Vorlesungsverzeichnis

Era and Technology. From stone age to light year. (Seminar)

Termin:
wöchentlich | Mittwoch | 12:15 - 13:45 | 14.10.2024 - 31.01.2025 | C 14.204 Seminarraum

Inhalt: We often assume today that technological change is a major factor in societal change and that it tends to lead to historical progress. In this seminar we will put it as question: How much did sciences, materials available and discoveries stamped the society in general and embossed the epoch of human evolution? How did science and technology evolve as human activities? How do they relate to the larger civilization? The seminar will focus on historical transitions in terms of changes in materials use and technologies applied and connect them with changes in policy, culture and way of living starting with: the Neolithic Revolution and coming to Nanotechnology or furthermore the future of the 21th century.

Artificial Intelligence – Understanding opportunities and limitations across disciplines (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Detlef Schwarting

Inhalt: AI (Artificial Intelligence) has become ubiquitous in the discourses on technological, economic, and societal development either as a savior or as a threat, both in the media and in various disciplines of science. In general, it can be stated that AI, in addition to having undeniable benefits and opportunities for humanity in the health care sector, in industrial processes and as a supporting tool in many situations of human life, also presents several existing or potential risks that are equally not yet holistically understood. In principle, an all-encompassing investigation would be called for that weighs benefits against risks and assesses them with a view to future developments. In fact, many discussions on the topic pick out individual aspects of the technology or individual applications and derive normative judgments. The assumptions made and their origins are often not clear. Many studies approach the topic from a mono-disciplinary perspective. It is the objective of this seminar of overcoming this by taking a cross-disciplinary view on AI’s functionality, opportunities, limitations, and shortcomings as a basis for further normative conclusions which will be detailed on a follow-on seminar. Some of the key questions that will be discussed in this seminar: • How does what computer scientists call "artificial intelligence" come into being? What are the mechanisms of action, how does cognition and judgment of AI come about? • What is natural intelligence, what does the intelligence theory of psychology tell us about it, and what clues does this provide for the understanding the limitations of artificial intelligence? • What is creativity and can AI ever be creative (in the human sense)? • What insights arise from the centuries-long discussions of the philosophy of mind, especially on the body-soul problem and on human consciousness for the classification of artificial intelligence? • Can human consciousness be "naturalized"? • What does science know about the functioning of the human brain and especially about the emergence of consciousness? • Does AI have free will and is the hypothesis that the human brain is determined plausible? • What is autonomy and is AI truly autonomous? • Can AI assume responsibility? • How does AI affect individuality of humans? • Does it affect human dignity? How?

Das Soziale und das Politische – Zum Spannungsverhältnis zweier Begriffe und zweier Disziplinen (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Julian Müller

Termin:
14-täglich | Mittwoch | 10:00 - 13:30 | 23.10.2024 - 29.01.2025 | C 40.152 Seminarraum

Inhalt: Die Soziologie und die Politikwissenschaft haben seit jeher ein gespanntes Verhältnis zueinander. Aus den Reihen der Politikwissenschaft wurde immer wieder und nicht ohne Grund Kritik an der Soziologie geübt, für die Politik nur ein bestimmter, aber kein vorrangiger Bereich innerhalb der modernen Gesellschaft ist. Vor diesem Hintergrund lohnt es sich, das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen den Begriffen des Sozialen und des Politischen und damit auch das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen soziologischer und politischer Theorie in den Blick zu nehmen. Meint ‚das Politische‘ dasselbe wie ‚das Soziale‘? Worin liegt die spezifische Differenz dieser beiden Begriffe? Ist soziale Ordnung gleichbedeutend mit politischer Ordnung? Das sind die zentralen Fragen dieser Veranstaltung, in der klassische Positionen der politischen Theorie ebenso wie der soziologischen Theorie vergleichend behandelt werden (Hobbes, Hegel, Durkheim, Habermas, Bourdieu), in der aber vor allem auch jene Positionen diskutiert werden sollen, die eine Unvereinbarkeit der beiden Fächer behaupten (Schmitt, Arendt) bzw. eine Annäherung der Fächer fordern (Latour, Mouffe, Beck).

Designing for Future Impact: End-User Integration, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Steffen Farny, Svenja Rehwinkel

Inhalt: Typically, end users or “consumers” are perceived as adopters of sustainable products and services, developed by companies. Thus, a lot of attention is paid to the (non-) diffusion of sustainable products and services. From this perspective end users are seen as – more or less – passive recipients of sustainable products and services. However, recent innovation and entrepreneurship research shows that end users can play an important role in (co-) innovating novel sustainable products, services, and systems. In this course, we will explore (a) how end users are integrated in the process of sustainability innovations driven by companies (“user integration”), (b) how end users innovative for themselves, and eventually form enterprises to capture value from their sustainability innovations (“user innovation and entrepreneurship”). The course module invites students to experience principles of design thinking and challenge-based education. This means that the format of the course deviates from the standard lecturer-centric approach and instead adopts a student-centric approach.

Developing entrepreneurial solutions in the context of HEYHO (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Steffen Farny, Svenja Rehwinkel

Inhalt: Join us for an engaging seminar that explores the exciting world of social enterprises and hybrid organizations. In order to address pressing social and environmental challenges, hybrid organizations combine the best of both for-profit and non-profit models and integrate market-driven and mission-focused practices, beliefs, and rationale (Haigh & Hoffman, 2014; Battilana & Dorado, 2010; Smallbone, Evans, Ekanem, & Butters, 2001). Let’s take HEYHO as an example: In their muesli factory in Lüneburg, HEYHO hand-roasts granola varieties using organic ingredients. What makes HEYHO special are the people who work for them: HEYHO was founded because they believe in a better and more socially responsible economy and society. That's why they create real job opportunities for people whose life paths haven't always been straightforward (e.g. referring to experiences made with former incarceration or homelessness, disability, mental health and discrimination). Increasingly, there is an expectation that ALL organizations should have a positive social impact, addressing societal challenges and contributing to the common good - which can be quite the balancing act, for example, between social impact and financial stability. It is time that we learn from hybrid organizations that take on this balancing act successfully. Through engaging case studies and practical insights, we will first derive learnings from hybrid organizations. Second, we will translate them into (small) innovative trainings. These trainings aim at enabling individuals to apply these learnings in their organizations in meaningful ways.

Gender and Inequality Matter for Entrepreneurship (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Rebecca Namatovu

Termin:
14-täglich | Mittwoch | 08:15 - 11:45 | 14.10.2024 - 31.01.2025 | C 11.320 Seminarraum

Inhalt: Entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as playing a key role in economic growth and poverty alleviation. The rapidly growing markets of developing countries are often seen as full of untapped opportunities for entrepreneurs. However, entrepreneurs in developing countries face various challenges such as difficult business environments with conflicting institutional demands, resource constraints, inequality, and widespread poverty. Despite these challenges acting as barriers to business start-up and growth, resource scarcity and uncertain institutional contexts also create opportunities for entrepreneurship. As a result, new forms of entrepreneurship are emerging, aiming to address gender opportunity gaps, inequality, poverty, and institutional voids. These initiatives, which can be for-profit, non-profit, or hybrid organizations, all utilize business principles to drive social, environmental, and/or institutional change. The course "Gender and Inequality Matter for Entrepreneurship" explores the opportunities and challenges for entrepreneurship in developing countries. It delves into the significance of gender, inequality, and their intersectionality in entrepreneurship for development. The course covers various theoretical approaches to entrepreneurship and examines different forms of entrepreneurship, including entrepreneurship in the informal economy, social entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship with the Base of the Pyramid (BoP), sustainability entrepreneurship, and digital and institutional entrepreneurship. It also evaluates how unequal practices and gender biases impact entrepreneurship for development and critically assesses the potential contributions of entrepreneurship to sustainable development. The course emphasizes the influence of the institutional, economic, and cultural environment on entrepreneurship opportunities and strategies, and evaluates how business models, such as social entrepreneurship and community-based enterprises, are either inclusive or help to improve gender disparities and other inequalities within the specific contexts of their operation.

Inequalities unveiled: Theorizing organizations from gender and diversity perspective (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Katharina Kreissl

Inhalt: This course is an in-depth exploration of how gender and diversity intersect with organizational structures and processes, delving into the theoretical underpinnings of these concepts and examining how they shape and are shaped by organizational dynamics. By focusing on inequalities, the course aims to uncover the systemic barriers that perpetuate discrimination and exclusion within workplaces. Adopting an organizational perspective, it understands that organizations are embedded within broader social, economic, and political contexts that influence their structures and practices. By integrating insights and concepts from organization studies, gender and diversity studies, sociology, and anthropology, students will understand why and how organizations address the growing socio-demographic diversity in society. They will explore which diversity policies are effective or ineffective and examine how gender and diversity are embedded and perpetuated in our everyday technologies and work designs.

Judicial Politics (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Natascha Zaun

Termin:
wöchentlich | Mittwoch | 10:15 - 11:45 | 14.10.2024 - 31.01.2025 | C 14.204 Seminarraum

Inhalt: This course addresses the role of courts in politics, an often neglected topic in Political Science. We ask how law and rights matter, how they affect policy and what influences judicial decision-making. What is the role of public opinion in court decisions? How independent is the judiciary from politics? And how does ideology or gender influence the decision-making of judges. While most of the literature on this topic addresses these aspects in the US context, we try to also cover non-US cases where possible.

Knowing Colour (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Timon Beyes

Inhalt: Colour is inescapable. It fills and forms the world, shaping what can be felt and known, desired and expressed. Yet where colour is and how it works are notoriously tricky and contested questions. Is it in our minds or bodies, or is it ‘out there’ in the word? Is colour perception culturally specific or universal? Does the way we talk about colour influence how we perceive it? Is it a mere appendage to social status – the black of intellectualism and artistry, say, or the muted colours of refinement – or does it shape social organization, e.g. as a tool of marketing or the manipulation of moods? As if behaving on its own terms, colour has proved to be supremely indifferent to scholarly categories, definitions and ordering systems. In Wittgenstein’s memorable words, ‘[w]e stand there like the ox in front of the newly-painted stall door’. That colour remains one of the most puzzling phenomena for academic inquiry might explain its comparable neglect in the social sciences. This seminar is dedicated to noticing colour and investigating the perennial problem of knowing colour. The emphasis lies on historic and recent attempts to understand colour as a cultural and social force: what it does rather than what it is. How can we think and explore colour as a ‘medium of transformation’ (Walter Benjamin) that shapes, and that is shaped by, the social?

Philosophy of Social Science (Complementary Studies) (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Markus Reihlen, Dennis Schoeneborn

Inhalt: This course provides you with insights into how to do more engaging and useful research. So what can philosophy contribute to social science? The answer is straightforward: it helps to construct more interesting research problems by challenging taken-for-granted assumptions. The philosophy of social science raises fundamental questions relevant to the practicing researcher, such as what is the nature of social phenomena? Should we see organizations as accumulations of autonomous individuals, collective actors with goals of their own, or systems embedded into society? What is the appropriate form of investigation? Should we rely on empirical facts, on our reason, on action, or on intuition? Can we investigate society by studying individuals or via their social structures? What values and norms of social actions are appropriate? Should we see the individual's freedom (maximization of individual benefit) or his/her responsibility to the community at large (maximization of collective benefit) as the primary goal of social action? This course blends specific perspectives from the philosophy of social science with controversies in social studies. Our use of the term social studies is broad; it includes all disciplines that study social systems of different kinds and of different levels such as economics, sociology, political science, culturology, social psychology, and the respective socio-technologies such as management. This course will enable students to explain how philosophy could contribute to the improvement and interestingness of social research. More specifically, students will be made familiar with general philosophical controversies in social science such as individualism versus holism, idealism versus materialism, the positivism versus postmodernism debates. Finally, we address the relation between science and praxis and reflect upon the different statuses of science and technology.

The diffusion and variation of organizational practices (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Rainer Lueg

Termin:
14-täglich | Freitag | 14:15 - 16:30 | 01.11.2024 - 24.01.2025 | C 6.316 Seminarraum

Inhalt: The course is designed to introduce theories, concepts and tools of organizational practices and their diffusion in a field. Specifically, it will shed light on the antecedents, processes and effects of diffusion processes, as well as the interaction with the change pattern of the diffusing practice. While examples will be discussed with a focus on social science research, the content can be transferred to practice diffusion in natural sciences and technology, life science, as well as humanities.

