In seinem Denkbild von der tastenden Hand des Kindes zieht Adorno mehrere Motive seiner Musikästhetik zu einer negativ-dialektischen Allegorie des musikalischen Kompositionsaktes zusammen. Diese bewegen sich im Spannungsfeld von kompositorischer Arbeit, künstlerischer Innovation und der verwickelten Beziehung von ›Möglichkeit‹ und ›Wirklichkeit‹ des musikalischen Materials. Das musikalisch Neue und die ästhetische Utopie des Neuen sind dabei durch einen unüberbrückbaren Abstand getrennt. Was auch immer die tastende Hand des Kindes auf der Klaviatur an neuen Klängen hervorbringen mag, entspringt einer bereits bestehenden Ordnung (...) systematisch geregelter Tonabstände, die den Möglichkeitsraum dessen eröffnet, was auf der Klaviatur in musikalischer Hinsicht verwirklicht werden kann. Die »Möglichkeiten der Kombination« sind durch die Wirklichkeit der technischen Anordnung »beschränkt«: »[E]igentlich«, so Adorno, »steckt alles schon in der Klaviatur. « Mögliches bleibt Wirklichem unterworfen. (shrink)

The limiting of violence through state powers is one of the central projects of the modern age. Why then have recent centuries been so bloody? In Trust and Violence, acclaimed German intellectual and public figure Jan Philipp Reemtsma demonstrates that the aim of decreasing and deterring violence has gone hand in hand with the misleading idea that violence is abnormal and beyond comprehension. We would be far better off, Reemtsma argues, if we acknowledged the disturbing fact that violence is (...) normal. At the same time, Reemtsma contends that violence cannot be fully understood without delving into the concept of trust. Not in violence, but in trust, rests the foundation of true power. Reemtsma makes his case with a wide-ranging history of ideas about violence, from ancient philosophy through Shakespeare and Schiller to Michel Foucault, and by considering specific cases of extreme violence from medieval torture to the Holocaust and beyond. In the midst of this gloomy account of human tendencies, Reemtsma shrewdly observes that even dictators have to sleep at night and cannot rely on violence alone to ensure their safety. These authoritarian leaders must trust others while, by means other than violence, they must convince others to trust them. The history of violence is therefore a history of the peculiar relationship between violence and trust, and a recognition of trust's crucial place in humanity. A broad and insightful book that touches on philosophy, sociology, and political theory, Trust and Violence sheds new, and at times disquieting, light on two integral aspects of our society. (shrink)

The book discusses philosophical and logical problems of quantum physics and its interpretations. Emphasis lies on the compatibility of quantum physics with classical logic and various ontological stances.

The participatory economics model (ParEcon) of Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel represents an important contribution to the debate about feasible alternatives to capitalism. What distinguishes the model from other proposals, like market socialism or cybersocialism, is the central role given to the participation of citizens in economic planning. Citizens form workers’ and neighbourhood consumers’ councils which develop production and consumption proposals. These councils form federations responsible for the coordination of planning. An Iteration Facilitation Board plays a mere perfunctory role in (...) the facilitation of the planning process. This way, economic planning is done entirely by the citizens themselves rather than planners at a central planning agency. The ParEcon model is thereby supposed to be more democratic than historical central planning.In this paper, I consider whether three possible justifications for democracy can also be used to support this kind of participatory economy. These justifications can be referred to as (1) the protection of citizens’ interests, (2) the revealing of preferences and (3) liberty. In my paper, I show that these three justifications of democracy do not in fact support democratic participation in concrete economic plans in the way envisaged by Albert and Hahnel. Instead of individual plans, citizens should choose general planning procedures. This prevents citizens from being subjected to the arbitrary power of their co-workers or neighbours. Such an algorithmic planning process also prevents central planners from holding arbitrary power since, much like the Iteration Facilitation Board in the ParEcon model, they simply facilitate the prescribed planning process without retaining significant discretion. As I elaborate in the case of consumption planning, citizens can still participate in planning, however they do so through their individual choices rather than a democratic vote. Individual citizens should not require the approval of their neighbours for their personal consumption. (shrink)

