Niemand dacht oorspronkelijker, speelser en scherper dan Ludwig Wittgenstein, en hij wist het. Van de kristallijnen helderheid in de 'Tractatus' tot de alledaagse onoverzichtelijkheid van de 'Filosofische onderzoekingen' blijft zijn denken één lange worsteling tegen de betovering van ons intellect door de schier eindeloze variatie van vermommingen waarin taal de gedachte aan het oog onttrekt.0Wittgenstein wist dat hij een bijzonder talent had, en zijn visie op zichzelf is zeker zo boeiend als zijn kijk op de wereld. In zijn brieven en (...) dagboeken treedt een geniale, lastige, komische en ontroerende man naar voren die in leven en in sterven een onuitwisbare indruk maakte op de mensen die hem kenden.0Bert Keizer biedt een heldere en toegankelijke introductie in leven en werk van Wittgenstein. Hij bespreekt diens brieven, dagboeken en belangrijkste werken: de 'Tractatus', de 'Filosofische onderzoekingen' en 'Over zekerheid'. Dat doet hij gedreven en enthousiast, zonder belerend te worden.0. (shrink)

Today, mechanisms and mechanistic explanation are very popular in philosophy of science and are deemed a welcome alternative to laws of nature and deductive‐nomological explanation. Starting from Mitchell's pragmatic notion of laws, I cast doubt on their status as a genuine alternative. I argue that (1) all complex‐systems mechanisms ontologically must rely on stable regularities, while (2) the reverse need not hold. Analogously, (3) models of mechanisms must incorporate pragmatic laws, while (4) such laws themselves need not always refer to (...) underlying mechanisms. Finally, I show that Mitchell's account is more encompassing than the mechanistic account *Received August 2008; revised January 2010. †To contact the author, please write to: Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, B‐9000 Belgium; e‐mail: Bert[email protected]. (shrink)

How do Dutch people let each other know that they disagree? What do they say when they want to resolve their difference of opinion by way of an argumentative discussion? In what way do they convey that they are convinced by each other’s argumentation? How do they criticize each other’s argumentative moves? Which words and expressions do they use in these endeavors? By answering these questions this short essay provides a brief inventory of the language of argumentation in Dutch.

The study of argumentation is prospering. After its brilliant start in Antiquity, highlighted in the classical works of Aristotle, after an alternation of ups and downs during the following millennia, in the post-Renaissance period its gradual decline set in. Revitalization took place only after Toulmin and Perelman published in the same year their landmark works The Uses of Argument and La nouvelle rhétorique. The model of argumentation presented by Toulmin and Perelman’s inventory of argumentation techniques inspired a great many scholars (...) in various ways to take up the study of argumentation in a serious manner. Nowadays there are well-established logical approaches to argumentation, but also social and socio-psychological, linguistic, juridical and other approaches. In most of these approaches traces can be found of the influence of the classical and neo-classical argumentation theories just mentioned. (shrink)

In spite of the remarkable progress made in the burgeoning field of social neuroscience, the neural mechanisms that underlie social encounters are only beginning to be studied and could —paradoxically— be seen as representing the ‘dark matter’ of social neuroscience. Recent conceptual and empirical developments consistently indicate the need for investigations, which allow the study of real-time social encounters in a truly interactive manner. This suggestion is based on the premise that social cognition is fundamentally different when we are in (...) interaction with others rather than merely observing them. In this article, we outline the theoretical conception of a second-person approach to other minds and review evidence from neuroimaging, psychophysiological studies and related fields to argue for the development of a second-person neuroscience, which will help neuroscience to really go social; this may also be relevant for our understanding of psychiatric disorders construed as disorders of social cognition. (shrink)

In this article, I present two conceptual problems for Craver's mutual manipulability account of constitutive relevance in mechanisms. First, constitutive relevance threatens to imply causal relevance despite Craver (and Bechtel)'s claim that they are strictly distinct. Second, if (as is intuitively appealing) parthood is defined in terms of spatio-temporal inclusion, then the mutual manipulability account is prone to counterexamples, as I show by a case of endosymbiosis. I also present a methodological problem (a case of experimental underdetermination) and formulate two (...) partial, but fallible solutions based on the notions of parthood and synchronicity. (shrink)

Finance is grease to the economy. Therefore, we assume that it may affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the sustainability of economic development too. This paper discusses the transmission mechanisms between finance and sustainability. We find that there is no simple one-to-one relationship between financial development and sustainable development but there are various – often indirect – linkages. It appears that most of the literature concentrates on the role of public shareholders when it comes to changing corporate policy and performance (...) in a more sustainable direction. However, this focus neglects the potential impact of the credit channel and private equity on a firm’s non-financial policies and performance. These very powerful mechanisms can govern business policies and practices. Therefore, there appears to be much more scope for finance to promote socially and environmentally desirable activities and to discourage detrimental activities than has been acknowledged in the academic literature so far. (shrink)

