Das große Spiel der Epoché. Die transzendentalphänomenologische Einstellung zwischen natürlichem Weltverhalten und theoretischer Wissenschaft

Zusammenfassung  Husserls Ansatz der Transzendentalph?nomenologie wird gemeinhin als Versuch einer rationalen Letztbegründung von Erkenntnis überhaupt gedeutet. Sein Verst?ndnis der konstitutiven Rolle des reinen Bewu?tseins gegenüber dem Weltph?nomen als solchem sowie seine Betonung des teleologischen Aspektes der transzendentalen Vernunft scheint sein Denken von vornherein in radikalen Gegensatz zu all jenen ph?nomenologischen Entwürfen zu bringen, die – wie etwa Heidegger oder Fink – die Beziehung von Subjekt und Welt sowie die Philosophie als ganze wesentlich vom Spiel her zu verstehen suchen. Andererseits hat die ph?nomenologische Epoché durch die in ihr liegende Neutralisierung der Existenzsetzung von transzendenter Wirklichkeit bisweilen in dem Ruf gestanden, sich in die freischwebende Sph?re der „reinen Denkbarkeiten” und Fiktionen zurückziehen zu wollen. Ausgehend von gewissen kritischen Bemerkungen Husserls zu den Analysen der praktischen Verwendungs- und Verstehenszusammenh?nge in Sein und Zeit soll in diesem Artikel gezeigt werden, da? der Spielbegriff bei Husserl so vielschichtig ist wie die intentionale Struktur des Bewu?tseins selbst. Zwischen der existenzneutralen Betrachtung „freischwebender” eidetischer Strukturen einerseits und der Betonung des absoluten teleologischen Zwecksinnes der transzendentalen Bewu?tseinsaktivit?t andererseits versucht Husserl, die Motivation des Durchbruchs der rein theoretischen Haltung als solcher vor dem Hintergrund spielerischer Freiheit und Spontaneit?t zu verstehen. Im Gegensatz zu Heidegger wird die „spielerische Neugierde” der theoretischen Haltung, die auch der Epoché zugrunde liegt, als ein positives Grundph?nomen verstanden, das auf die Freiheit des transzendentalen Subjekts von dinglichen Zweckzusammenh?ngen und damit auf seine überweltliche Würde als transzendentale Person verweist.

Screening for borderline personality disorder in outpatient youth

Young people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) commonly seek help but often go unrecognized. Screening offers a means of identifying individuals for more detailed assessment for early intervention and for research. AIMS: This study compared the McLean Screening Instrument for Borderline Personality Disorder (MSI-BPD), Borderline Personality Questionnaire (BPQ), the BPD items from the International Personality Disorder Examination Screening Questionnaire and the BPD items from the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II disorders (SCID-II) Personality Questionnaire. METHOD: 101 outpatient youth (aged 15-25 years) completed the screening measures and were interviewed, blind to screening status, with the SCID-II BPD module. The screening measures were readministered two weeks later to assess test-retest reliability. RESULTS: All four instruments performed similarly but the BPQ had the best mix of characteristics, with moderate sensitivity (0.68), the highest specificity (0.90), high negative predictive value (0.91) and moderate positive predictive value (0.65). Compared to the other three instruments, the BPQ had the highest overall diagnostic accuracy (0.85), a substantially higher kappa (0.57) with the criterion diagnosis, the highest test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.92) and the highest internal consistency (alpha = 0.92). The only clear difference to emerge in the Receiver Operator Curve (ROC) analysis was that the BPQ significantly outperformed the MSI (p = 0.05). CONCLUSION: Screening for BPD in out-patient youth is feasible but is not a replacement for clinical diagnosis.     

Attitudes of Potential Providers Towards Preconceptional Cystic Fibrosis Carrier Screening

To determine the attitudes of potential providers (general practitioners and Community Health Service workers) towards preconceptual cystic fibrosis (CF) carrier screening and to determine which factors are associated with a positive attitude. A survey was conducted among 200 general practitioners (GPs) and 134 Community Health Service (CHS) workers. Fifty-two percent of the eligible GPs participated and 84% of the CHS workers. Fifty-five percent of the GPs and 73% of the CHS workers had a positive attitude towards routinely offering CF carrier screening, and more than 80% were in favor of informing the target population about the possibility of having a CF carrier test. A positive attitude was associated with (a) high perceived severity of CF, (b) religion (nonreligious compared to Reformed), (c) low perceived barriers, and (d) high perceived test reliability. The care providers who are most likely to be involved in a preconceptual CF carrier screening program, i.e. GPs and CHS workers, generally have a positive attitude towards the implementation of such a program.     

