This article traces the development of European ideas of peace and unity from the time of Desiderius Erasmus to Immanuel Kant. The argument will be made that these ideas, which were initially strongly determined by Christian religious thinking, gradually changed, and from the seventeenth century onwards were put forward in more political and legal terms. Erasmus's way of reasoning about peace and war was still strongly influenced by his firm orientation on the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus Christ. (...) Emeric Crucé, a French writer, was of the opinion that all human beings in the end had God in common, and so had to live peacefully together. Duc de Sully was one of the first not to argue as a religious man but as a politician: a system of balance of power could bring international stability. According to the English Quaker William Penn and the French Abbé de Saint-Pierre only the acceptance of international rules of justice could produce everlasting peace. Immanuel Kant finally directed attention to the form of government and to the founding of a federation of free republics. So God seems to have disappeared from Europe???but with what consequences for today? (shrink)

This article focuses on the themes of the two conferences organized by the League of Nations—“Modern Man” and “The Foundations of Modern Humanism”—which were held in Nice and Budapest in 1935 and 1936, respectively. It was a time of deepening crisis, when the pervasive belief was that European civilization was declining. The more specific questions discussed in these conferences included the relation of modern man to the state, the impact of irrational theories on modern life, and the need for free (...) education for everyone. Renowned writers and academics of the period participated in the debates, among them Thomas Mann, Jules Romains, Salvador de Madariaga, Alfred Zimmern, and Johan Huizinga. I present a critical overview of their debates, beginning with Paul Valéry, the initiator and chairman of these conferences, who coined the intriguing slogan “La Société des Nations suppose la Société des Esprits.”. (shrink)

United Nations (UN) leaders suggest that the world is not on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the SDGs provide a valuable platform to call for a basic income (BI) globally. Adopting a critical historical studies approach, the article traces the evolution of ‘development’, including the UN decades of development, the Millennium Development Goals, and the SDGs. It subsequently describes the structural adjustment and poverty reduction efforts by (...) the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and then outlines why the SDG framework may be helpful in advancing a BI. We argue that as climate-related disasters increase, a BI will be vital in providing a modicum of security in an increasingly unstable world. Calls for BI must be anchored to a broader change agenda that recognizes the causes of poverty and income inequality, and seeks their dismantling and redress. (shrink)

William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science is sometimes glossed over as a footnote to Kant. There is however a key feature of Whewell’s account worth noting. This is his appeal to Aristotle’s form/matter hylomorphism as a metaphor to explain how mind and world merge in successful scientific inquiry. Whewell’s hylomorphism suggests a middle way between rationalism and empiricism reminiscent of experience pragmatists like Steven Levine’s view that mind and world are entwined in experience. I argue however that Levine does (...) not adequately explain exactly how mind and world entwine. He could nonetheless do so if he appealed to Whewell’s hylomorphic metaphor. We may prefer a reductive metaphysical explanation, but I suggest that pragmatists only have recourse to metaphor in this case. Both reductive and metaphorical explanations can enjoy great explanatory power if they exhibit a suitable measure of what I will call sematic distance. Semantic distance measures how close or how far apart explanandum and explanans are from each other in meaning. Metaphorical explanation - as evident in Whewell’s hylomorphism and as detailed via the notion of semantic distance - presents a valuable new explanatory tool to those who hold that mind and world are entwined sans recourse to metaphysics. (shrink)

As humans, we frequently engage in mental time travel, reliving past experiences and imagining possible future events. This study examined whether similar factors affect the subjective experience associated with remembering the past and imagining the future. Participants mentally “re-experienced” or “pre-experienced” positive and negative events that differed in their temporal distance from the present , and then rated the phenomenal characteristics associated with their representations. For both past and future, representations of positive events were associated with a greater feeling of (...) re-experiencing than representations of negative events. In addition, representations of temporally close events contained more sensorial and contextual details, and generated a stronger feeling of re-experiencing than representations of temporally distant events. It is suggested that the way we both remember our past and imagine our future is constrained by our current goals. (shrink)

