A social scientific survey on visions of human/nature relationships in western Europe shows that the public clearly distinguishes not only between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, but also between two nonanthropocentric types of thought, which may be called “partnership with nature” and “participation in nature.” In addition, the respondents distinguish a form of human/nature relationship that is allied to traditional stewardship but has a more ecocentric content, labeled here as “guardianship of nature.” Further analysis shows that the general public does not subscribe (...) to an ethic of “mastery over nature.” Instead, practically all respondents embrace the image of guardianship, while the more radical relationships of partnership and participation also received significant levels of adherence. The results imply that ethicists should no longer assume that the ethics of the public are merely anthropocentric. Finally, they call into question the idea of a single form of ecocentrism and favor a hermeneutic virtue ethics approach to the study of the interface between ethics and action. (shrink)

Visions of nature are defined as public views on what nature is, what values are carried by nature and what is the appropriate relationship between humans and nature. They were studied in Lubelski region, Poland. With respect to the first, respondents expressed that human influence and naturalness do not exclude each other. One result of the values survey was that respondents acknowledged nature's intrinsic value. The study into the relationship between humans and nature showed that the respondents adhered strongly to (...) a steward type of relationship, and that more ecocentric images were adhered to for a lesser, but substantial degree. (shrink)

Albinism in Tanzania causes fierce health-related stigma. Little research has focused on the impact of stigma reduction strategies aiming to reduce albinism related stigma. Therefore, this research assessed the impact of two short video interventions among high school students in Tanzania on their attitude towards people with albinism: a contact intervention (n = 95) and an education intervention (n = 97). A mixed method design was used. Directly before and after the interventions impact was measured among all participants through the (...) Albinism Social Distance Scale for Adolescents (ASDS-A), knowledge items, and entertainment items. After these measurements focus group discussions were conducted, 16 in total (n = 80). Both interventions caused a significant increase in the levels of correct knowledge about albinism. The education intervention entailed a significant positive change in attitude measured through the ASDS-A, whereas the contact intervention did not have a significant effect. In terms of entertainment value, the respondents were more enthusiastic about the contact intervention. The study suggests that education interventions on their own can be a successful tool in decreasing albinism related stigma. Additionally, qualitative findings show many positive outcomes for the contact intervention. Therefore, we would recommend using a combination of these two interventions, which has also proved successful in the past. However, more research on the effect of a combination of the two strategies is recommended. (shrink)

Inleiding tot het groene linkse denken over de samenleving.

In their interesting paper, Susser and Cabrera (2024) apply the contextual integrity framework to brain data and mental privacy. This framework, developed by Nissenbaum (2009) and rooted in digital...

It has often been noted that liberal democracies are facing a serious political crisis. A common reaction to this situation is to call for more comprehensive or more effective liberal democratic education. This volume discusses some of the most important challenges to and critiques of the paradigm of liberal democratic education. In doing so, it offers novel insights into how liberal democratic education can be amended, extended or qualified to address the special challenges of the current political moment.

BackgroundThis article is part of a study to gain insight into the decision-making process by looking at the views of the relatives of potential brain dead donors. Alongside a literature review, focus interviews were held with healthcare professionals about their role in the request and decision-making process when post-mortal donation is at stake. This article describes the perspectives of the relatives.MethodsA content-analysis of 22 semi-structured in-depth interviews with relatives involved in an organ donation decision.ResultsThree themes were identified: ‘conditions’, ‘ethical considerations’ (...) and ‘look back’. Conditions were: ‘sense of urgency’, ‘incompetence to decide’ and ‘agreement between relatives’. Ethical considerations result in a dilemma for non-donor families: aiding people or protecting the deceased’s body, especially when they do not know his/her preference. Donor families respect the deceased’s last will, generally confirmed in the National Donor Register. Looking back, the majority of non-donor families resolved their dilemma by justifying their decision with external arguments. Some non-donor families would like to be supported during decision-making.DiscussionThe discrepancy between general willingness to donate and the actual refusal of a donation request can be explained by multiple factors, with a cumulative effect. Firstly, half of the participants stated that they felt that they were not competent to decide in such a crisis and they seem to struggle with utilitarian considerations against their wish to protect the body. Secondly, non-donor families refused telling that they did not know the deceased’s wishes or contesting posthumous autonomy of the eligible. Thirdly, the findings emphasise the importance of Donor Registration, because it seems to prevent dilemmas in decision-making, at least for donor families.ConclusionDiscrepancies between willingness to consent to donate and refusal at the bedside can be attributed to an unresolved dilemma: aiding people or protect the body of the deceased. Non-donor families felt incompetent to decide. They refused consent for donation, since their deceased had not given any directive. When ethical considerations do not lead to an unambiguous answer, situational factors were pivotal. Relatives of unregistered eligible donors are more prone to unstable decisions. To overcome ambivalence, coaching during decision-making is worth investigation. (shrink)

El desafío actual de la posverdad que amenaza el funcionamiento de la democracia surge desde los límitesde nuestro conocimiento y la interferencia de las emociones y los valores. Dos corrientes comunes, la ética del discurso, y la política agonista, son insuficientes para resolver este desafío. En la comprensión de la política de Aristóteles estos dos elementos ya estaban presentes. Él presenta a la política como un campo de saber determinado no exclusivamente por el saber, sino al mismo tiempo por los (...) límites del saber y por el cargo emotivo.El objetivo de este artículo es proponer una concepción contemporánea de un discurso político phronético,incorporando las características clave de una phronesis aristotélica. La hipótesis es que un discurso políticophronético contemporáneo no se puede fundar en el bien, ya que la pluralidad de las concepciones del bien es lo que separa la política moderna de los tiempos aristotélicos. En su lugar, y siguiendo a los debates en la ética neo-aristotélica, se debería buscar el fundamento en el desarrollo del carácter de los (futuros) participantes en dicho discurso. Por consiguiente, la educación es el punto de partida esencial para reforzar las capacidades y los hábitos de los participantes del discurso a fin de mejor manejar, en la medida de lo posible, las limitaciones de nuestro conocimiento y nuestro compromiso personal con el campo político. (shrink)

Over 30 million people worldwide have taken a commercial at-home DNA test, because they were interested in their genetic ancestry, disease predisposition or inherited traits. Yet, these consumer DNA data are also increasingly used for a very different purpose: to identify suspects in criminal investigations. By matching a suspect’s DNA with DNA from a suspect’s distant relatives who have taken a commercial at-home DNA test, law enforcement can zero in on a perpetrator. Such forensic use of consumer DNA data has (...) been performed in over 200 criminal investigations. However, this practice of so-called investigative genetic genealogy raises ethical concerns. In this paper, we aim to broaden the bioethical analysis on IGG by showing the limitations of an individual-based model. We discuss two concerns central in the debate: privacy and informed consent. However, we argue that IGG raises pressing ethical concerns that extend beyond these individual-focused issues. The very nature of the genetic information entails that relatives may also be affected by the individual customer’s choices. In this respect, we explore to what extent the ethical approach in the biomedical genetic context on consent and consequences for relatives can be helpful for the debate on IGG. We argue that an individual-based model has significant limitations in an IGG context. The ethical debate is further complicated by the international, transgenerational and commercial nature of IGG. We conclude that IGG should not only be approached as an individual but also—and perhaps primarily—as a collective issue. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Many studies claim to measure decision-making under risk by employing the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale, a self-report measure, or the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), a behavioural task. However, these tasks do not measure decision-making under risk but decision-making under uncertainty, a related but distinct concept. The present commentary discusses both the theoretical and empirical basis of the distinction between uncertainty and risk from the viewpoint of several scientific disciplines and reports how many studies wrongfully employ the DOSPERT scale and (...) BART as risk-taking measures. Importantly, we call for proper distinguishing between (tasks measuring) decision-making under uncertainty and decision-making under risk in psychology and related fields. We believe this is vital as research has shown that people’s attitudes, behaviour, and brain activity differ between both concepts, indicating that confusing the concepts may lead researchers to erroneous conclusions. (shrink)

We introduce non-associative linear logic, which may be seen as the classical version of the non-associative Lambek calculus. We define its sequent calculus, its theory of proof-nets, for which we give a correctness criterion and a sequentialization theorem, and we show proof search in it is polynomial.

In _Aristotle’s Empiricism_, Jean De Groot argues that an important part of Aristotle’s natural philosophy has remained largely unexplored and shows that much of Aristotle’s analysis of natural movement is influenced by the logic and concepts of mathematical mechanics that emerged from late Pythagorean thought. De Groot draws upon the pseudo-Aristotelian_ Physical Problems_ XVI to reconstruct the context of mechanics in Aristotle’s time and to trace the development of kinematic thinking from Archytas to the Aristotelian _Mechanics_. She shows (...) the influence of kinematic thinking on Aristotle’s concept of power or potentiality, which she sees as having a physicalistic meaning originating in the problem of movement. De Groot identifies the source of early mechanical knowledge in kinesthetic awareness of mechanical advantage, showing the relation of Aristotle’s empiricism to more ancient experience. The book sheds light on the classical Greek understanding of imitation and device, as it questions both the claim that Aristotle’s natural philosophy codifies opinions held by convention and the view that the cogency of his scientific ideas depends on metaphysics. (shrink)

In the Netherlands, consent from relatives is obligatory for post mortal donation. This study explored the perspectives of relatives regarding the request for consent for donation in cases without donor registration. A content analysis of narratives of 24 bereaved relatives of unregistered, eligible, brain-dead donors was performed. Relatives of unregistered, brain-dead patients usually refuse consent for donation, even if they harbour pro-donation attitudes themselves, or knew that the deceased favoured organ donation. Half of those who refused consent for donation mentioned (...) afterwards that it could have been an option. The decision not to consent to donation is attributed to contextual factors, such as feeling overwhelmed by the notification of death immediately followed by the request; not being accustomed to speaking about death; inadequate support from other relatives or healthcare professionals, and lengthy procedures. Healthcare professionals could provide better support to relatives prior to donation requests, address their informational needs and adapt their message to individual circumstances. It is anticipated that the number of consenting families could be enlarged by examining the experience of decoupling and offering the possibility of consent for donation after circulatory death if families refuse consent for donation after brain-death. (shrink)

International treaties, conventions and declarations have been developed in an attempt to establish a world in which people s basic rights and needs are provided for. An increasing number of states have ratified and incorporated them into their national legislations. But are such norms and values truly universal? And with states no longer being the only actors that shape global developments, what can be said about the role of social contracts between state and society for shaping the agenda of international (...) cooperation? And how do these social contracts develop in heterogeneous societies? If people themselves are the main drivers behind development, what does this imply for foreign aid?These and other questions are addressed in "Global Values in a Changing World," the 2010-2011 lecture series organized by the Netherlands Chapter of the Society for International Development. This volume combines views and recommendations by international experts, academics, and activists, and analyzes the connection between internationally agreed norms, standards, goals, and common goods, and the way they can be realized in a world that is both globalized and localized.". (shrink)

Millions of human biological samples are stored worldwide for medical research or treatment purposes. These biospecimens are of enormous potential value to law enforcement as DNA profiles can be obtained from these samples. However, forensic use of such biospecimens raises a number of ethical questions. This article aims to explore ethical issues of using human bodily material in medical biobanks for crime investigation and prosecution purposes. Concerns about confidentiality, trust, autonomy and justice will be discussed. We explore how to balance (...) these concerns against the importance of crime solving. Relevant case examples of forensic use of medical biobanks show that requests by law enforcement to access biobanks are handled in disparate ways. We identify some core ethical issues and conclude that further research on these issues is needed to provide ethical guidance. (shrink)

Positive monotone modal logic is the negation- and implication-free fragment of monotone modal logic, i.e., the fragment with connectives and. We axiomatise positive monotone modal logic, give monotone neighbourhood semantics based on posets, and prove soundness and completeness. The latter follows from the main result of this paper: a duality between so-called \-spaces and the algebraic semantics of positive monotone modal logic. The main technical tool is the use of coalgebra.

It is shown that Aristotle’s references to automata in his biological treatises are meant to invoke the principle behind the ancient conception of the lever, i.e. that points on the rotating radius of a circle all move at different speeds proportional to their distances from the center. This principle is mathematical and explains a phenomenon taken as whole. Automata do not signify for him primarily a succession of material movers in contact, the modern model for mechanism. For animal locomotion and (...) embryological development, Aristotle models his dunamis concept on the idea of mechanical potential that the lever principle displays. (shrink)

In recent years the cognitive science community has witnessed the rise of a new, dynamical approach to cognition. This approach entails a framework in which cognition and behavior are taken to result from complex dynamical interactions between brain, body, and environment. The advent of the dynamical approach is grounded in a dissatisfaction with the classical computational view of cognition. A particularly strong claim has been that cognitive systems do not rely on internal representations and computations. Focusing on this claim, we (...) take as a starting point a question recently raised by Cliff and Noble: " if evolution did produce a design that used internal representations, how would we recognize it?" (Knowledge-based vision and simple visual machines, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 352 , 1165-1175, 1997). We will argue that cognitive science lacks a proper operationalization of the notion of representation, and therefore is unable to fruitfully discuss whether a particular system has representations or not. A basic method to detect representations in a physical system, grounded in isomorphism, turns out to be quite unconstrained. We will look at a practical example of this problem by examining the debate on whether or not van Gelder's (What might cognition be, if not computation? Journal of Philosophy, 92 , 345-381, 1995) controversial example of the Watt Governor is representational. We will conclude that cognitive science, as of yet, has no empirically applicable means to answer Cliff and Noble's question unequivocally. This makes the recent representationalism vs. anti-representationalism debate a debate for the sake of appearance. (shrink)

Als je in een kiosk de tijdschriftenrekken doorloopt, ontdek je al snel dat er een groot aantal draait om ‘goede smaak’: goede smaak in het inrichten van je huis, goede smaak in het klaarmaken van maaltijden. De idee dat er ook zoiets zou bestaan als een goede smaak in het leven zélf, zoals die bij Aristoteles voorkomt, heeft in onze seculiere tijd met wortels in het christendom echter afgedaan. Een maatstaf die de voortreffelijkheid van mensenlevens meet, strookt immers niet (...) met de opvatting dat al die levens gelijkwaardig zijn. Maar het belang van goede smaak duidt op een onbehagen waarvoor de oplossing nog niet in zicht is. (shrink)

This paper proposes communities of practice (CoP) as a process to build moral resilience in healthcare settings. We introduce the starting point of moral distress that arises from ethical challenges when actions of the healthcare professional are constrained. We examine how situations such as the current COVID-19 pandemic can exponentially increase moral distress in healthcare professionals. Then, we explore how moral resilience can help cope with moral distress. We propose the term collective moral resilience to capture the shared capacity arising (...) from mutual engagement and dialogue in group settings, towards responding to individual moral distress and towards building an ethical practice environment. Finally, we look at CoPs in healthcare and explore how these group experiences can be used to build collective moral resilience. (shrink)

Originally published in 1991. Philoponus’ long commentary on Aristotle’s definition of light sets up the major concerns, both in optics and theory of light, that is discussed here. Light was of special interest in Neoplatonism because of its being something incorporeal in the world of natural bodies and therefore had a special role in the philosophical analysis of the interpenetration of bodies and also as a paradigm for the soul-body problem. The material investigated in this book contains much about the (...) physiology of vision as well as the propagation of light. Several chapters investigate the philosophical theory and its origins in ‘multiplication of species.’ These issues in the history of science philosophy are looked at further and an analysis is offered of the development of the distinction between Aristotle’s kinesis and energeia. The book covers a substantial amount of the philosophy of mathematical science from the point of view of Philoponus, drawing on more of his works relating to three dimensionality. (shrink)

This paper examines geometrical arguments from Galileo's Mechanics and Two New Sciences to discern the influence of the Aristotelian Mechanical Problems on Galileo's dynamics. A common scientific procedure is found in the Aristotelian author's treatment of the balance and lever and in Galileo's rules concerning motion along inclined planes. This scientific procedure is understood as a development of Eudoxan proportional reasoning, as it was used in Eudoxan astronomy rather than simply as it appears in Euclid's Elements. Topics treated include the (...) significance of the circle in Galileo's demonstrations, the substitution of rectilinear elements for heterogeneous factors like weight and curvilinear distance, and the way in which elements of a motion are used to measure other elements of the same motion. The indirectness of Galileo's proofs, his conception of speed as relative and comparative, and the meaning of his concept of moment all come into clearer focus. Conclusions are drawn about Galilean idealization, and also about the contrast of literal versus figural modes of explanation in Galileo's science. (shrink)

Rethinking the meaning of mechanism in antiquity Content Type Journal Article Category Essay Review Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9599-0 Authors Jean De Groot, School of Philosophy, Catholic University of America, 420 Michigan Ave., NE, Washington, DC 20064, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

We anticipate a further decline of patients who eventually will become brain dead. The intensive care unit (ICU) is considered a last resort for patients with severe and multiple organ dysfunction. Patients with primary central nervous system failure constitute the largest group of patients in which life-sustaining treatment is withdrawn. Almost all these patients are unconscious at the moment physicians decide to withhold and withdraw life-sustaining measures. Sometimes, however competent ICU patients state that they do not want to live anymore (...) because of the severity of their illness or the poor prognosis and ask for withdrawal of life-sustaining measures like mechanical ventilation. Do we consider the unconscious patient as potential organ donor before withdrawal of mechanical ventilation? This is paradoxically rare in the case of the conscious ICU patient. Is it practically possible and ethically feasible to obtain consent for organ donation from this group of patients? (shrink)

Im Jahre 1886 erregte I. Hilberg großes Aufsehen, als er in einem Artikel über die Autorschaft des Christus patiens auf die verschiedene Behandlung der dichrona bei den Jambographen der byzantinischen Epoche hinwies – die bis heute herrschende Anschauung geht dahin, dass α, ι und υ bei den byzantinischen Jambographen ausnahmslos mittelzeitig sind – und, je nach der absoluten Korrektheit in der Versifikation, sowohl was die Quantität als was die Zäsuren betraf, die Autoren in drei Gruppen meinte einreihen zu können: die (...) Classiker, die Epigonen und die Stümper. P. Maas griff diesen Standpunkt quasi unmittelbar an; er bemerkte sarkastisch, dass in diesem Fall Georgios Pisides, umstrahlt von der Glorie reinster Quantität einsam über allen anderen Dichtern in der einsamen Höhe seines „klassischen“ Himmels thronen würde, und dass die Byzantiner in Wirklichkeit von der Quantität der Vokale nichts hörten, da dieselben einfach isochron geworden waren. Dies hat nicht verhindert, dass F. Scheidweiler lange danach doch untersucht hat, ob die Poesie des Joannes Geometres noch der antiken Quantitätslehre entspricht, oder konkreter: dem Metrum des jambischen Trimeters:In diesem Beitrag möchte ich, mit den Untersuchungen von Scheidweiler als Richtschnur, der Frage nachgehen, in welchem Maβe der Dichter in seiner Μετάφϱασις των ώδων tatsächlich noch die antike Metrik respektiert. (shrink)