The book argues that mainstream economists, who base their analyses only on the economic motivation of people, fail to explain and understand real-life economic phenomena. The economic crisis, which began in 2008, illustrates the relevance of psychic and social motivations, especially when combined with each other. This book discusses orthodox and heterodox economics, and offers the reader ample material on philosophy of science, psychology and sociology. A multidisciplinary economic perspective is constructed in which economics, psychology, and sociology are integrated, and (...) this multidisciplinary approach offers an understanding of real-life problems. Moreover, it offers researchers a rich source for further analysis. (shrink)

The important conclusion of this article is that essences of singular things are not eternal in the sense of being distinctive eternal modes, as is generally held by Spinoza scholars. Both the essence and the existence of singular things are eternal in the sense that they are comprehended in God’s eternal nature, that is to say, in the sense that they follow necessarily from that nature. The second conclusion is that the essence and the existence of things are inseparable. There (...) are no essences of things when things do not exist. Another conclusion regards the meaning of ”formal essence’. It is argued that the formal essence of a thing is the essence of a thing that formally follows from an attribute. It is not in any sense opposite to the actual essence of a thing. The formal essence is simply the actual essence of a thing that formally follows from an attribute. (shrink)

Since it has generally been accepted that to Spinoza attributes are real features of substance, the interpretation of his attribute definition has become a notorious problem. The reason is that interpreters have failed to see that the definition formulates a purely epistemological account of the state of affairs. The article presents and justifies such an interpretation. It will be shown that the definition in spite of its epistemological character implies a real ontological definition, which specifies the critical features of an (...) attribute. As to the reason why Spinoza has stated the definition in an ‘indirect way’, it is shown that it is likely that he has done so in order to have a more efficient, a more unambiguous and a more elegant definition. The relevance of the new interpretation is not only that it provides us with an interpretable, transparent attribute definition, but it also contributes to the establishment of a coherent picture of Spinoza’s metaphysics around this definition. (shrink)

We analyze ethical policies of firms in industrialized countries and try to find out whether culture is a factor that plays a significant role in explaining country differences. We look into the firm’s human rights policy, its governance of bribery and corruption, and the comprehensiveness, implementation and communication of its codes of ethics. We use a dataset on ethical policies of almost 2,700 firms in 24 countries. We find that there are significant differences among ethical policies of firms headquartered in (...) different countries. When we associate these ethical policies with Hofstede’s cultural indicators, we find that individualism and uncertainty avoidance are positively associated with a firm’s ethical policies, whereas masculinity and power distance are negatively related to these policies. (shrink)

We investigate how conventional asset managers account for environmental, social, and governance factors in their investment process. We do so on the basis of an international survey among fund managers. We find that many conventional managers integrate responsible investing in their investment process. Furthermore, we find that ESG information in particular is being used for red flagging and to manage risk. We find that many conventional fund managers have already adopted features of responsible investing in the investment process. Furthermore, we (...) argue and show that ESG investing is highly similar to fundamental investing. We also reveal that there is a substantial difference in the ways in which U.S. and European asset managers view ESG. (shrink)

Many theories about human number representation stress the importance of a central semantic representation that includes the magnitude information of small integer numbers, and that is conceived as an abstract, compressed number line. However, thus far there has been little or no direct evidence that units and teens are represented on the same number line. In two masked priming experiments, we show that single-digit and two-digit Arabic numerals are equally well primed by an Arabic numeral with the same number of (...) digits as by an equally distant Arabic numeral with a different number of digits (e.g. the priming effect of 7 on the target 9 is the same as the priming effect of 11 on the target 9). The finding was obtained both with a number naming task and with a parity judgement task. This is in line with the hypothesis that units and teens are part of a continuous number line. (shrink)

In clinical moral decision making, emotions often play an important role. However, many clinical ethicists are ignorant, suspicious or even critical of the role of emotions in making moral decisions and in reflecting on them. This raises practical and theoretical questions about the understanding and use of emotions in clinical ethics support services. This paper presents an Aristotelian view on emotions and describes its application in the practice of moral case deliberation.According to Aristotle, emotions are an original and integral part (...) of (virtue) ethics. Emotions are an inherent part of our moral reasoning and being, and therefore they should be an inherent part of any moral deliberation. Based on Aristotle's view, we examine five specific aspects of emotions: the description of emotions, the attitude towards emotions, the thoughts present in emotions, the reliability of emotions, and the reasonable principle that guides an emotion. We then discuss three ways of dealing with emotions in the process of moral case deliberation. Finally, we present an Aristotelian conversation method, and present practical experiences using this method. (shrink)