Theories of Law (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Philipp Ceesay

Inhalt: Unlike a traditional course on legal theory that focuses on the abstract question “what is law,” this course adopts a pluralistic approach to theories of law, structured across three thematic blocks. The first block covers legal norms and comparative law. The second block, which forms the core of the course, is devoted to private law, exploring theoretical concepts in contract, consumer, tort, and property law, as well as the theories of strategic private climate litigation. The final block examines key concepts in corporate law—such as legal personhood, governance, and regulation through corporate law—that provide essential insights into how corporations interact with society, making this knowledge valuable across all legal fields.

Think Mathematically, Act Algorithmically: Modelling and Control of Dynamical Systems using Linear and Nonlinear Differential Equations (Complementary Studies) (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Paolo Mercorelli

Inhalt: Forms of Modelling of dynamical systems (technical, biological, economic and social systems), which can be seen as a course of applied mathematics intended for humanists, aims to try to introduce those forms with their language to be used to interpret and describe systems. Beneﬁting from having knowledge in the field of applied mathematics is in the same way important as beneﬁting from having knowledge in the field of German literature, or theology, philosophy or agronomy for example. Humanists with no experience in training in the formal notation of applied mathematics, which, in nearly every case, works as compactness over explanatory transparency, have difficulties in making their way through an argument depending on that form. And there is, in general, no way to “ﬁgure it out” without that kind of training. As mentioned, applied mathematics, in nearly every case, works as compactness over explanatory transparency and represents, nevertheless, a clear paradoxically valid mystification of the reality. Humanists can have interest to build a proper set of concepts for dealing with modelling and simulation forms. Modelling and simulation forms of dynamical systems can be represented using different but equivalent structures such as equations with variables defined in real time, block diagrams, equations with variables defined in the imaginary domain or others. But, paradoxically, without those mathematical valid mystifications they become mostly unintelligible. To conclude, independently of the motivations of each of us, the most important aim is to try knowing our soul better, as long as we are assuming that our soul manifests itself in different but, in the meantime, "complementary" forms. (Free interpreted from De Anima, Aristotle).

Think Mathematically, Act Algorithmically: Numerical Algorithms and Methods to Identify Dynamical Systems for Data Analysis and Reconciliation (Complementary Studies) (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Paolo Mercorelli

Thinking Space – Space for Thinking: Engaging Philosophy with Architecture (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Maria Teresa Costa

Inhalt: Architectural visualization has evolved from sketches, plans, sectional drawings, and perspective images into infographics and other 3D visualization techniques. This has affected not only our interactions with space, but also within space and therefore with other species that share our environment. Seemingly, since its beginning, Philosophy was always dealing with the concept of space and its relation with the human being and the environment. Engaging Philosophy with Architecture can help us go beyond disciplinary borders, looking at similar questions from different perspectives, to better understand both our past and our present. Thinking about space means also to reflect on the power of images, about how our perception has, over centuries, changed through the use of different media and visualization tools. This has also a contemporary political and environmental relevance: on the one side it confronts us with political issues such as surveillance, sovereignty, exception, exclusion, minorities, and the use of Big Data. On the other side, it helps us understand that we are a small ingredient of an immense and fascinating world that we should care about.

Vorlesungsverzeichnis

Lehrveranstaltungen

Era and Technology. From stone age to light year. (Seminar)

Artificial Intelligence – Understanding opportunities and limitations across disciplines (Seminar)

Das Soziale und das Politische – Zum Spannungsverhältnis zweier Begriffe und zweier Disziplinen (Seminar)

Designing for Future Impact: End-User Integration, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Seminar)

Developing entrepreneurial solutions in the context of HEYHO (Seminar)

Gender and Inequality Matter for Entrepreneurship (Seminar)

Inequalities unveiled: Theorizing organizations from gender and diversity perspective (Seminar)

Judicial Politics (Seminar)

Knowing Colour (Seminar)

Philosophy of Social Science (Complementary Studies) (Seminar)

The diffusion and variation of organizational practices (Seminar)

Theories of Law (Seminar)

Think Mathematically, Act Algorithmically: Modelling and Control of Dynamical Systems using Linear and Nonlinear Differential Equations (Complementary Studies) (Seminar)

Think Mathematically, Act Algorithmically: Numerical Algorithms and Methods to Identify Dynamical Systems for Data Analysis and Reconciliation (Complementary Studies) (Seminar)

Thinking Space – Space for Thinking: Engaging Philosophy with Architecture (Seminar)