Different methods have been developed to address ethical issues during research. Most of these methods were developed at universities. In this article ethical parallel research within a Research and Technology Organization is described. Within a European project about perceived security, CPSI, the ethical issues were identified by ethicists cooperating in the project. The project CPSI was aimed at developing a research method that can be used by (local) government to monitor or assess perceived and actual security. Together with the researchers (...) a way was sought to address the ethical issues. Several issues could be addressed by choices with regard to the design of the validation study, in this case a survey. The ethical and legal reasons that were relevant for choices in the design of the validation study were made an integral part of these decisions. Some issues were already identified during the writing of the proposal others were only identified during the research. Participating in the research gave the ethicists access to all relevant information. It made it possible to address the ethical issues when they became relevant. Ethical reasons were part of some of the discussions on research method. It proved possible to address most ethical issues satisfactorily during the research project. (shrink)

Surprisingly little has been written about hedged assertion. Linguists often focus on semantic or syntactic theorizing about, for example, grammatical evidentials or epistemic modals, but pay far less attention to what hedging does at the level of action. By contrast, philosophers have focused extensively on normative issues regarding what epistemic position is required for proper assertion, yet they have almost exclusively considered unqualified declaratives. This essay considers the linguistic and normative issues side-by-side. We aim to bring some order and clarity (...) to thinking about hedging, so as to illuminate aspects of interest to both linguists and philosophers. In particular, we consider three broad questions. 1) The structural question: when one hedges, what is the speaker’s commitment weakened from? 2) The functional question: what is the best way to understand how a hedge weakens? And 3) the taxonomic question: are hedged assertions genuine assertions, another speech act, or what? (shrink)

Vaccination policy is an ethically challenging domain of public policy. It is a matter of collective importance that reaches into the most private sphere of citizens and unavoidably conflicts with individual-based ethics. Policy makers need to walk a tight rope in order to complement utilitarian public health values with individual autonomy rights, protection of privacy, non-discrimination and protection of the worst-off. Whether vaccination is voluntary or compulsory, universal or targeted, every option faces complex ethical hurdles because of the interdependence of (...) humans in infectious disease matters. In this article, we explore the following three policy questions. (i) Ethically, which policy measures should be addressed when vaccination coverage is insufficient in a population? Information campaigns, legal compulsion, or the use of financial incentives can all be effective, but also controversial policy options. (ii) Is it ethical to target vaccination programs at certain risk-groups? If such measures are necessary, we argue that policymakers will often have to decide which is more important to uphold: non-discrimination or the protection of privacy. And (iii), what is the ethical significance of adverse herd immunity effects? Some vaccination programs will improve average population health, but will at the same time increase the risk of severe morbidity and mortality for individuals in the worst-off groups of society. (shrink)

Der Streit darüber, ob es objektive Wahrheitskriterien gibt, wird oft mit der Frage vermengt, ob Wissenschaft immer fortschreite. Vor allem Popper in "Objective Knowledge" unterstellt in starkem Maße einen allgemeinen Trend der Wissenschaft zum Fortschritt. In diesem Beitrag wird gezeigt, daß Wissen verloren gehen kann: 1. Weil es nicht aufgezeichnet wird; 2. weil die Dokumente, in denen es niedergelegt wurde, verloren gehen; 3. weil das Wissen um die Sprache der Dokumente, in denen es niedergelegt wurde, verloren gegangen ist, 4. weil (...) die spätere Wissenschaftlergemeinschaft die Dokumente nicht genügend beachtet, in denen es niedergelegt wurde. Der Verlust nichtaufgezeichneten Wissens ist äußerst üblich. Der Verlust veröffentlichter Dokumente war besonders vor der Erfindung der Drucktechnik häufig und hat besonders in manchen Zweigen der Geisteswissenschaften einen Rückschritt bedeutet, weil entweder Dokumente, die das Objekt dieser Wissenschaften ausmachen , oder Aufzeichnungen historischer Ereignisse verloren gingen. Der Verlust veröffentlichter Dokumente nach der Erfindung der Drucktechnik war etwas weniger bedeutend, aber er kam dennoch vor. Der Verlust unveröffentlichter Dokumente geschah häufig, und zwar sowohl vor wie nach der Erfindung der Drucktechnik. Ob in unentzifferten Dokumenten definitiv Wissensverlust vorliegt, ist einigermaßen zweifelhaft. Einige unentzifferte Sprachen mögen eines Tages entziffert werden, aber einige unentzifferte Sprachen mögen auch für immer unentziffert bleiben. Der Verlust von Wissen wegen unzureichender Aufmerksamkeit gegenüber dem Werk eines früheren Wissenschaftlers kann behoben werden, wenn man seine Behauptungen nochmals untersucht. Wissensverlust kommt hauptsächlich in den Geisteswissenschaften vor. In der Mathematik und einigen Naturwissenschaften gibt es fast nur Zunahme an Wissen wegen der Wiederholbarkeit der Experimente. (shrink)

In the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature, the principle of voluntarism is predominant and implies that responsible business activities are discretionary and reach beyond the rule of law. This principle fails to explain that governments have a great interest in CSR and exercise influence on firms’ CSR activities. Therefore, we argue in favour of a contingency approach on voluntarism in CSR. To this end, we analyse the academic literature to demonstrate how governments are part of the CSR debate. We selected (...) 703 papers where the impact of governments is mentioned from five journals in our field (BEER, BEQ, BSE, BAS, JBE) in the period 1982–2011. We studied the titles and abstracts of these papers and provide an overview of: (i) the geographical orientation of the reviewed studies; (ii) the variety of government levels involved; and (iii) the various subjects where governments appear to be involved. In addition, an in‐depth reading of a subsample of 39 articles offers more details on the role of governments in the CSR literature. Hence, we offer a structured overview on the discussion of CSR and governments while stimulating a contingent understanding of the voluntarism concept in CSR. (shrink)

Summary This article compares the discoveries of the planets Neptune and Pluto and the unsuccessful search of intra-Mercurial planets. Its conclusion is, that the search of intra-Mercurial planets was started on the basis of reasonable assumptions and competently pursued, that the success in the search of Neptune and Pluto and the failure in the search of intra-Mercurial planets was not due to greater competence of the successful planet searchers, but to good luck of the successful researchers and bad luck of (...) the unsuccessful researchers. (shrink)

Recent policy developments in the area of livestock husbandry have suggested that, from the perspective of optimizing animal welfare, new animal husbandry systems should be developed that provide opportunities for livestock animals to be raised in environments where they are permitted to engage in “natural behavior.” It is not known whether consumers regard animal husbandry issues as important, and whether they differentiate between animal husbandry and other animal welfare issues. The responsibility for the development of such systems is allocated jointly (...) between farmers, regulators, different actors in the food chain, and consumers. This research focuses on understanding consumer attitudes and preferences regarding the development and introduction of such systems, to ensure that they are acceptable to consumers as well as producers, regulators, and scientists. Consumer perceptions of animal welfare and animal husbandry practices were evaluated using quantitative consumer survey, which focused on two animal husbandry issues – farmed pigs and farmed fish. Following pilot work, 1000 representative Dutch consumers were sampled about their attitudes to either pig or fish husbandry. The results indicated that consumers think about animal welfare in terms of two broad categories related to their health and living environment, but do not think about welfare issues at a more detailed level. Greater concern was expressed about the welfare of pigs compared to fish. Consumer trust in labeling also emerged as an important issue, since consumers need to trust different food chain actors with responsibility for promoting animal welfare, and are reluctant to consider the details of animal husbandry systems. As a consequence, a transparent, enforceable, and traceable monitoring system for animal welfare friendly products is likely to be important for consumers. (shrink)

A compromise is an agreement that involves mutual concessions. Each party gets less than it feels entitled to, but agrees to it because the situation it anticipates under the deal is better than the one it expects in the absence of a deal: conflict, exit or arbitration by a third party. Some compromises, however, are bad, and others are good. This article discusses three conjectures about what it is that makes a compromise good. Is a good compromise an honourable compromise, (...) one that enables each party to save face? Is it rather a fair compromise, one that contributes to the progress of justice independently defined? Or is it a Pareto-improving compromise, one that changes things in such a way that it ends up making everyone better off than under the status quo? A compromise is never as good as a consensus, but it is generally better than nothing, and often achievable when a consensus is not. And when it is, trying to make it as good as possible in each of the three ways described is always worthwhile. © 2012 Government and Opposition Ltd. (shrink)