In the long running debate about the desirability and feasibility of a planned socialist economy, Austrian economists proclaim victory. Drawing from Mises and Hayek, they stress that the problem of deciding the most economic methods for producing goods and services is not simply, as some early socialist responses suggested, a ‘computational’ one but is rather epistemological. Hence, they reject recent ‘cybersocialist’ claims that developments in computational technology offer potential for addressing the ‘socialist calculation problem’ famously formulated by Mises, long before (...) the advent of computer technology. Yet this theoretical claim by Austrians hinges more than is recognised upon the capacity of rapidly evolving computational technologies and their potential applications. We highlight the need to re-appraise Austrian conclusions, attending closely to the distinction offered by Mises between supply and demand-side calculation. Recent cybersocialist proposals should be viewed as opening up several different avenues of research relating to different aspects of the long-running socialist calculation debate, including the inter-relationships between economic calculation, incentives and innovation. (shrink)

Purpose The network theory assumes that mental disorders are an emergent property of the dynamic interaction between variables such as symptoms of mental disorder. Most studies of the network theory have focused on these symptom interactions. Here, we examine the association of common mental health syndromes and core psychological processes. Methods An explorative network analysis was performed on the data of 87 patients currently treated with psychotherapy. A cross-sectional partial correlation network with four syndromes (depression, anxiety, somatization, and disordered eating) (...) and six processes (activation, self-functioning, valuing, repression/denial, avoidance, and rumination) was estimated and strength centrality was calculated for all nodes. The six processes were selected out of twelve processes by empirical criteria. Results A network with 24 edges, i.e., adjusted partial correlations between the ten variables was estimated. Particularly strong edges emerged connecting valuing and activation, repression/denial and self-functioning, and rumination and self-functioning. The process of self-functioning was the node with the highest strength centrality, followed by the process of valuing and the depressive syndrome. Conclusions We have found connections within processes and syndromes as well as between them. This suggests that they might interact in the maintenance of psychopathology. Idiographic analysis of longitudinal data is needed to assess if these connections are causal in nature. (shrink)

The relationship between body and mind plays an important role in many spiritual and religious experiences. Previous studies that looked into embodiment in the psychology of religion have mainly focused on the motoric system or embodied cognition phenomena. Despite interoceptive sensibility (IS) playing an important role in cognition, emotion, and well-being, a systematic investigation of the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and IS has not yet been conducted. In this preregistered report, we performed such an investigation. We used established measures and (...) collected data from a large sample to guarantee sufficient statistical power. We contrasted groups with different religious backgrounds (Christians n = 271, Buddhists n = 236, and Muslims, n = 229) to explore possible religious differences in the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and IS. As expected, the results showed that adaptive forms of IS were linked to spirituality. Significant correlations between IS and spirituality were observed across all religious groups. However, contrary to our hypothesis, these associations were strongest among Christians rather than Buddhists. While spirituality showed significant correlations with IS, the correlations between religiosity and IS were mostly non-significant when accounting for the shared variance between spirituality and IS. Our results indicate that IS, as the inner dimension of embodiment, may be a fundamental factor in shaping spiritual experiences across diverse faiths and denominations. The preregistered analysis plan, materials, raw data, and the analysis code are publicly available. (shrink)

Der Einsatz generativer KI verändert die Arbeitsgewohnheiten in der Softwareentwicklung erheblich. Große Sprachmodelle wie ChatGPT ermöglichen die Generierung von Quellcode und die Automatisierung weiterer Teile des Softwarelebenszyklus. Bereits vor ChatGPT wurden KI-Techniken genutzt, um Code auf Schwachstellen zu analysieren. Dieses Kapitel bietet einen Überblick über aktuelle und zukünftige Einsatzfelder von KI in der Softwareentwicklung. Anhand konkreter Beispiele wird gezeigt, welche Möglichkeiten und Potentiale KI heute bietet, was künftig zu erwarten ist und welche Einschränkungen bestehen. Neben der Perspektive der Programmierer wird (...) auch betrachtet, wie Designer, Produkt- und Projektmanager sowie Anforderungsmanager von KI profitieren können. Die Analyse zeigt, wie sich die Aufgaben dieser Rollen durch den verstärkten KI-Einsatz wandeln und welche Auswirkungen dies auf die Softwareentwicklung haben kann. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Ahead of Print.

