The article discusses Sartre’s the o retical conversion towards Marxism and historical ma t e r ialism. It emphasizes, however, that this conversion has ne v e r implied abandoning certain existentialist conc e p t s. In the Critique of dialectical reason Sartre aimed at defining a new dialectics, in which the subjective and ex i stential dimension is part of the process of economic, political and social transformation.

Das Lehrbuch, das neuartige Zugänge bietet, die sowohl die Politikgestaltung beeinflussen, als auch der Politikwissenschaft ein komplexes kritisch-rationales Handlungs- und Orientierungswissen bereitstellen. Das Werk eignet sich sowohl für das Selbststudium als auch für den akademischen Unterricht.

Continuous reducibilities are a proven tool in Computable Analysis, and have applications in other fields such as Constructive Mathematics or Reverse Mathematics. We study the order-theoretic properties of several variants of the two most important definitions, and especially introduce suprema for them. The suprema are shown to commutate with several characteristic numbers.

Exploration of the political roles firms play in society is a flourishing stream within corporate social responsibility research. However, few empirical studies have examined multiple levels of political CSR at the same time from a critical perspective. We explore both how the motivations of managers and internal organizational practices affect a company’s choice between competing CSR approaches, and how the different CSR programs of corporate and civil society actors compete with each other. We present a qualitative interpretative case study of (...) how a French children’s clothing retailer develops CSR practices in response to accusations of poor working conditions and child labor in its supply chain. The company’s CSR approach consists of superficial practices, such as supplier audits by a cooperative business-organized nongovernmental organization and philanthropic activities, which enable managers to silence more radical alternative models defended by other NGOs, activists, and trade unions. By this approach, the core business model based on exploitative low-cost country sourcing remains intact through self-regulated CSR. Through the case study, we develop a framework of dynamism in competing CSR programs. We discuss the implications of our study for CSR researchers, company managers, and policy makers. (shrink)

Bentham, a founder of political science based on the calculation of interest, has been misread as a crass materialist. I argue, instead, that Bentham's interest is a specific product of the imagination, and the pleasures and pains of which it is composed are also products of the imagination. On my reading, interests and imaginations are always governed and the role of Bentham's political science is to help govern them more effectively and efficiently. Political science is a mode of what he (...) calls. Various interest-based modes of analysis have been attacked by constructivist critics, but I argue that the arch-theorist of interest himself relies on constructivist modes of analysis. What lessons can we learn from this? We should pay less attention to methodological and foundational conflicts, and pay more attention to the practices of government that social science may or may not indirectly legislate. (shrink)

Although machine learning has been successful in recent years and is increasingly being deployed in the sciences, enterprises or administrations, it has rarely been discussed in philosophy beyond the philosophy of mathematics and machine learning. The present contribution addresses the resulting lack of conceptual tools for an epistemological discussion of machine learning by conceiving of deep learning networks as ‘judging machines’ and using the Kantian analysis of judgments for specifying the type of judgment they are capable of. At the center (...) of the argument is the fact that the functionality of deep learning networks is established by training and cannot be explained and justified by reference to a predefined rule-based procedure. Instead, the computational process of a deep learning network is barely explainable and needs further justification, as is shown in reference to the current research literature. Thus, it requires a new form of justification, that is to be specified with the help of Kant’s epistemology. (shrink)

This contribution investigates the idea that an act of signification can be understood in terms of the self-referentiality that is typical of the biological organization. The capacity of a living being to interpret and appreciate its own environment can be understood as being grounded in its ability to perform self-referential experiences. We may call this the living being’s capacity of sense. In any act that generates sense, it is possible to distinguish a process of signification from its outcome, but such (...) a distinction between logical levels inevitably demands an external observer’s point of view. Hence, the concept of ‘subjectivity’ can be defined in terms of an absence of such distinction between logical levels. This absence is considered pivotal both for the self-referential organization of the living and for the generation of sense. A case example from the field of psychotherapy is added to illustrate the distinction as well as the non-distinction between logical levels of description. (shrink)

This paper reviews the debate on the notion of biological function and on functional explanation as this takes place in philosophy. It describes the different perspectives, issues, intuitions, theories and arguments that have emerged. The author shows that the debate has been too heavily influenced by the concerns of a naturalistic philosophy of mind and argues that in order to improve our understanding of biology the attention should be shifted from the study of intuitions to the study of the actual (...) practice of biological inquiry. (shrink)