This article reflects on the contribution that stakeholder involvement could give to circular bioeconomy transformation (CBE). By comparing argument for stakeholder involvement in literature as well as on our own experiences in six stakeholder involvement workshops, we argue that it is probably unrealistic to fully achieve both normative and co-design goals in a single workshop. Furthermore, stakeholder involvement can help to acquire insight into dependencies in the market and offer an opportunity to connect people to deal with them. Therefore we (...) propose for future stakeholder involvement initiatives for CBE to focus on (1) identify relationships of dependency which make it hard for players in the market to change, (2) develop strategies to change while mitigating the detrimental effects on already existing relationships and (3) gradually breaking down relationships and building new ones that support CBE. (shrink)

"Cet ouvrage a pour objectif de proposer une histoire de ce que, après Descartes, on a appelé le cogito, le "Je pense, donc je suis". Le parti-pris est que sa valeur ne tient pas seulement à ce qu'il a pu affirmer de l'ego, de la nature de la pensée et de l'existence, mais à ce qui s'est ensuite écrit et qui peut prendre la forme d'une critique. Chaque étude constitue un échantillon du travail sur le cogito ; elle le déplie (...) selon un aspect de la méthode philosophique ou de la diversité des traditions historiques de la philosophie. L'ouvrage devrait permettre de parcourir les réécritures du cogito, en conduisant à porter une attention renouvelée à la formule cartésienne et en la désenclavant, pour ainsi dire, de ses réécritures."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Current theory-of-mind research faces the challenge of reconciling two sets of seemingly incompatible findings: Whereas children come to solve explicit verbal false belief tasks from around 4years of age, recent studies with various less explicit measures such as looking time, anticipatory looking, and spontaneous behavior suggest that even infants can succeed on some FB tasks. In response to this tension, two-systems theories propose to distinguish between an early-developing system, tracking simple forms of mental states, and a later-developing system, based on (...) fully developed concepts of belief and other propositional attitudes. One prediction of such theories is that the early-developing system has signature limits concerning aspectuality. We tested this prediction in two experiments. The first experiment showed that 2- and 3-year-olds take into account a protagonist's true or false belief about the location of an object in their active helping behavior. In contrast, toddlers' helping behavior did not differentiate between true and false belief conditions when the protagonist's belief essentially involved aspectuality. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with a more stringent method designed to rule out more parsimonious explanations. Taken together, the current findings are compatible with the possibility that early theory-of-mind reasoning is subject to signature limits as predicted by the two-systems account. (shrink)

The expansion of the older population suggests that there will be significant numbers in need of care and support in their own home environment. Yet, little is known about the kind of situations professionals are faced with and how they intervene in the living environment of older people. Qualitative data were collected over a period of 1.5 years from a multi-disciplinary community-based geriatric team in the Netherlands, and participant observations carried out. Forty-two cases discussed within the team meetings were analysed. (...) Results demonstrate that providing care to older people is a dynamic process and revolves around various paradoxes as experienced by professionals. This is illustrated by presenting three paradoxes that emerged within the data: respecting autonomy versus preserving safety; the care needs of the care recipients versus the capacity of their informal carers to cope; and holding a formal orientation versus a tailored orientation on tasks. Providing care in the home environment of older people requires from professionals a continuous anticipation of (un)expected evolutions in situations of their care recipients. In order to optimally support older people professionals need ‘professional discretion’. They must be supported to systematically reflect on and legitimize their intervention strategies. (shrink)

The King Report on Corporate Governance (1994) evoked unprecedented interest in corporate governance in South Africa. This does not mean that corporate governance was not an issue of concern before the release of this historical report. To the contrary, corporate governance in its broader sense has been at stake since the inception of the first publicly owned companies in South Africa. This article intends to give an overview of corporate governance in South Africa. It starts by making a distinction between (...) broad and narrow conceptions of corporate governance. Before applying this distinction to the practice of corporate governance in South Africa, a brief overview of the corporate landscape in South Africa is provided. Then the South African situation with regard to broad and narrow corporate governance respectively is analysed. The article ends with a discussion of the review of corporate governance that currently is in the making in South Africa. Throughout the article both the financial and ethical dimensions of corporate governance is attended to. (shrink)