SCA. It offers guidance to stakeholders in the healthcare system, for example, patients, healthcare professionals, and insurance providers and could be used in future empirical research to investigate the perspectives of those affected, such as users. (shrink)

This article correlates fine-grained semantic variability and change with measures of occurrence frequency to investigate whether a word’s degree of semantic change is sensitive to how often it is used. We show that this sensitivity can be detected within a short time span (i.e., 20 years), basing our analysis on a large corpus of German allowing for a high temporal resolution (i.e., per month). We measure semantic variability and change with the help of local semantic networks, combining elements of deep (...) learning methodology and graph theory. Our micro-scale analysis complements previous macro-scale studies from the field of natural language processing, corroborating the finding that high token frequency has a negative effect on the degree of semantic change in a lexical item. We relate this relationship to the role of exemplars for establishing form–function pairings between words and their habitual usage contexts. (shrink)

This open access book provides the first explicit case study for an application of the method of reflective equilibrium (RE), using it to develop and defend a precautionary principle. It thereby makes an important and original contribution to questions of philosophical method and methodology. The book shows step-by-step how RE is applied, and develops a methodological framework which will be useful for everyone who wishes to use reflective equilibrium. With respect to precautionary principles, the book demonstrates how a rights-based precautionary (...) principle can be constructed and defended. The case study succeeds in demonstrating that RE can be successfully applied and puts real constraints on the justification process. This is all the more remarkable as the case study was designed as an open-ended process, without presupposing any specific results. This book will be highly relevant both to people interested in philosophical methodology and epistemology, as well as to researchers who are interested in using philosophical methods and tools and applying them to practical problems. (shrink)

This paper explores how consumers’ ethical food consumption practices, mediated by mobile phone applications (apps), are transformed into digital data. Based on a review of studies on the digitalization of ethical consumption practices and food apps, we find that previous research, while valuable, fails to acknowledge and critically examine the digital labor required to perform digitalized ethical food consumption. In this paper, we call for research on how digital labor underlies the digitalization of ethical food consumption and develop a conceptual (...) framework that supports this research agenda. Our proposed conceptual framework builds on three interconnected analytical concepts—datafication, affordances and digital labor—that enable the study of digital labor as an infrastructural element of digitalized food consumption. We illustrate our conceptual framework through our previous research concerning Buycott, a US-based mobile app whose stated aim is to facilitate consumers’ ethical purchasing decisions. Using the walkthrough method, we consider how the Buycott app engages user-generated data and what implications this holds for consumers. The app’s infrastructure, we suggest, connects ethical consumption and digital labor. A richer understanding of the digital food economy, we propose, enables social scientists not only to elucidate how consumers engage in digital labor, but also to contribute to the development of new data governance structures in the digital food economy. We therefore call for social scientists interested in food, consumption and the digital economy to contribute to a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization by empirically examining how ethical consumption apps implicate ethical consumers’ work. (shrink)

We view agrobiodiversity as a social-ecological phenomenon and, therefore, an example of nature–gender relations within agrarian change, including social, economic, political and technical changes in agriculture and rural areas. As a result of the industrialization of agriculture, nature–gender relations in the field of agrobiodiversity have become characterized by separation processes such as conservation versus use or subsistence versus commodity production. We argue that the sustainable development paradigm, as currently implemented in European Common Agricultural Policy through the concept of multifunctionality, does (...) not necessarily overcome separation tendencies and lead towards integration, despite its claim to bring together different ecological, economic and social needs. In our paper we critically reflect this observation and develop a theory-based analytical framework at the interface of nature and gender relations. For analytical purposes we distinguish between three different agrarian structures and focus on the development of two separation tendencies within them and their effects on agrobiodiversity. Concerning nature, we discuss the effects of separating agrobiodiversity conservation and use. With regard to gender, we discuss the separation of subsistence and commodity production. Against this background, we claim for new rural economic rationalities characterized by processes whose qualitative, material and value dimensions maintain agrobiodiversity. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a growing public discourse regarding the influence AI will have on the future of work. Simultaneously, considerable critical attention has been given to the implications of AI on gender equality. Far from making precise predictions about the future, this discourse demonstrates that new technologies are instances for renegotiating the relation of gender and work. This paper examines how gender is addressed in news media discourse on AI and the future of work, focusing on Germany. (...) We approach this question from a perspective of feminist technology studies and discourse analysis, exploring a corpus of 178 articles from 2015 to 2021 from German newspapers and newsmagazines. The findings indicate that critical AI and gender knowledge circulates in public discourse in the form of specific discursive frames, thematizing algorithmic bias, automatization and enhancement, and gender stereotypes. As a result, we show that, first, the discourse takes up feminist and scholarly discourse on gender and discusses AI in a way that is informed by social constructivism and standpoint theories. Second, gender appears as a—to some extent intersectional—diversity category which is critical to AI, while at the same time omitting important perspectives. Third, it can be shown that there is a renegotiating of the ideal worker norm taking place, and finally, we argue that the gendered frame of the powerful men developer responsible for AI’s risk is a concept to be challenged. (shrink)

