Singular troubles with singleton socrates

I identify a problem for Kit Fine’s truthmaker semantics for ground: it excludes a range of plausible structures of grounding hierarchies. Specifically, there is an attractive view about the grounds of the existence of individual singleton sets which is inconsistent under the truthmaker account. I then develop a modification of the truthmaker account which avoids this difficulty and show that it preserves most of the desirable features of the original account, such as the propositional logic of ground it yields.     

Schädigungsmechanismen beim sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern

The criminal intervention in child sexual development is carried out in a protean event of increasing exploration of ones own body, also reciprocally with other children and ultimately the development of shame. This process is part of the identity development of children, to which their bodily sexual self-concept also belongs. Against this background, the multitude of sexual activities also of smaller children is presented in order to discuss the question of whether the quality and intensity of the various acts of sexual abuse (manifest violence versus apparently violence-free usurpation) lead to different mental and social sequelae. Thoughts are presented on how this harm could have arisen. Excluded are the particularly complex problems of ideological excessive assaults in religious or pedagogic faith communities. The article is intended as an incentive to discussion.     

How the Political Becomes Private: In Vitro Fertilization and the Catholic Church in Poland

The Polish debate on in vitro fertilization (IVF) is extremely heated and highly politicized. The hierarchs of the Catholic vehemently oppose the use of IVF. In this text, I present the Church’s approach to IVF. Basing on the documentary film, Three Conversations about Life, and ethnographic research, as well as an analysis of Vatican documents and official statements of Polish bishops, I show how the positions of clergy might influence private lives. I indicate series of tensions associated with the “politics of morality” of the Catholic Church and the daily lives of people, who have children thanks to IVF.     

Pathologisches Glücksspielen: Persönlichkeitsmerkmale und forensische Aspekte

Causes and psychological characteristics of pathological gambling are reviewed. Neither the addiction model nor the conception of a “disorder of impulse control” is fitting to comprehend the peculiarity of these hardened conduct disorders. Pathological gambling is a learned pattern of behaviour with a variety of etiological backgrounds. There is no uniform type of “the” pathological gambler. Some kinds of gambling like roulette or horse betting are used to experience arousal and thrill; other forms like german slot machines on the contrary are used to relax and to find relief from depression and boredom. There is a broad spectrum of comorbid disorders, e.g. mood disorders and personality disorders. The paper delineates the overlap with antisocial patterns and the juridical consequences.     

Habgier und Geldfetischismus

Zusammenfassung  Der Beitrag referiert den aktuellen Kenntnisstand über psychologische Ursachen und Einflussfaktoren bei pathologischem Glücksspiel. Weder die Konzeptualisierung nach dem Suchtmodell noch das Konstrukt der Impulskontrollst?rung sind gut geeignet, das Besondere dieser St?rung des Sozialverhaltens zu erfassen. Pathologisches Glücksspielen erweist sich als erlerntes Verhaltensmuster, das auf ganz unterschiedliche Ursachen zurückgehen kann. Es gibt keinen einheitlichen Typus des exzessiven Spielers. Es gibt Formen des Glücksspiels (Roulette, Pferdewetten), die vor allem genutzt werden, um Spannung und Erregung zu erleben, und andere Formen (insbesondere das Spielen an deutschen Geldspielautomaten), die eher zur Ablenkung, Beruhigung und Problemverdr?ngung dienen. Dargestellt wird das breite Spektrum komorbider St?rungen, insbesondere affektiver Erkrankungen und Pers?nlichkeitsst?rungen. Er?rtert werden die überlappungen mit dissozialen Entwicklungen und strafrechtliche Konsequenzen.      

Meta-analytic evidence of the effectiveness of stress management at work

To increase employees’ psychological health and to achieve a competitive advantage, organizations are increasingly introducing flexible work arrangements (FWAs) and stress management training (SMT). This paper provides meta-analytic evidence of the effects of two forms of FWA (flexitime and telecommuting) and three forms of SMT (cognitive-behavioural skills training, relaxation techniques and multiple SMT) on employees’ psychological health, job satisfaction, job performance and absenteeism. Applying the conservation of resource theory, we conjecture that both FWAs and SMT improve all four employee-related outcomes. Quantitative meta-analyses based on 43 primary studies and 22,882 employees show that both FWAs and SMT are positively associated with psychological health and job satisfaction. However, due to a lack of primary studies we were mostly unable to analyse the effects on performance and absenteeism. Although we found a large heterogeneity in the hypothesized relationships, additional moderator analyses of study quality, age, gender, duration and intention of intervention yielded no significant effects. We discuss limitations and implications for practice and for future research.     

Measuring and modeling salience with the theory of visual attention

For almost three decades, the theory of visual attention (TVA) has been successful in mathematically describing and explaining a wide variety of phenomena in visual selection and recognition with high quantitative precision. Interestingly, the influence of feature contrast on attention has been included in TVA only recently, although it has been extensively studied outside the TVA framework. The present approach further develops this extension of TVA’s scope by measuring and modeling salience. An empirical measure of salience is achieved by linking different (orientation and luminance) contrasts to a TVA parameter. In the modeling part, the function relating feature contrasts to salience is described mathematically and tested against alternatives by Bayesian model comparison. This model comparison reveals that the power function is an appropriate model of salience growth in the dimensions of orientation and luminance contrast. Furthermore, if contrasts from the two dimensions are combined, salience adds up additively.