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is an organization which seeks to identify the causes of human cancer. Per agent, such as betel quid or Human Papillomaviruses, they review the available evidence deriving from epidemiological studies, animal experiments and information about mechanisms (and other data). The evidence of the different groups is combined such that an overall assessment of the carcinogenicity of the agent in question is obtained. In this paper, we critically review the IARC’s carcinogenicity evaluations. First (...) we show that serious objections can be raised against their criteria and procedures – more specifically regarding the role of mechanistic knowledge in establishing causal claims. Our arguments are based on the problem of confounders, of the assessment of the temporal stability of carcinogenic relations, and of the extrapolation from animal experiments. Then we address a very important question, viz. how we should treat the carcinogenicity evaluations that were based on the current procedures. After showing that this question is important, we argue that an overall dismissal of the current evaluations would be too radical. Instead, we argue in favour of a stepwise re-evaluation of the current findings. (shrink)

Background Seven wards from three Norwegian mental health care institutions participated in a study in which regular ethics reflection groups focusing on coercion had been implemented and evaluated. This article presents a thematic overview of the ethical challenges identified based on a systematic qualitative analyses of 161 ethics reflection groups and some general observations on these ethical challenges. Results The ethical challenges are divided into four main thematic categories: formal coercion, informal coercion, uncertainty related to the Norwegian legislation on coercion (...) and professional role and identity. Some ethical challenges did not fit into these categories. Only 36% of the ethical challenges were related to the use of formal coercion or the interpretation of the health law. Conclusion Even within coercion regulated by law, weighing different moral values remains important to reflect upon the appropriateness of the possible use of coercion. (shrink)

This article explores a new reading of an important section of Part II of Spinoza’s Ethics. It recognizes that Spinoza actually differentiates between the human mind conceived from the viewpoint of its cause and the human mind conceived from the viewpoint of its nature. It shows, most importantly, that Spinoza assigns different objects to those ‘minds’. Consequently they represent different knowledge of the body. It will appear that the human mind in respect of its cause represents non-conscious knowledge of the (...) human body and that the human mind in respect of its nature represents conscious knowledge of the human body. It will be shown that knowledge of the inner processes of the human body and of the body per se belongs to the domain of non-conscious knowledge. The same conclusion will be obtained in an analysis that starts from the distinction between the formal and the objective being of the human mind. (shrink)

The Greek word afi≈n has a wide-ranging meaning as well as a wideranging history: it is most commonly translated as ‘eternity’ but has as its first meaning ‘life’ or ‘lifetime’; it has its place in Greek literature and philosophy, but also in the Greek Bible, where it represents the Hebrew word ‘olâm. In this article I intend to sketch the history of the meaning and interpretation of aiôn from the word’s first attestation in Homer up until the beginning of the (...) Christian era. The expanded version of this study was defended as a doctoral dissertation, entitled Life Time Entirety: A Study of AIVN in Greek Literature and Philosophy, the Septuagint and Philo, on 7 September 1999 at the University of Amsterdam. (shrink)

Abstract: This article invalidates a central objection that has been brought up against Spinoza’s idea of idea doctrine as a theory of consciousness. Key point in the argument is that the perfection of ideas of ideas is as variable as the perfection of ideas and corresponds to the perfection of the associated bodies. This allows ideas of ideas to account for various degrees of consciousness. In its application to human beings the theory covers important aspects of consciousness: to know that (...) one knows a thing, to know what one knows and to know that is our mind that knows the thing. The doctrine is a theory of the self-reflectivity of ideas that explains the immediate awareness of thoughts. The author argues that the idea of idea doctrine is the make-up of a comprehensive theory of consciousness throughout nature. Keywords:. (shrink)

Little is known about how health care professionals deal with ethical challenges in mental health care, especially when not making use of a formal ethics support service. Understanding this is important in order to be able to support the professionals, to improve the quality of care, and to know in which way future ethics support services might be helpful.