The term “translation” has three meanings: the practice of the translator, the textual outcome of this practice, and the relationship it creates between texts and languages. In this article, I would like to draw attention to this third aspect, translation as a relation. To do so, I will first propose a historical overview of the first two meanings, as well as of the normative or descriptive aims associated to them. Secondly, I identify three motives for thinking about translation that are (...) primarily concerned with its relational dimension: the lack of a language to speak about the relationship between languages, i.e. about what’s incomparable and what gets subtracted. I conclude this article with the hypothesis that translation as a relation constitutes a refuge event for the plurality of languages. (shrink)

This handbook explores the ways biomedicine and pop culture interact while simultaneously introducing the reader with the tools and ideas behind this new field of enquiry. From comic books to health professionals, from the arts to genetics, from sci-fi to medical education, from TV series to ethics, it offers different entry points to an exciting and central aspect of contemporary culture: how and what we learn about scientific knowledge and its representation in pop culture. Divided into three sections the handbook (...) surveys the basics, the micro-, and the macroaspects of this interaction between specialized knowledge and cultural production: After the introduction of basic concepts of and approaches to the topic from a variety of disciplines, the respective theories and methods are applied in specific case studies. The final section is concerned with larger social and historical trends of the use of biomedical knowledge in popular culture. Presenting over twenty-five original articles from international scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds, this handbook introduces the topic of pop culture and biomedicine to both new and mature researchers alike. The articles, all complete with a rich source of further references, are aimed at being a sincere entry point to researchers and academic educators interested in this somewhat unexplored field of culture and biomedicine. (shrink)

I argue that there are at least four different ways in which the term ‘function’ is used in connection with the study of living organisms, namely: function as activity, function as biological role, function as biological advantage, and function as selected effect. Notion refers to what an item does by itself; refers to the contribution of an item or activity to a complex activity or capacity of an organism; refers to the value for the organism of an item having a (...) certain character rather than another; refers to the way in which a trait acquired and has maintained its current share in the population. The recognition of a separate notion of function as biological advantage solves the problem of the indeterminate reference situation that has been raised against a counterfactual analysis of function, and emphasizes the importance of counterfactual comparison in the explanatory practice of organismal biology. This reveals a neglected problem in the philosophy of biology, namely that of accounting for the insights provided by counterfactual comparison. (shrink)

Dieses Buch schlägt - unter dem Titel "synthetischer Materialismus" - einen neuen Weg zur Klärung des Geist-Materie-Problems vor. Ausgangspunkt ist die These, dass wir als Betrachter der Welt frei sind, dieselben Gegenstände in unterschiedlich komplexe raum-zeitliche Zusammenhänge einzuordnen, und dass sich daraus unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten der Klassifikation von Gegenständen ergeben können: Wenn wir von "Lebewesen", "Handlungssubjekten" und "Personen" sprechen, und ihnen psychische Phänomene zuschreiben, nutzen wir den Umstand, dass die Konstellationen von Kohlehydraten, Eiweißen, Wasser und Nukleinsäuren, die jene Entitäten auch sind, (...) in einer besonderen Weise mit Teilen ihrer Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft in Verbindung gebracht werden können. Der synthetische Materialismus vermag so zu zeigen, dass es zwischen einem ausschließlich "materialistischen" Verständnis der Welt und jenen Sichtweisen, innerhalb derer wir manche Komplexe von materiellen Phänomenen als Individuen mit ihnen selbst bewussten Empfindungen, Absichten und Überzeugungen verstehen, Übergänge gibt, die methodisch-wissenschaftlich nachvollzogen werden können und die nicht zu nutzen töricht wäre. (shrink)

Max Horkheimer, the founder of the critical theory of the ‘Frankfurt School’, died in July 1973. In his essay dedicated to this great thinker, sociologist and philosopher, the author attempts to uncover the theoretical roots of this critical thinking in the philosopher's early work. He analyses Horkheimer's early commitment to the cause of the victims of social, economic and political oppression as well as all systems that trample on the freedom and dignity of the individual and that discriminate against and (...) persecute minorities. He also pays special attention to Horkheimer's struggle against the authoritarian state, against totalitarianism as well as anti-Semitism. (shrink)