Die Bezeichnung ‚Logischer Behaviorismus‘ wurde von Carl Gustav HempelHempel, Carl Gustav in seinem Aufsatz „The Logical Analysis of Psychology“ (Hempel Hempel: The Logical Analysis of Psychology. In: Ausonio Marras (Hg.): Intentionality, Mind, and Language. Urbana/Chicago/London 1972, 115–131 (frz. 1935).) eingeführt, um das Psychologieverständnis des Logisch-Empiristischen Einheitswissenschaftsprogramms vom Psychologischen Behaviorismus abzugrenzen. Unter letzterem ist eine zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts entstandene psychologische Schule zu verstehen, die sich als Gegenströmung zur Introspektions-basierten Psychologie einzig der Untersuchung des „bodily behaviour“ widmete, „with which man (...) and the animals respond to changes in their physical environment“ (Hempel 1935, 375). Der Logische Behaviorismus wird von den Logischen Empiristen dagegen als eine philosophisch begründete Antwort auf die Frage entworfen, in welchem Sinne Psychologie überhaupt als Wissenschaft gelten kann (Hempel 1935, 375). (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Ahead of Print.

Humanoid robots are projected to be mass marketed in the future in several fields of application. Today, however, user evaluations of humanoid robots are often based on mediated depictions rather than actual observations or interactions with a robot, which holds true not least for scientific user studies. People can be confronted with robots in various modes of presentation, among them 2D videos, 3D, i.e., stereoscopic videos, immersive Virtual Reality, or live on site. A systematic investigation into how such differential modes (...) of presentation influence user perceptions of a robot is still lacking. Thus, the current study systematically compares the effects of different presentation modes with varying immersive potential on user evaluations of a humanoid service robot. Participants observed an interaction between a humanoid service robot and an actor either on 2D or 3D video, via a virtual reality headset or live. We found support for the expected effect of the presentation mode on perceived immediacy. Effects regarding the degree of human likeness that was attributed to the robot were mixed. The presentation mode had no influence on evaluations in terms of eeriness, likability, and purchase intentions. Implications for empirical research on humanoid robots and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Journal editors have a large amount of power to advance open science in their respective fields by incentivising and mandating open policies and practices at their journals. The Data PASS Journal Editors Discussion Interface (JEDI, an online community for social science journal editors: www.dpjedi.org) has collated several resources on embedding open science in journal editing (www.dpjedi.org/resources). However, it can be overwhelming as an editor new to open science practices to know where to start. For this reason, we created a guide (...) for journal editors on how to get started with open science. The guide outlines steps that editors can take to implement open policies and practices within their journal, and goes through the what, why, how, and worries of each policy and practice. This manuscript introduces and summarizes the guide (full guide: https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/hstcx). (shrink)

GoalThis paper presents an immersive Virtual Reality system to analyze and train Executive Functions of soccer players. EFs are important cognitive functions for athletes. They are a relevant quality that distinguishes amateurs from professionals.MethodThe system is based on immersive technology, hence, the user interacts naturally and experiences a training session in a virtual world. The proposed system has a modular design supporting the extension of various so-called game modes. Game modes combine selected game mechanics with specific simulation content to target (...) particular training aspects. The system architecture decouples selection/parameterization and analysis of training sessions via a coaching app from an Unity3D-based VR simulation core. Monitoring of user performance and progress is recorded by a database that sends the necessary feedback to the coaching app for analysis.ResultsThe system is tested for VR-critical performance criteria to reveal the usefulness of a new interaction paradigm in the cognitive training and analysis of EFs. Subjective ratings for overall usability show that the design as VR application enhances the user experience compared to a traditional desktop app; whereas the new, unfamiliar interaction paradigm does not negatively impact the effort for using the application.ConclusionThe system can provide immersive training of EF in a fully virtual environment, eliminating potential distraction. It further provides an easy-to-use analyzes tool to compare user but also an automatic, adaptive training mode. (shrink)