Do the mass media deliver what contemporary democracies require? This fundamental research question has been discussed for many decades and the body of literature is firmly rooted in the debate following from the Hutchins Commission 1947. In more recent years, monitoring of the relations between democracy and the mass media has concentrated on new or democracies in transition. Fewer monitoring efforts have been undertaken in mature democracies. The following text develops a social science based monitoring instrument for established democracies, the (...) Media for Democracy Monitor. It has been developed at the University of Zurich and tested in five European countries. (shrink)

Reflective equilibrium —the idea that we have to justify our judgments and principles through a process of mutual adjustment—is taken to be a central method in philosophy. Nonetheless, conceptions of RE often stay sketchy, and there is a striking lack of explicit and traceable applications of it. This paper presents an explicit case study for the application of an elaborate RE conception. RE is used to reconstruct the arguments from Thomson’s paper “Turning the Trolley” for why a bystander must not (...) divert a runaway trolley from five workmen onto one. Analyzing Thomson’s resulting position with the RE-criteria has two main results: Firstly, the adjustment of one of her commitments can be defended. Secondly, no justified position in RE was reached. With respect to RE as a method, the main results from this application are: There is at least one conception of RE that is sufficiently specified to be applicable; the RE criteria put real constraints on the process of justification; and an explicit application of RE has benefits in terms of clarity while at the same time providing guidance for how the justificatory process could be continued. (shrink)

Recent research on grapheme-colour synesthesia has focused on whether visual attention is necessary to induce a synesthetic percept. The current study investigated the influence of synesthesia on overt visual attention during an oculomotor target selection task. Chromatic and achromatic stimuli were presented with one target among distractors among multiple ‘5’s ). Participants executed an eye movement to the target. Synesthetes and controls showed a comparable target selection performance across conditions and a ‘pop-out effect’ was only seen in the chromatic condition. (...) As a pop-out effect was absent for the synesthetes in the achromatic condition, a synesthetic element appears not to elicit a synesthetic colour, even when it is the target. The synesthetic percepts are not pre-attentively available to distinguish the synesthetic target from synesthetic distractors when elements are presented in the periphery. Synesthesia appears to require full recognition to bind form and colour. (shrink)

This paper describes ongoing work towards a rich analysis of the social contexts of neologism use in historical corpora, in particular the Corpora of Early English Correspondence, with research questions concerning the innovators, meanings and diffusion of neologisms. To enable this kind of study, we are developing new processes, tools and ways of combining data from different sources, including the Oxford English Dictionary, the Historical Thesaurus, and contemporary published texts. Comparing neologism candidates across these sources is complicated by the large (...) amount of spelling variation. To make the issues tractable, we start from case studies of individual suffixes and people. By developing tools aiding these studies, we build toward more general analyses. Our aim is to develop an open-source environment where information on neologism candidates is gathered from a variety of algorithms and sources, pooled, and presented to a human evaluator for verification and exploration. (shrink)