I argue that there are at least four different ways in which the term ‘function’ is used in connection with the study of living organisms, namely: function as activity, function as biological role, function as biological advantage, and function as selected effect. Notion refers to what an item does by itself; refers to the contribution of an item or activity to a complex activity or capacity of an organism; refers to the value for the organism of an item having a (...) certain character rather than another; refers to the way in which a trait acquired and has maintained its current share in the population. The recognition of a separate notion of function as biological advantage solves the problem of the indeterminate reference situation that has been raised against a counterfactual analysis of function, and emphasizes the importance of counterfactual comparison in the explanatory practice of organismal biology. This reveals a neglected problem in the philosophy of biology, namely that of accounting for the insights provided by counterfactual comparison. (shrink)

Given the replication crisis in cognitive science, it is important to consider what researchers need to do in order to report results that are reliable. We consider three changes in current practice that have the potential to deliver more realistic and robust claims. First, the planned experiment should be divided into two stages, an exploratory stage and a confirmatory stage. This clear separation allows the researcher to check whether any results found in the exploratory stage are robust. The second change (...) is to carry out adequately powered studies. We show that this is imperative if we want to obtain realistic estimates of effects in psycholinguistics. The third change is to use Bayesian data-analytic methods rather than frequentist ones; the Bayesian framework allows us to focus on the best estimates we can obtain of the effect, rather than rejecting a strawman null. As a case study, we investigate number interference effects in German. Number feature interference is predicted by cue-based retrieval models of sentence processing, but it has shown inconsistent results. We show that by implementing the three changes mentioned, suggestive evidence emerges that is consistent with the predicted number interference effects. (shrink)

In several recent papers and a monograph, Andreas Stokke argues that questions can be misleading, but that they cannot be lies. The aim of this paper is to show that ordinary speakers disagree. We show that ordinary speakers judge certain kinds of insincere questions to be lies, namely questions carrying a believed-false presupposition the speaker intends to convey. These judgements are robust and remain so when the participants are given the possibility of classifying the utterances as misleading or as deceiving. (...) The judgements contrast with judgements participants give about cases of misleading or deceptive behaviour, and they pattern with judgements participants make about declarative lies. Finally, the possibility of lying with non-declaratives is not confined to questions: ordinary speakers also judge utterances of imperative, exclamative and optative sentences carrying believed-false presuppositions to be lies. (shrink)

We define and investigate a family of local–global principles for fields involving both orderings and p-valuations. This family contains the PAC, PRC and PpC fields and exhausts the class of pseudo classically closed fields. We show that the fields satisfying such a local–global principle form an elementary class, admit diophantine definitions of holomorphy domains, and their orderings satisfy the strong approximation property.

The work [11] deals with questions of first-order definability in algebraic function fields. In particular, it exhibits new cases in which the field of constant functions is definable, and it investigates the phenomenon of definable transcendental elements. We fix some of its proofs and make additional observations concerning definable closure in these fields.

We show that a computable function $f:\mathbb R\rightarrow \mathbb R$ has Luzin’s property if and only if it reflects $\Pi ^1_1$ -randomness, if and only if it reflects $\Delta ^1_1$ -randomness, and if and only if it reflects ${\mathcal {O}}$ -Kurtz randomness, but reflecting Martin–Löf randomness or weak-2-randomness does not suffice. Here a function f is said to reflect a randomness notion R if whenever $f$ is R-random, then x is R-random as well. If additionally f is known to have (...) bounded variation, then we show f has Luzin’s if and only if it reflects weak-2-randomness, and if and only if it reflects $\emptyset '$ -Kurtz randomness. This links classical real analysis with algorithmic randomness. (shrink)

We show that a computable function $f:\mathbb R\rightarrow \mathbb R$ has Luzin’s property if and only if it reflects $\Pi ^1_1$ -randomness, if and only if it reflects $\Delta ^1_1$ -randomness, and if and only if it reflects ${\mathcal {O}}$ -Kurtz randomness, but reflecting Martin–Löf randomness or weak-2-randomness does not suffice. Here a function f is said to reflect a randomness notion R if whenever $f$ is R-random, then x is R-random as well. If additionally f is known to have (...) bounded variation, then we show f has Luzin’s if and only if it reflects weak-2-randomness, and if and only if it reflects $\emptyset '$ -Kurtz randomness. This links classical real analysis with algorithmic randomness. (shrink)