We introduce the working concept of “affective arrangement.” This concept is the centerpiece of a perspective on situated affectivity that emphasizes relationality, dynamics, and performativity. Our proposal relates to work in cultural studies and continental philosophy in the Spinoza–Deleuze lineage, yet it is equally geared to the terms of recent work in the philosophy of emotion. Our aim is to devise a framework that can help flesh out how affectivity unfolds dynamically in a relational setting by which it is at (...) the same time modulated in recurring ways. With this orientation, this article contributes to the interdisciplinary study of situated affectivity and to the theoretical and conceptual unification of distinct strands of research from several disciplines. (shrink)

This chapter develops and defends the claim that human emotions are best understood as active engagements with the world and not, as mainstream philosophy of emotion believes, as passively undergone experiences. It shows how the active nature of emotion sheds light on the way emotion relates to value. Emotional engagement is what lets value manifest and become concrete. Value, it is held, is both constituted and detected by emotional engagements—a view whose paradoxical initial appearance will be strongly mitigated by the (...) account proposed. The argument commences from the perspective of the socially engaged person and her situated affectivity, subsequently discusses Aristotle’s notion of ‘hexis’ as an active hold a person can have over her emotions, and closes with remarks on the active-affective ‘minimal self’, whose erosion in conditions like severe depression lends phenomenological credibility to the proposed account. (shrink)

This paper proposes an analysis of the discursive dynamics of high-impact concepts in the humanities. These are concepts whose formation and development have a lasting and wide-ranging effect on research and our understanding of discursive reality in general. The notion of a conceptual practice, based on a normative conception of practice, is introduced, and practices are identified, on this perspective, according to the way their respective performances are held mutually accountable. This normative conception of practices is then combined with recent (...) work from philosophy of science that characterizes concepts in terms of conceptual capacities that are productive, open-ended, and applicable beyond the original context they were developed in. It is shown that the formation of concepts can be identified by changes in how practitioners hold exercise of their conceptual capacities accountable when producing knowledge about a phenomenon. In a manner similar to the use of operational definitions in scientific practices, such concepts can also be used to intervene in various discourses within or outside the conceptual practice. Using the formation of the concepts “mechanism” and “performative” as examples, the paper shows how high-impact concepts reconfigure what is at issue and at stake in conceptual practices. As philosophy and other humanities disciplines are its domain of interest, it is a contribution to the methodology of the humanities. (shrink)

in a nervous system of a given species. This chapter provides a critical perspective on the role of connectomes in neuroscientific practice and asks how the connectomic approach fits into a larger context in which network thinking permeates technology, infrastructure, social life, and the economy. In the first part of this chapter, we argue that, seen from the perspective of ongoing research, the notion of connectomes as “complete descriptions” is misguided. Our argument combines Rachel Ankeny’s analysis of neuroanatomical wiring diagrams (...) as “descriptive models” with Hans-Joerg Rheinberger’s notion of “epistemic objects,” i.e., targets of research that are still partially unknown. Combining these aspects we conclude that connectomes are constitutively epistemic objects: there just is no way to turn them into permanent and complete technical standards because the possibilities to map connection properties under different modeling assumptions are potentially inexhaustible. In the second part of the chapter, we use this understanding of connectomes as constitutively epistemic objects in order to critically assess the historical and political dimensions of current neuroscientific research. We argue that connectomics shows how the notion of the “brain as a network” has become the dominant metaphor of contemporary brain research. We further point out that this metaphor shares (potentially problematic) affinities to the form of contemporary “network societies.” We close by pointing out how the relation between connectomes and networks in society could be used in a more fruitful manner. (shrink)

