Willem A. Visser ‘t Hooft: The Future of Peace

This is an edited translation of an address given on 20 July 2017, the 73rd anniversary of the bomb plot against Adolf Hitler, at the Adam von Trott Foundation in Imshausen, Germany. It recalls the contacts of Willem A. Visser 't Hooft, the first general secretary of the World Council of Churches, with the German resistance during the Second World War, discusses the relevance of their vision of the post‐war future to contemporary politics, and highlights the significance of Visser 't Hooft for the ecumenical movement.     

Social science and Sozialwissenschaft: Categorical and institutional boundaries of knowledge

This article explores how linguistic categories affect boundary work in scholarly knowledge production. Whereas the German language knows the unified concept of Wissenschaft for all branches of scholarship represented at universities, the English language separates science from the arts or humanities and does not commonly engage an overarching concept. This has had consequences for American social science, which are traced both in the discourse shaping its development and in the deployment and distribution of institutional resources.     

Shared emotions: a Steinian proposal

The aim of this paper is to clarify the notion of shared emotion. After contextualizing this notion within the broader research landscape on collective affective intentionality, I suggest that we reserve the term shared emotion to an affective experience that is phenomenologically and functionally ours: we experience it together as our emotion, and it is also constitutively not mine and yours, but ours. I focus on the three approaches that have dominated the philosophical discussion on shared emotions: cognitivist accounts, concern-based accounts, and phenomenological fusion accounts. After identifying strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and summarizing the elements that a multifaceted theory of shared emotions requires, I turn to the work of the early phenomenologist Edith Stein to further advance an approach to shared emotions that combines the main strengths of Helm and Salmela’s concern-based accounts and Schmid’s phenomenological fusion account. According to this proposal, the sharedness of a shared emotion cannot be located in one element, but rather consists in a complex of interrelated features.     

The implementation of guided Internet-based cognitive behaviour therapy for panic disorder in a routine-care setting: effectiveness and implementation efforts

Panic disorder is a common mental disorder. Guided Internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy (Guided Internet-based cognitive behaviour therapy (ICBT)) is a promising approach to reach more people in need of help. In the present effectiveness study, we investigated the outcome of guided ICBT for panic disorder after implementation in routine care. A total of 124 patients were included in the study, of which 114 started the treatment. Large within-group effect sizes were observed on the primary panic disorder symptoms (post-treatment: d = 1.24; 6-month follow-up: d = 1.39) and moderate and large effects on secondary panic disorder symptoms and depressive symptoms at post-treatment and follow-up (d = .55–1.13). More than half (56.1%) of the patients who started treatment recovered or improved at post-treatment. Among treatment takers (completed at least five of the nine modules), 69.9% recovered or improved. The effectiveness reported in the present trial is in line with previous effectiveness and efficacy trials of guided ICBT for panic disorder. This provides additional support for guided ICBT as a treatment alternative in routine care.     

Representing Meta-Knowledge in Poole-Systems

We show how Poole-systems, a simple approach to nonmonotonic reasoning, can be extended to take meta-information into account adequately. The meta-information is used to guide the choice of formulas accepted by the reasoner as premises. Existence of a consistent set of conclusions is guaranteed by a least fixpoint construction. The proposed formalism has useful applications in defeasible reasoning, knowledge base fusion and belief revision.     

A set of semantic norms for German and Italian

The psychological community frequently investigates semantic norms of properties produced by native speakers after being presented concept words, and these norms are of great value for a wide variety of psychological experiments. This paper presents a new set of norms that includes a collection of properties from a production experiment for the German and the Italian languages. Stimuli consisted of 50 concrete objects taken from 10 different concept classes. The data comprise annotations of semantic relation types and several statistical measures, which facilitate the comparison of the two target languages.     

All at once or one at a time? A randomized controlled trial comparing two ways to deliver bibliotherapy for panic disorder

Bibliotherapy is potentially effective in the treatment of panic disorder (PD). A still unanswered question is whether pacing is important. This study was designed to test whether there is a difference between being assigned a full book as therapy and receiving one individual chapter every week (i.e. pacing). A total of 28 participants were randomized to either 10 paced chapters or one book with 10 chapters. To maximize compliance, short weekly telephone calls were added in both conditions (M = 17.8 min, SD = 4.2). Both treatments showed promising results, with effects maintained up to 2 years and with within-group effect sizes (Cohen's d) between 0.95 and 1.11. Pretreatment ratings of credibility were positively correlated with the change scores at both posttest and 2-year follow-up for three panic measures. Pacing of text material in bibliotherapy for PD is not needed, and all material can be provided at once when the treatment is guided by a therapist.     

Individually-tailored, Internet-based treatment for anxiety disorders: A randomized controlled trial

Previous studies on Internet-based treatment with minimal to moderate therapist guidance have shown promising results for a number of specific diagnoses. The aim of this study was to test a new approach to Internet treatment that involves tailoring the treatment according to the patient’s unique characteristics and comorbidities.A total of 54 participants, regardless of specific anxiety diagnosis, were included after an in-person, semi-structured diagnostic interview and randomized to a 10 week treatment program or to a control group. Treatment consisted of a number of individually-prescribed modules in conjunction with online therapist guidance. Significant results were found for all dependent measures both immediately following treatment and at 1 and 2 year intervals. Mean between-group effect size including measures of anxiety, depression and quality of life was Cohen’s d = 0.69 at post-treatment, while the mean within-group effect size was d = 1.15 at post-treatment and d = 1.13 and d = 1.04 at 1 and 2 year follow-up respectively.The tentative conclusion drawn from these results is that tailoring the Internet-based therapy can be a feasible approach in the treatment of anxiety in a homogeneous population.     

Structural correspondence,indirect reference,and partial truth: phlogiston theory and Newtonian mechanics

This paper utilizes a logical correspondence theorem (which has been proved elsewhere) for the justification of weak conceptions of scientific realism and convergence to truth which do not presuppose Putnam’s no-miracles-argument (NMA). After presenting arguments against the reliability of the unrestricted NMA in Sect. 1, the correspondence theorem is explained in Sect. 2. In Sect. 3, historical illustrations of the correspondence theorem are given, and its ontological consequences are worked out. Based on the transitivity of the concept of correspondence, a correspondence-based notion of convergence to truth is developed in Sect. 4. In the final Sect. 5 it is argued that the correspondence theorem together with the assumption of ‘minimal realism’ yields a justification of a weak version of scientific realism, which is then compared to metaphysical realism and to instrumentalism.