Promoting translational research as a means to overcoming chasms in the translation of knowledge through successive fields of research from basic science to public health impacts and back is a central challenge for research managers and policymakers. Organizational leaders need to assess baseline conditions, identify areas needing improvement, and to judge the impact of specific initiatives to sustain or improve translational research practices at their institutions. Currently, there is a lack of such an assessment tool addressing the specific context of (...) translational biomedical research. To close this gap, we have developed a new survey for assessing the organizational climate for translational research. This self-assessment tool measures employees’ perceptions of translational research climate and underlying research practices in organizational environments and builds on the established Survey of Organizational Research Climate, assessing research integrity. Using this tool, we show that scientists at a large university hospital perceive translation as a central and important component of their work. Importantly, local resources and direct support are main contributing factors for the practical implementation of translation into their own research practice. We identify and discuss potential leverage points for an improvement of research climate to foster successful translational research. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with reasonings that purport to explain why certain organisms have certain traits by showing that their actual design is better than contrasting designs. Biologists call such reasonings 'functional explanations'. To avoid confusion with other uses of that phrase, I call them 'design explanations'. This paper discusses the structure of design explanations and how they contribute to scientific understanding. Design explanations are contrastive and often compare real organisms to hypothetical organisms that cannot possibly exist. They are not (...) causal but appeal to functional dependencies between an organism's different traits. These explanations point out that because an organism has certain traits, it cannot be alive if the trait to be explained were replaced by a specified alternative. They can be understood from a mechanistic point of view as revealing the constraints on what mechanisms can be alive. (shrink)

We present a computational evaluation of three hypotheses about sources of deficit in sentence comprehension in aphasia: slowed processing, intermittent deficiency, and resource reduction. The ACT-R based Lewis and Vasishth model is used to implement these three proposals. Slowed processing is implemented as slowed execution time of parse steps; intermittent deficiency as increased random noise in activation of elements in memory; and resource reduction as reduced spreading activation. As data, we considered subject vs. object relative sentences, presented in a self-paced (...) listening modality to 56 individuals with aphasia and 46 matched controls. The participants heard the sentences and carried out a picture verification task to decide on an interpretation of the sentence. These response accuracies are used to identify the best parameters that correspond to the three hypotheses mentioned above. We show that controls have more tightly clustered parameter values than IWA; specifically, compared to controls, among IWA there are more individuals with slow parsing times, high noise, and low spreading activation. We find that individual IWA show differential amounts of deficit along the three dimensions of slowed processing, intermittent deficiency, and resource reduction, overall, there is evidence for all three sources of deficit playing a role, and IWA have a more variable range of parameter values than controls. An important implication is that it may be meaningless to talk about sources of deficit with respect to an abstract verage IWA; the focus should be on the individual's differential degrees of deficit along different dimensions, and on understanding the causes of variability in deficit between participants. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungSeit seiner Entstehung zeichnet sich das Genre des Zombie-Films durch eine kulturreflexive Komponente aus, die politische Entwicklungen kritisch begleitet. Abseits dieser gesellschaftskritischen Traditionslinie wird in der TV-Serie The Walking Dead eine weitere Ebene der Reflexion eingeführt. Auch wenn hier viele der ästhetischen und narrativen Traditionen des Zombie-Genres aufgegriffen werden, ermöglicht der Seriencharakter einen vertiefenden Blick der Charaktere im Angesicht des apokalyptischen Zerfalls von personalen, familiären und gesellschaftlichen Gewissheiten und Wertestrukturen. Am deutlichsten wird diese Verunsicherung angesichts des Umganges mit dem Tod. (...) Damit reflektiert die Serie auch die zunehmende reale Aushebelung der Gewissheit des Todes durch die Lebenswissenschaften ab den 1960er-Jahren. Die Ausprägungen und Folgen dieses Diskurses werden in The Walking Dead in Form einer Negation biologischer Gewissheiten dramatisch zugespitzt. Somit bietet die Serie nicht nur ein kritisch-reflexives Medium auf die im Umlauf befindlichen Diskurselemente, sondern sie fügt auch neue Perspektiven auf den Tod in der Gesellschaft hinzu. (shrink)

This paper poses the question of whether people have a duty to participate in digital epidemiology. While an implied duty to participate has been argued for in relation to biomedical research in general, digital epidemiology involves processing of non-medical, granular and proprietary data types that pose different risks to participants. We first describe traditional justifications for epidemiology that imply a duty to participate for the general public, which take account of the immediacy and plausibility of threats, and the identifiability of (...) data. We then consider how these justifications translate to digital epidemiology, understood as an evolution of traditional epidemiology that includes personal and proprietary digital data alongside formal medical datasets. We consider the risks imposed by re-purposing such data for digital epidemiology and propose eight justificatory conditions that should be met in justifying a duty to participate for specific digital epidemiological studies. The conditions are then applied to three hypothetical cases involving usage of social media data for epidemiological purposes. We conclude with a list of questions to be considered in public negotiations of digital epidemiology, including the application of a duty to participate to third-party data controllers, and the important distinction between moral and legal obligations to participate in research. (shrink)