Joannes Geometres gehörte als einer der führenden Rhetoriker und Dichter seiner Zeit und als Offizier in der byzantinischen Armee – ϰαί σοφίη θάλλων ϰαί τόλμη ϰϱαδίης – zur politischen und literarischen Elite Konstantinopels. Nicht lange vor dem Jahr 986 wurde er aus dem Militärdienst entlassen; wie er selbst zu verstehen gibt, lag seine Tätigkeit als Soldat und Dichter, die bei seinen Zeitgenossen Neid ausgelöst hätte, diesem Ereignis zugrunde; die wirkliche Ursache war aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach jedoch seine Sympathie für Basileios Nothos, (...) der seit 976 de facto als Kaiser des Reiches aufgetreten war, 985 aber gestürzt wurde. Wie dem auch sei, Joannes verließ seine luxuriöse Wohnung im Mesomphalos-Bezirk der Metropole und zog sich als Mönch ins Kloster Τα Κύϱου zurück; möglicherweise bekam er infolgedessen seinen zweiten Namen: Kyriotes. (shrink)

This study investigates the likelihood of director turnover following opportunistic insider selling. Given that opportunistic insider selling may be costly to a firm due to potential legal risk and firm legitimacy concerns, we hypothesize that directors engaging in this type of transactions have a higher likelihood of subsequently leaving the board. Using archival data of 11,409 directors in 2280 US firms from 2005 to 2014, univariate comparisons show that directors engaging in opportunistic insider selling are about 8% more likely to (...) exit their firms’ board compared to directors not engaging in this behavior. Furthermore, multivariate results show that the likelihood of director departure following opportunistic insider selling is higher for some directors but not all. Specifically, directors who are especially valuable to the board or costly to replace do not seem to experience elevated levels of turnover. Interestingly, this difference in director turnover is only observed in smaller firms. We find that in larger firms, the likelihood of director turnover following opportunistic insider selling does not depend on director characteristics. As such, results seem to suggest that boards do not homogeneously self-regulate in this context as some directors seem to be shielded from turnover following unethical behavior. (shrink)

Examples are presented of Aristotle’s use of non-idealized mathematics. Distinctions Husserl makes in Crisis help to delineate the features of this empiricalmathematics, which include the non-persistence of mathematical aspects of things and the selective application of mathematical traits and proper accidents. In antiquity, non-abstracted mathematics was involved with practical sciences that treat motion. The suggestion is made that these sciences were incorporated by Aristotle into natural philosophy without first being abstracted as pure mathematics—a state of affairs not envisioned by Husserl, (...) for whom science recast natural ontology by means of the idealization of pure mathematics. The relation of empirical mathematics to life-world ontology is considered. (shrink)

Examples are presented of Aristotle’s use of non-idealized mathematics. Distinctions Husserl makes in Crisis help to delineate the features of this empiricalmathematics, which include the non-persistence of mathematical aspects of things and the selective application of mathematical traits and proper accidents. In antiquity, non-abstracted mathematics was involved with practical sciences that treat motion. The suggestion is made that these sciences were incorporated by Aristotle into natural philosophy without first being abstracted as pure mathematics—a state of affairs not envisioned by Husserl, (...) for whom science recast natural ontology by means of the idealization of pure mathematics. The relation of empirical mathematics to life-world ontology is considered. (shrink)

Building on Ben-Avi and Winter’s (2007) work, this paper provides a general “intensionalization” procedure that turns an extensional semantics for a language into an intensionalized one that is capable of accommodating “truly intensional” lexical items without changing the compositional semantic rules. We prove some formal properties of this procedure and clarify its relation to the procedure implicit in Montague’s (1973) PTQ.

This piece uses a feminist approach to explore various aspects of ‘commodification’ in the lives and work of those teaching and researching in UK universities, and in particular its gender dimensions. After setting a historical context for the radical transformation of UK universities during the 1980s, it considers how this transformation was experienced by academics in terms of alienation, anxiety and accountability. Key features of that experience are loss of autonomy and control to the external power of competition and managerialism, (...) insecurity and casualization in employment, and exposure to increasing judgemental scrutiny. For women academics job insecurity and discrimination continue to be disproportionately important, although some of the challenges to old established academic convention and practice have opened up real possibilities to progress more pro-women agendas. In the future they will confront quite depressing developments in the reconstruction of academic identities and labour, but have the legacy of the gains/insights of feminist analysis and politics over the last twenty years with which to do so. (shrink)