Transitioning to sustainable agricultural systems is imperative to meet the global Sustainable Development Goals. Achieving more sustainable agricultural production systems will require significant additional capital, however this cannot be covered by the current financial market setup, which dissociates public and private funders. Blended finance, where concessionary development-oriented funding is used to mobilize additional private capital, is essential. To ensure that the limited pool of concessionary funding is used efficiently and effectively, a shared understanding of the roles and limitations of public (...) and private funders is necessary. In this paper, we describe the high-level funding gap for sustainable agriculture, the general landscape of agricultural finance, and the concept and potential roles of blended finance in this context. This paper introduces the conditions under which different financing mechanisms can contribute to addressing barriers related to sustainable agriculture investments. It highlights that multiple funding modalities must be utilized in order to achieve agricultural investment at a meaningful level and encourages greater exploration of the range of blended financing structures to increase SDG-related agriculture investments. (shrink)

The basic idea underlying a precautionary principle is often summarized as “better safe than sorry.” Even if it is uncertain whether an activity will lead to harm, for example, to the environment or to human health, measures should be taken to prevent harm. This demand is partly motivated by the consequences of regulatory practices of the past. Often, chances of harm were disregarded because there was no scientific proof of a causal connection between an activity or substance and chances of (...) harm, for example, between asbestos and lung diseases. When this connection was finally established, it was often too late to prevent severe damage. However, it is highly controversial how the vague intuition behind “better safe than sorry” should be understood as a principle. As a consequence, we find a multitude of interpretations ranging from decision rules over epistemic principles to procedural frameworks. To acknowledge this diversity, it makes sense to speak of precautionary principles (PPs) in the plural. PPs are not without critices. For example, it has been argued that they are paralyzing, unscientific, or promote a culture of irrational fear. This article systematizes the different interpretations of PPs according to their functions, gives an overview about the main lines of argument in favor of PPs, and outlines the most frequent and important objections made to them. (shrink)

Despite a strong sensitization to the corruption problem and a large body of interdisciplinary research, scientists have only rarely investigated which motivational, volitional, emotional, and cognitive components make decision makers in companies act corruptly. Thus, we examined how their interrelation leads to corruption by proposing an action model. We tested the model using a business simulation game with students as participants. Results of the PLS structural equation modeling showed that both an attitude and subjective norm favoring corruption led to a (...) desire to act corruptly. Given high perceived behavioral control, this desire was transformed into an intention that finally resulted in corrupt action. Components related to general private and professional goals did not allow for any prediction. Based on these results, we discuss preventative measures and methods for combating intra- and inter-organizational corruption. (shrink)

Colour has been shown to facilitate the recognition of scene images, but only when these images contain natural scenes, for which colour is ‘diagnostic’. Here we investigate whether colour can also facilitate memory for scene images, and whether this would hold for natural scenes in particular. In the first experiment participants first studied a set of colour and greyscale natural and man-made scene images. Next, the same images were presented, randomly mixed with a different set. Participants were asked to indicate (...) whether they had seen the images during the study phase. Surprisingly, performance was better for greyscale than for coloured images, and this difference is due to the higher false alarm rate for both natural and man-made coloured scenes. We hypothesized that this increase in false alarm rate was due to a shift from scrutinizing details of the image to recognition of the gist of the image. A second experiment, utilizing images without a nameable gist, confirmed this hypothesis as participants now performed equally on greyscale and coloured images. In the final experiment we specifically targeted the more detail-based perception and recognition for greyscale images versus the more gist-based perception and recognition for coloured images with a change detection paradigm. The results show that changes to images are detected faster when image-pairs were presented in greyscale than in colour. This counterintuitive result held for both natural and man-made scenes and thus corroborates the shift from more detailed processing of images in greyscale to more gist-based processing of coloured images. (shrink)

The focus of this chapter is the relationship between synaesthesia, attention and eye movements. The measurement of eye movements as a core experimental tool for gaining insight into complex cognitive processes in general and attentional mechanisms more specifically, is now firmly established. By means of eye movements, the neural basis of higher cognitive processes, such as target selection, working memory, and response suppression, can be investigated. It therefore seems logical that eye movement recordings can also be used to investigate a (...) complex phenomenon like synaesthesia. In this chapter, we will start with a section summarizing the relationship between eye movements and attention in general. Then the focus moves to synaesthesia and what we currently know about synaesthesia based on the method of measuring eye movements. Finally, we discuss pupillometry which provides a window on changes in the 'allocation' of attention and the 'consolidation' of perception. Consequently, it offers a useful technique for probing 'changes' in mental states due synaesthetic perceptions. (shrink)