The five‐factor personality inventory: cross‐cultural generalizability across 13 countries

In the present study, we investigated the structural invariance of the Five‐Factor Personality Inventory (FFPI) across a variety of cultures. Self‐report data sets from ten European and three non‐European countries were available, representing the Germanic (Belgium, England, Germany, the Netherlands, USA), Romance (Italy, Spain), and Slavic branches (Croatia, Czech Republic, Slovakia) of the Indo‐European languages, as well as the Semito‐Hamitic (Israel) and Altaic (Hungary, Japan) language families. Each data set was subjected to principal component analysis, followed by varimax rotation and orthogonal Procrustes rotation to optimal agreement with (i) the Dutch normative structure and (ii) an American large‐sample structure. Three criteria (scree test, internal consistency reliabilities of the varimax‐rotated components, and parallel analysis) were used to establish the number of factors to be retained for rotation. Clear five‐factor structures were found in all samples except in the smallest one (USA, N = 97). Internal consistency reliabilities of the five components were generally good and high congruence was found between each sample structure and both reference structures. More than 80% of the items were equally stable within each country. Based on the results, an international FFPI reference structure is proposed. This reference structure can facilitate standardized communications about Big Five scores across research programmes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft on the imagination

The article compares Rousseau’s and Wollstonecraft’s views on the imagination. It is argued that though Wollstonecraft was evidently influenced by Rousseau, there are significant differences between their views. These differences are grounded in their different views on the faculty of reason and its relation to the passions. Whereas Rousseau characterizes reason as a derivative faculty, grounded in the more primary faculty of perfectibility, Wollstonecraft perceives reason as the faculty defining human nature. It is argued that contrary to what is often assumed, Wollstonecraft’s conception of the imagination is not primarily characterized by its Romantic features, but rather by the close affinity she posits between reason and the imagination. This close affinity has several consequences. One consequence is that she is less worried than Rousseau about the imagination wandering without external constrains, because she believes in reason’s ability to guide the imagination by choosing its objects. Ultimately the difference between Rousseau’s and Wollstonecraft’s views on the imagination helps us understand why she was a passionate philosopher of the Enlightenment while he was one of its first, perceptive and most articulate critics.     

A four-part working bibliography of neuroethics: Part 4 - Ethical issues in clinical and social applications of neuroscience

Background

As a discipline, neuroethics addresses a range of questions and issues generated by basic neuroscientific research (inclusive of studies of putative neurobiological processes involved in moral and ethical cognition and behavior), and its use and meanings in the clinical and social spheres. Here, we present Part 4 of a four-part bibliography of the neuroethics literature focusing on clinical and social applications of neuroscience, to include: the treatment-enhancement discourse; issues arising in neurology, psychiatry, and pain care; neuroethics education and training; neuroethics and the law; neuroethics and policy and political issues; international neuroethics; and discourses addressing "trans-" and "post-" humanity.

Methods

To complete a systematic survey of the literature, 19 databases and 4 individual open-access journals were employed. Searches were conducted using the indexing language of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). A Python code was used to eliminate duplications in the final bibliography.

Results

When taken with Parts 1-3, this bibliography aims to provide a listing of international peerreviewed papers, books, and book chapters published from 2002 through 2016. While seeking to be as comprehensive as possible, it may be that some works were inadvertently and unintentionally not included. We therefore invite commentary from the field to afford completeness and contribute to this bibliography as a participatory work-in-progress.

     

Philosophical research on cognition

At the turn of the twentieth century, a number of philosophers introduced the idea of philosophical research on cognition that could enter into competition with psychology, which was developing into an autonomous discipline at that time. In view of the problems of the traditional but still prevailing associationist theory, Ernst Cassirer demanded a more sophisticated theory that could explain the human ability to concentrate one’s thoughts on a topic, such as a problem or a task. He presented a representational theory of mind to explain this ability. This paper explicates the scope of this theory and Cassirer’s idea of interdisciplinary cooperation between philosophers and psychologists.     

EEG correlates of postural audio-biofeedback

The control of postural sway depends on the dynamic integration of multi-sensory information in the central nervous system. Augmentation of sensory information, such as during auditory biofeedback (ABF) of the trunk acceleration, has been shown to improve postural control. By means of quantitative electroencephalography (EEG), we examined the basic processes in the brain that are involved in the perception and cognition of auditory signals used for ABF. ABF and Fake ABF (FAKE) auditory stimulations were delivered to 10 healthy naive participants during quiet standing postural tasks, with eyes-open and closed. Trunk acceleration and 19-channels EEG were recorded at the same time. Advanced, state-of-the-art EEG analysis and modeling methods were employed to assess the possibly differential, functional activation, and localization of EEG spectral features (power in α, β, and γ bands) between the FAKE and the ABF conditions, for both the eyes-open and the eyes-closed tasks. Participants gained advantage by ABF in reducing their postural sway, as measured by a reduction of the root mean square of trunk acceleration during the ABF compared to the FAKE condition. Population-wise localization analysis performed on the comparison FAKE - ABF revealed: (i) a significant decrease of α power in the right inferior parietal cortex for the eyes-open task; (ii) a significant increase of γ power in left temporo-parietal areas for the eyes-closed task; (iii) a significant increase of γ power in the left temporo-occipital areas in the eyes-open task. EEG outcomes supported the idea that ABF for postural control heavily modulates (increases) the cortical activation in healthy participants. The sites showing the higher ABF-related modulation are among the known cortical areas associated with multi-sensory, perceptual integration, and sensorimotor integration, showing a differential activation between the eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions.