Would metaphors used in the context of psychotherapy by people who experience various forms of anxiety disorders differ from those used by people who experience stress? We investigated this question with the help of the Motivation & Sedimentation Model (MSM), a theory of meaning-making developed within the synthetic new discipline of cognitive semiotics. The analysis of a sample of ten transcripts of psychotherapy sessions concerning the topic of anxiety, and a comparable sample concerning stress, showed a significantly stronger proportion of (...) conventionalized metaphors in the stress sample, and a marginally significant difference in the number of innovative metaphors in the anxiety sample. These results suggest that lived experience of an anxiety disorder or another form of maladaptive anxiety affects metaphorical meaning-making, and manifests itself in spontaneous metaphor use. Furthermore, as a result of the conceptual and the empirical investigations of the topic, we propose novel theoretical and operational definitions of the notion of metaphoricity. (shrink)

Every day we make choices, but our degree of investment in them differs, both in terms of pre-verbal experience and verbal justification. In an earlier experimental study, participants were asked to pick the more attractive one among two human faces, and among two abstract figures, and later to provide verbal motivations for these choices. They did not know that in some of the cases their choices were manipulated. Against claims about our unreliability as conscious agents, the study found that in (...) about half the cases the manipulations were detected. In the present study, we investigated whether varying degrees of choice investment could be an explanatory factor for such findings. We analysed the verbal justifications of the participants along a set of semantic categories, based on theoretical ideas from phenomenology and cognitive linguistics, and formulated a matrix of eleven markers of choice investment. We predicted a greater degree of investment when motivating choices of faces than figures, manipulated than actual choices, and detected than non-detected manipulations. These predictions were confirmed, but with various strength. This allows us to argue for both consilience and differences between pre-verbal choice investment and the corresponding verbal motivations of the choices made, and thus for conscious awareness of choice making. (shrink)

As humans interact in the world, they often orient one another's attention to objects through the use of spoken demonstrative expressions and head and/or hand movements to point to the objects. Although indicating behaviors have frequently been studied in lab settings, we know surprisingly little about how demonstratives and pointing are used to coordinate attention in large-scale space and in natural contexts. This study investigates how speakers of Quiahije Chatino, an indigenous language of Mexico, use demonstratives and pointing to give (...) directions to named places in large-scale space across multiple scales. The results show that the use and coordination of demonstratives and pointing change as the scale of search space for the target grows. At larger scales, demonstratives and pointing are more likely to occur together, and the two signals appear to manage different aspects of the search for the target: demonstratives orient attention primarily to the gesturing body, while pointing provides cues for narrowing the search space. These findings underscore the distinct contributions of speech and gesture to the linguistic composite, while illustrating the dynamic nature of their interplay.s in Spanish and Quiahije Chatino are provided as appendices.Se incluyen como apéndices resúmenes en español y en el chatino de San Juan Quiahije. SonGktyiCreCinH, ngyaqCskaEktyiCnoEndaHsonBnaFngaJnoIngyaqCloEktyiCreC, ngyaqCranFchaqExlyaKqoEchaqFjnyaJnoAndywiqArenqAKchinAKyqyaC. (shrink)

A persistent controversy in language evolution research has been whether language emerged in the gestural-visual or in the vocal-auditory modality. A “dialectic” solution to this age-old debate has now been gaining ground: language was fully multimodal from the start and remains so to this day. In this paper, we show this solution to be too simplistic and outline a more specific theoretical proposal, which we designate as pantomime-first. To decide between the multimodal-first and pantomime-first alternatives, we review several lines of (...) interdisciplinary evidence and complement it with a cognitive-semiotic experiment. In the study, the participants saw – and then matched to hand-drawn images – recordings of short transitive events enacted by 4 actors in two conditions: visual and multimodal. Significantly, the matching accuracy was greater in the visual than the multimodal condition, though a follow-up experiment revealed that the emotional profiles of the events enacted in the multimodal condition could be reliably detected from the sound alone. We see these results as supporting the proposed pantomime-first scenario. (shrink)

Human communication can be either monosemiotic or polysemiotic, depending on whether it combines ensembles of representations from one or more semiotic systems such as language, gesture and depiction. Each semiotic system has its unique storytelling potentials, which makes intersemiotic translation from one system to another challenging. We investigated the influence of the source semiotic system, realised in speech and a sequence of pictures, respectively, on the way the same story was retold using speech and co-speech gestures. The story was the (...) content of the picture book Frog, Where Are You?. A group of Finnish speakers saw the story in pictures, and another group heard it in matched oral narration. Each participant retold the story to an addressee and all narrations were video-recorded and analysed for both speech and gestures. Given the high degree of iconicity in depiction, we expected more iconic gestures (especially enactments) in the narratives translated from pictures than in those translated from speech. Conversely, we expected greater narrative coherence in the narratives translated from speech. The results showed that more iconic gestures were produced in the narratives translated from speech, but these were primarily not from the enactment subtype. As expected, iconic enactments were more frequent in the narratives translated from the story presented in pictures. The narratives produced by participants who had only heard the story did not have a greater variety of connective devices, yet the type of devices differed slightly between the groups. Together with some additional differences between the groups that had not been anticipated, the results indicate that a story presented in different semiotic systems tends to be translated into different polysemiotic narratives. (shrink)

Happiness is an increasingly prominent topic of interest across academia. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how it is created, especially not in a multidimensional sense. By ‘created’ we do not mean its influencing factors, for which there is extensive research, but how it actually forms in the person. The work that has been done in this arena tends to focus on physiological dynamics, which are certainly part of the puzzle. But they are not the whole picture, with (...) psychological, phenomenological, and socio cultural processes also playing their part. As a result, this paper offers a multidimensional overview of scholarship on the ‘architecture’ of happiness, providing a stimulus for further work into this important topic. (shrink)

In their open peer commentary: “Making It Count: Extracting Real World Data from Compassionate Use and Expanded Access Programs”, Rozenberg and Greenbaum discuss impo...

PurposeThe relation between fear of childbirth and gestational age is inconclusive, and self-reported need for help regarding this fear has never been investigated. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and course of FoC according to gestational age, to identify risk factors for the development of FoC, the influence of this fear on preferred mode of delivery, and self-reported need for help.MethodsNulliparous pregnant women of all gestational ages completed an online survey. The study consisted of a cross-sectional and a longitudinal (...) analysis. Women who completed the survey in the first or second trimester were approached again in their third trimester. The Wijma Delivery Expectancy Questionnaire Version A was used with a cut-off score ≥ 85 to define presence of fear of childbirth. Questionnaires indexing social support, anxiety, symptoms of depression, preferred mode of delivery, and self-reported need for help were included.ResultsIn total, 364 women were enrolled at T0, and 118 out of 184 eligible women were included in the longitudinal analysis. Point prevalence of FoC at T0 was 18.4% with no significant difference between trimesters. In the longitudinal sample, the prevalence of FoC decreased from 18.6% to 11.0%, p = 0.004. Although mean scores for FoC decreased significantly, p < 0.001, scores increased in 41 women. The presence of FoC was associated with elevated anxiety, less family support, prenatal care of the obstetrician by choice, preference for a cesarean section, and for pain relief. Women with FoC were more likely to actively seek for help compared to women without FoC.ConclusionWhile FoC is common in each trimester, prevalence decreases over the course of pregnancy. Women with FoC are often actively seeking for help, suggesting that this fear should be addressed better, and help should be offered accordingly. (shrink)

This article deals with the birth of `the virus' as an object of technoscientific analysis. The aim is to discuss the process of objectification of pathogen virulence in virological and medical discourses. Through a short excursion into the history of modern virology, it will be argued that far from being a matter of fact, pathogen virulence had to be `produced', for example in petri-dishes, test-kits and hyper-real signification-practices. The now commonly accepted objective status of `the virus' has been an accomplishment (...) of a complex ensemble of actors. Indeed, this illustrates why objectification rather than objectivity has become the main focus of science and technology studies. The objectification of `the' virus was by no means a smooth process. It involved more than five decades of highly speculative and fragmented research projects before it became actualized as a separate discipline under the heading of virology. The specific objectification of viruses took place through an inter-disciplinary de-differentiation of research questions, methodologies, techniques and technologies. The main argument of this article is that viruses only became intelligible after the establishment of a virology-assemblage. Its inauguration in the early 1950s was radical and sudden because only then could the various substrands of virological technoscience affect each other through deliberate enrolment, and engender a universal intelligibility. (shrink)

Inleiding tot het gedachtegoed van de Franse filosoof Alain Badiou (1937).

This article deals with the birth of `the virus' as an object of technoscientific analysis. The aim is to discuss the process of objectification of pathogen virulence in virological and medical discourses. Through a short excursion into the history of modern virology, it will be argued that far from being a matter of fact, pathogen virulence had to be `produced', for example in petri-dishes, test-kits and hyper-real signification-practices. The now commonly accepted objective status of `the virus' has been an accomplishment (...) of a complex ensemble of actors. Indeed, this illustrates why objectification rather than objectivity has become the main focus of science and technology studies. The objectification of `the' virus was by no means a smooth process. It involved more than five decades of highly speculative and fragmented research projects before it became actualized as a separate discipline under the heading of virology. The specific objectification of viruses took place through an inter-disciplinary de-differentiation of research questions, methodologies, techniques and technologies. The main argument of this article is that viruses only became intelligible after the establishment of a virology-assemblage. Its inauguration in the early 1950s was radical and sudden because only then could the various substrands of virological technoscience affect each other through deliberate enrolment, and engender a universal intelligibility. (shrink)

Small tandem DNA duplications in the range of 15 to 300 base‐pairs play an important role in the aetiology of human disease and contribute to genome diversity. Here, we discuss different proposed mechanisms for their occurrence and argue that this type of structural variation mainly results from mutagenic repair of chromosomal breaks. This hypothesis is supported by both bioinformatical analysis of insertions occurring in the genome of different species and disease alleles, as well as by CRISPR/Cas9‐based experimental data from different (...) model systems. Recent work points to fill‐in synthesis at double‐stranded DNA breaks with complementary sequences, regulated by end‐joining mechanisms, to account for small tandem duplications. We will review the prevalence of small tandem duplications in the population, and we will speculate on the potential sources of DNA damage that could give rise to this mutational signature. With the development of novel algorithms to analyse sequencing data, small tandem duplications are now more frequently detected in the human genome and identified as oncogenic gain‐of‐function mutations. Understanding their origin could lead to optimized treatment regimens to prevent therapy‐induced activation of oncogenes and might expose novel vulnerabilities in cancer. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to empirically investigate differences in role expectations, among the stakeholders involved, about the devolved personnel management role of front-line managers. In particular, we researched the role expectation differences between FLMs, their middle managers, and Human Resource practitioners. In total, nineteen semi-structured interviews have been conducted involving eleven FLMs, eight middle managers, and two HR practitioners working at the same Dutch hospital. Most discovered role expectation differences were related to how FLMs should execute their HR (...) tasks. FLMs were often uncertain if their role enactment met those of their middle managers and/or HR practitioners, herewith indicating role stress. Our findings underline the importance of paying attention to role expectations’ differences in aligning components of the HRM-performance relationship. Future research could include the role expectations of other important stakeholders, such as: subordinates and top management. The outcomes of this empirical work are translated into four interventions to diminish FLMs’ role stress. (shrink)

The concept of Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) emphasises the comprehensive person-centred experience as essential to promoting living environments. SHAFE takes an interdisciplinary approach, conceptualising complete and multidisciplinary solutions for an inclusive society. From this approach, we promote participation, health, and well-being experiences by finding the best possible combinations of social, physical, and digital solutions in the community. This initiative emerged bottom-up in Europe from the dream and conviction that innovation can improve health equity, foster caring communities, and sustainable development. (...) Smart, adaptable, and inclusive solutions can promote and support independence and autonomy throughout the lifespan, regardless of age, gender, disabilities, cultural differences, and personal choices, as well as promote happier and fairer living places. The New European Bauhaus initiative gathers “beautiful, sustainable, and inclusive projects and ideas” to inspire a positive transformation around us. The New European Bauhaus 2024 Festival took place between 9-13 April. “Designing the perfect New European Bauhaus neighbourhood: New European Bauhaus meets SHAFE” was a Satellite Event of the Festival, held as an online workshop, organised by the SHAFE Foundation on April 9th, 2024. At the event, a group of 50 participants with a multidisciplinary background discussed how to meet the challenges of the European Garcia family to enable them to live in a perfect neighbourhood. The White Paper presents the findings of the participants with the New European Bauhaus inspiring projects and ideas to house the European Garcia family in their neighbourhood. The White Paper recommends developers, designers, planners, and policymakers to include person-centred design of social and physical environments and technologies. Although awareness of person-centred design is growing, many initiatives still hamper the inclusion of citizens or end-users throughout the development of products and services. (shrink)

Featuring a unique systematic approach to dealing with ethical problems known as the 'ethical cycle, ' the book utilizes an abundance of real-life case studies ...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop an ethical framework for the marketing of corporate social responsibility. Methods The approach is a conceptual one based on virtue ethics and on the corporate identity literature. Furthermore, empirical research results are used to describe the opportunities and pitfalls of using marketing communication tools in the strategy of building a virtuous corporate brand. Results/conclusions An ethical framework that addresses the paradoxical relation between the consequentialist perspective many proponents of the marketing of (...) CSR adopt, and ethical perspectives which criticize an exclusive profit-oriented approach to CSR. Furthermore, three CSR strategies in relation to the marketing of CSR are discussed. For each CSR strategy it is explored how a corporation could avoid falling into the promise/performance gap. (shrink)

There is no agreement on how nanoethics should proceed. In this article I focus on approaches for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology, which is as of yet one of the most difficult and urging tasks for nanoethics. I discuss and criticize two existing approaches for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology and propose a network approach as alternative. I discuss debates in nanoethics about the desirable role of ethics in nanotechnological development and about the newness of ethical issues in nanotechnology. On (...) basis of a critical analysis of both debates, I formulate a number of desiderata for a method for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology and argue that the network approach that my colleagues and I have developed for ethical issues in research and development networks is also appropriate in nanotechnology. (shrink)

This paper aims at contributing to a research agenda in engineering ethics by exploring the ethical aspects of engineering design processes. A number of ethically relevant topics with respect to design processes are identified. These topics could be a subject for further research in the field of engineering ethics. In addition, it is argued that the way design processes are now organised and should be organised from a normative point of view is an important topic for research.

Pleidooi vooor eerherstel van de politiek, door de PvdA-fractieleider.

Arriving at a moral judgment is not a straightforward or linear process in which ethical theories are simply applied to cases. Instead it is a process in which the formulation of the moral problem, the formulation of possible “solutions”, and the ethical judging of these solutions go hand in hand. This messy character of moral problems, however, does not rule out a systematic approach. In this article, we describe a systematic approach to problem solving that does justice to the complex (...) nature of moral problems and ethical judgment: the ethical cycle. Our goal is to provide a structured and disciplined method of addressing moral problems, which helps to guide a sound analysis of these problems. We will illustrate the usefulness of this cycle with an example. Further, we will discuss two general issues in applied ethics in relation to the proposed ethical cycle: the role of ethical theories and the place of individual judgment versus collective deliberation. (shrink)

How are we to appraise new technological developments that may bring revolutionary social changes? Currently this is often done by trying to predict or anticipate social consequences and to use these as a basis for moral and regulatory appraisal. Such an approach can, however, not deal with the uncertainties and unknowns that are inherent in social changes induced by technological development. An alternative approach is proposed that conceives of the introduction of new technologies into society as a social experiment. An (...) ethical framework for the acceptability of such experiments is developed based on the bioethical principles for experiments with human subjects: non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, and justice. This provides a handle for the moral and regulatory assessment of new technologies and their impact on society. (shrink)

In Belgium, as in most countries, each Minister or Secretary is assisted by a limited number of trusted collaborators who constitute the Ministerial Office.The article is an attempt to shed a light on the Chief Ministerial Officer who is the closest collaborator of the Minister.In order to show the role of the Chief Ministerial Officer, the article first describes the tasks, powers and composition of the Ministerial Office to proceed to a more extensive analysis of the functions, the appointment of (...) the Chief Ministerial Officer, and the question whether he can exercise executive power.The most important tasks of the Chief Ministerial Officer are: organization and coordination of the Office and its activities, acting as a «Liaison-Officer» with the Minister, passing on of information, exercising of a form of internal, political and administrative control.The article closes with some more personal remarks, pointing out a few guidelines which a Chief Ministerial Office, should keep in mind. (shrink)

As artefacts, the worlds of digital games are designed and developed to fulfil certain expressive, functional, and experiential objectives. During play, players infer these purposes and aspirations from various aspects of their engagement with the gameworld. Influenced by their sociocultural backgrounds, sensitivities, gameplay preferences, and familiarity with game conventions, players construct a subjective interpretation of the intentions with which they believe the digital game in question was created. By analogy with the narratological notion of the implied author, we call the (...) figure to which players ascribe these intentions ‘the implied designer’. In this article, we introduce the notion of the implied designer and present an initial account of how appreciators ascribe meaning to interactive, fictional gameworlds and act within them based on what they perceive to be the designer’s intentions. (shrink)

In 'Een handvol filosofen' staan de filosofen centraal die sinds de oprichting van de Vrije Universiteit in 1880 aan deze instelling verbonden zijn geweest. Het gaat hierbij niet alleen om de inhoud van hun werk, maar ook om de personen zelf. Er waren filosofiedocenten die zich met de universiteit identificeerden en zich volledig konden ontplooien. Er waren er echter ook voor wie dit niet gold, die geïsoleerd of in gewetensnood raakten. Veel filosofiestudenten waren actief betrokken bij wat er in hun (...) faculteit gebeurde. Zij namen initiatieven, protesteerden soms tegen de gang van zaken en kozen partij in conflictsituaties. Sinds het eind van de jaren zestig van de twintigste eeuw verloor de Vrije Universiteit geleidelijk haar christelijk karakter. Tegenwoordig werken alle stafleden vanuit hun eigen motivatie mee aan een hoofdzakelijk seculier geworden universiteit, die ruimte biedt voor religieuze en levensbeschouwelijke diversiteit. (shrink)

Living organisms are currently most often seen as complex dynamical systems that develop and evolve in relation to complex environments. Reflections on the meaning of the complex dynamical nature of living systems show an overwhelming multiplicity in approaches, descriptions, definitions and methodologies. Instead of sustaining an epistemic pluralism, which often functions as a philosophical armistice in which tolerance and so-called neutrality discharge proponents of the burden to clarify the sources and conditions of agreement and disagreement, this paper aims at analysing: (...) (i) what has been Kant's original conceptualisation of living organisms as natural purposes; (ii) how the current perspectives are to be related to Kant's viewpoint; (iii) what are the main trends in current complexity thinking. One of the basic ideas is that the attention for structure and its epistemological consequences witness to a great extent of Kant's viewpoint, and that the idea of organisational stratification today constitutes a different breeding ground within which complexity issues are raised. The various approaches of complexity in biological systems are captured in terms of two different styles, universalism and (weak and strong) constructivism, between which hybrid forms exist. (shrink)