The “Human Brain Project” (HBP) is a large-scale European neuroscience and information communication technology (ICT) project that has been a matter of heated controversy since its inception. With its aim to simulate the entire human brain with the help of supercomputing technologies, the HBP plans to fundamentally change neuroscientific research practice, medical diagnosis, and eventually the use of computers itself. Its controversial nature and its potential impacts render the HBP a subject of crucial importance for critical studies of science and (...) society. In this paper, we provide a critical exploratory analysis of the potential mid- to long-term impacts the HBP and its ICT infrastructure could be expected to have, provided its agenda will indeed be implemented and executed to a substantive degree. We analyse how the HBP aspires to change current neuroscientific practice, what impact its novel infrastructures could have on research culture, medical practice and the use of ICT, and how, given a certain degree of successful execution of the project’s aims, potential clinical and methodological applications could even transform society beyond scientific practice. Furthermore, we sketch the possibility that research such as that projected by the HBP may eventually transform our everyday world, even beyond the scope of the HBP’s explicit agenda, and beyond the isolated ‘application’ of some novel technological device. Finally, we point towards trajectories for further philosophical, historical and sociological research on the HBP that our exploratory analysis might help to inspire. Our analysis will yield important insights regardless of the actual success of the HBP. What we drive at, for the most part, is the broader dynamics of scientific and technological development of which the HBP agenda is merely one particularly striking exemplification. (shrink)

Was heißt es, einen literarischen Text zu interpretieren? Wie können Interpretationen begründet werden? Können wir mit Interpretationen Anspruch auf Erkenntnis erheben? Können Interpretationen wahr sein? In welcher Weise fließt das Wissen von Interpreten in ihre Interpretationen ein? Aus der Perspektive verschiedener Disziplinen suchen die Beiträge dieses Bandes Antworten auf diese und andere fundamentale Fragen, die sich mit der Interpretation von Literatur verbinden. Der einleitende Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über wichtige Themen und Probleme, die gegenwärtig im Hinblick auf die Theorie und (...) Praxis der Literaturinterpretation diskutiert werden. Die in den folgenden vier Sektionen versammelten Studien widmen sich unter anderem Fragen nach dem Interpretationsbegriff, der Geltung und der methodisch geleiteten Begründung von Interpretationen, den kognitiven Operationen beim Verstehen und Interpretieren von Literatur sowie den Problemen, die sich in der Praxis der Literaturinterpretation angesichts der spezifischen Beschaffenheit literarischer Texte ergeben. Vertreten sind die Fachgebiete der deutschsprachigen Literaturwissenschaft, Philosophie, Linguistik, Mediävistik, Anglistik und Computerphilologie. [What does it mean to interpret a work of literature? How can interpretations be justified? Can interpretations serve as a source of knowledge? Is it possible for interpretations to be true? How does the knowledge of interpreters contribute to their interpretations? The essays comprised in this volume look for answers to these and other fundamental questions regarding the interpretation of literature. The introduction provides an overview of the main issues and problems in contemporary debates on the theory and practice of interpretation. The articles are grouped into four sections and cover topics like the concept of interpretation, the validity of interpretations, the methods for justifying interpretations, the cognitive processes that are involved in understanding and interpreting literature, and address problems that arise in the practice of interpretation and in light of the specific characteristics of literary texts. The contributors to this volume come from a variety of disciplines such as literary studies, philosophy, linguistics, and the digital humanities.]. (shrink)

Technologies designed to »assist« users with and without disabilities, such as computer interfaces, act as mediators of barriers in Digital Cultures. At the same time, these technologies, as »assistive media«, emerge into a pre-existing technological environment and add an additional level of mediation to human-machine interaction. Drawing on examples rooted in a diverse range of fields – from engineering to medical research to gaming culture – the contributors to this volume each provide a unique perspective on assistance, situated at the (...) intersection of media studies and disability studies. (shrink)