Este artículo trata de relacionar el teatro posdramático con algunas ideas que Friedrich Nietzsche presenta sobre todo en su primera obra importante, El origen de la tragedia. En concreto se buscan similitudes en el concepto de lo performativo y en un aspecto esencial de la tragedia nietzscheana, el dolor físico. No se pretende establecer una filiación directa entre Nietzsche y el teatro de última actualidad sino llamar la atención sobre una de las consecuencias más recientes de la ruptura estética que (...) él propuso. (shrink)

Resumo O entendimento de Friedrich Nietzsche sobre Friedrich Schiller é bem conhecido e culmina em 1888, na desqualificação que se tem com “Schiller: ou o trompetista moral de Säckingen”. Mas é sabido que suas considerações são contraditórias, mudando com frequência nas diferentes etapas de sua vida produtiva. A monografia de Nicholas Martin marca um ponto de viragem no que diz respeito a este tema, refutando a disseminada compreensão de que somente o jovem Nietzsche teria experimentado admiração por Schiller, depois vindo (...) a assumir distância cada vez maior. A dívida de Nietzsche para com Schiller, segundo Martin, é constante, e manifesta-se sobretudo em sua recepção das cartas estéticas. O que se pretende fazer ver aqui, seguindo a tradição de Wolfgang Riedel, é que o ensaio Sobre a poesia ingênua e sentimental [Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung] é tão ou mais importante neste contexto sobretudo quando dirigimos nosso enfoque para o contexto da crítica cultural. Várias declarações de Nietzsche, por exemplo, formulada em 1870, “não estou em condições de empregar essa terminologia esplendorosamente schilleriana para o inteiro e mais amplo domínio de toda a arte”, confirmam tal suposição, e uma vez que, no mesmo momento de elaboração de O nascimento da tragédia no espírito da música, ele se propõe a “[…] fortalecer o conceito do ingênuo e do sentimental”, tem-se justificada a intenção de relacionar ambas as obras-chave de ambos os Dichterphilosophen [filósofos poetas] do ponto de vista da crítica cultural.Friedrich Nietzsche's opinion about Friedrich Schiller is well known and culminates in 1888 in the disqualification “Schiller: oder der Moral-Trompeter von Säckingen”, but at the same time it is recognized that his considerations are contradictory and that they change in the different moments of his productive life. Nicholas Martin's study from 1996 marks a caesura in this subject by refuting the widespread view that only the young Nietzsche experienced admiration for Schiller and that there was a growing distance afterwards. Nietzsche's debt to Schiller, according to Martin, is constant and is manifested above all in his reception of the aesthetic letters. We would like to demonstrate in the tradition of Wolfgang Riedel that the essay Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung is equally or even more important in this context, especially when it is approached from the standpoint of cultural criticism. Several statements by Nietzsche, such as the one formulated in 1870 “Ich bin nicht im Stande, jene herrliche Schillersche Terminologie auf das ganze weiteste Bereich aller Kunst anzuwenden” confirm this assumption, and when, at the very moment when Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geist der Musik was being prepared, Nietzsche proposed that the “[…] Begriff des Naiven und des Sentimentalistischen ist zu steigern”, the attempt to link both key works of the two Dichterphilosophen from the point of view of cultural criticism is justified. (shrink)

This paper deals with some formal properties of objects that are supposed to be internal to persons, that is, mental structures and mental functions. Depending on the ways of talking about these internal objects, they will appear different. Two types of discourse will be presented, to be called the realist and the nominalist discourses, and for eachdiscourse I will focus upon the construction of `self'.The realist discourse assumes an identity between the person and his construction of himself. I will illustrate (...) this discourse in terms of Descartes' ideas on himself as a `thinking substance'. The nominalist discourse assumes an impossibility to attain this identity, and instead to imply a complementarity between the person and his self-construction. I will illustrate this discourse in terms of the problems both William James and Sartre discerned when a conscious person chases after his own consciousness (termed `judging thought' and `pour-soi' respectively). (shrink)