Only one year after the global wave of protest movements and revolts—starting with the ‘Arab Spring’, then, subsequently, the Indignados movement and Occupy- our appreciation of such movements turned sour. The aim of this contribution is to question the predominantly sceptical and defeatist discourse on these movements. One element central to many defeatist discourses on the 2011 movements, is the way in which a lack of demonstrable ‘outcomes’ or ‘successes’ is retrospectively ascribed to them. Therefore, an alternative approach should be (...) formulated, which would allow us to recognise the significant or valuable aspects of these movements and their practices, without downplaying them as ‘unsuccessful’ or ‘failures’ altogether. Pierre Rosanvallon’s concept of ‘counter-democracy’ and Hardt and Negri’s perspective of a ‘Multitude’ will be evaluated as alternative approaches to current political movements. Although they are meritorious, both perspectives do not go far enough and need further articulation. The notion of ‘prefiguration’, originally derived from contemporary anarchist discourse, could be beneficial to this endeavour. After defining and deepening this concept from an anarchist perspective, it will be applied to one particular context: the occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo, during the 2011 revolution in Egypt. As will be concluded, in its application this concept of ‘prefiguration’ could teach us more about the recent wave of protest movements in general, and could help us to formulate a different approach to such movements. (shrink)

Gertrudis van de Vijver and Filip Geerardyn This book was conceived in the wake of an international congress on Sigmund Freud's pre-analytic writings, ...

Is the position of a moving target ? I argue that we should regard moving targets as the natural (veridical) position references. Motion is probably perceptually absolute, whereas position and time are relative quantities, as in physics. According to this view, processing delays are incorporated in the abstract local signs of motion signals. The flash-lag effect is one case in point.

How have legal philosophers systemized law, and what types of assumptions have they made in undertaking this task? In what sense is law a system, and how is it maintained as such? This translation of a French book answers these two core inter-related questions by surveying and analyzing the theories of a number of important European legal philosophers as well as offering its own distinct theory for viewing the law as a system.

Features are unary operators used to build record-like expressions. The resulting term algebras are encountered in linguistic computation and knowledge representation. We present a general description of feature logic and of a slightly restricted version, called record logic. It is shown that every first-order theory can be faithfully interpreted in a record logic with various additional axioms. This fact is used elsewhere [15] to extend a result of Tarski and Givant [14] on expressing first order theories in relation algebra.

The debate following Berlin's famous lecture Two Concepts of Liberty circled around the opposition between negative and positive liberty. Berlin delivered his lecture during the period of the Cold War. Therefore it not only provoked a very technical debate within analytic philosophy on the concept of liberty but also contained an important butdebatable political message: those who endorse positive liberty should be conscious of the fact that the logic of positive liberty leads, if not necessarily at least easily to despotism, (...) paternalism and even totalitarianism. It is no unimportant question then to ask whether no conception of political society can be developed which, without denying pluralism and negative liberty, would show that virtue and law are part of freedom, that freedom entails the exercise of certain actions without this leading up to the imposition of one conception of the good. In this article there is shown in what sense the republican or neo-roman vision of civil liberty can fulfil this requirement. The analysis of the different components of the republican conception of freedom shows that republicanism distinguishes itself from liberalism not so much by the defence of different institutions but by a different legitimation of them which ultimately has its origin in taking serious the proper finality of political society, in taking serious, as the Ancients did, the political and not only social nature of man. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe that appeals to promoting or maximizing good consequences are a suspect way of attempting to justify coercive interference with another person's actions. Suppose that is true. If there is a presumption that individuals have a right not to be coercively interfered with, then, foregoing utilitarian type appeals, it would seem that the only way to justify coercive interference of a paternalistic sort would be to show that under certain conditions the presumption fails.