This article offers a general discussion of the concept of false hope. Its ultimate aim is to clarify the meaning and the relevance of that concept for medicine and medical research. In the first part, the concept of hope is discussed. I argue that hope is more than a combination of a desire and a belief about the probability that the desire will be fulfilled. Imagination and anticipation are as well components of hope. I also discuss if hope implies orientation (...) to action. In the second part, I examine the concept of false hope. I show that hope is false if it cannot be justified epistemically. There is, I argue, an intimate relation between false hope and ignorance. Hope is justified—“realistic”—when the hoping person knows and accepts experts’ judgement about the probability of hope fulfillment. I then argue that what matters for evaluating a person’s hope is not only whether it is realistic, but also whether it is reasonable in the light of the aim and goals that a person strives for in his life. Part three goes into the question of what is morally wrong about having or causing false hope. In the fourth part, the relevance is shown of the insights from the previous parts for the debate on false hope in medicine and clinical research. (shrink)

Emotions play an important part in moral life. Within clinical ethics support (CES), one should take into account the crucial role of emotions in moral cases in clinical practice. In this paper, we present an Aristotelian approach to emotions. We argue that CES can help participants deal with emotions by fostering a joint process of investigation of the role of emotions in a case. This investigation goes beyond empathy with and moral judgment of the emotions of the case presenter. In (...) a moral case deliberation, the participants are invited to place themselves in the position of the case presenter and to investigate their own emotions in the situation. It is about critically assessing the facts in the case that cause the emotion and the related (moral) thoughts that accompany the emotion. It is also about finding the right emotion in a given situation and finding the right balance in dealing with that emotion. These steps in the moral inquiry give rise to group learning. It is a process of becoming open towards the perspectives of others, leading to new insights into what is an appropriate emotion in the specific situation. We show how this approach works in moral case deliberation. A physician presents a situation in which he is faced with a pregnant woman who is about to deliver multiple extremely premature infants at the threshold of viability. The moral deliberation of the case and the emotions therein leads to the participants’ conclusion that “compassion” is a more adequate emotion than “sadness”. The emotion “sadness” is pointed towards the tragedy that is happening to the woman. The emotion “compassion” is pointed towards the woman; it combines consideration and professional responsibility. Through the shift towards compassion, participants experienced more creativity and freedom to deal with the sad situation and to support the woman. The paper ends with an analysis and reflection on the deliberation process. In the conclusion we argue for more attention to emotions in clinical ethics support and offer some directions for doing this in the right way. (shrink)

This article aims at providing a framework to assess corporate social responsibility with international banks. Currently, it is mainly rating institutions like EIRIS and KLD that provide information about firms’ social conduct and performance. However, this is costly information and it is not clear how the rating institutions arrive at their conclusion. We develop a framework to assess the social responsibility of internationally operating banks. We apply this framework to more than 30 institutions and find significant differences among individual banks, (...) countries, and regions. Furthermore, it appears that social responsibility of these banks has significantly improved between 2000 and 2005. (shrink)

Mechanistic approaches are very common in the causal interpretation of biological and neuroscientific experimental work in today’s philosophy of science. In the mechanistic literature a strict distinction is often made between causal relations and constitutive relations, where the latter cannot be causal. One of the typical reasons for this strict distinction is that constitutive relations are supposedly synchronic whereas most if not all causal relations are diachronic. This strict distinction gives rise to a number of problems, however. Our end goal (...) in this paper is to argue that it should be given up, at least in the context of the biological and the psychological sciences. To that effect, we argue that constitutive relations in this context are diachronic, thus undermining the aforementioned reason. We offer two cases from scientific practice in which constitutive relations are regarded as both diachronic and causally efficacious, review three existing ways of dealing with the apparent diachronic nature of interlevel relations in mechanisms and propose a new account of diachronic, causal constitutive relevance. (shrink)

The use of general and universal laws in historiography has been the subject of debate ever since the end of the nineteenth century. Since the 1970s there has been a growing consensus that general laws such as those in the natural sciences are not applicable in the scientific writing of history. We will argue against this consensus view, not by claiming that the underlying conception of what historiography is—or should be—is wrong, but by contending that it is based on a (...) misconception of what general laws such as those of the natural sciences are. We will show that a revised notion of law, one inspired by the work of Sandra D. Mitchell, in tandem with Jim Woodward’s notion of “invariance,” is indeed applicable to historiography, much in the same way as it is to most other scientific disciplines. Having developed a more adequate account of general laws, we then show, by means of three examples, that what are called “pragmatic laws” and “invariance” do in fact play a role in history in several interesting ways. These examples—from cultural history, economic history, and the history of religion—have been selected on the basis of their diversity in order to illustrate the widespread use of pragmatic laws in history. (shrink)

What are scientific theories and how should they be represented? In this article, I propose a causal–structural account, according to which scientific theories are to be represented as sets of interrelated causal and credal nets. In contrast with other accounts of scientific theories (such as Sneedian structuralism, Kitcher’s unificationist view, and Darden’s theory of theoretical components), this leaves room for causality to play a substantial role. As a result, an interesting account of explanation is provided, which sheds light on explanatory (...) unification within a causalist framework. The theory of classical genetics is used as a case study. 1 Introduction2 The Theory of Classical Genetics3 Three Philosophical Accounts of the Theory of Classical Genetics3.1 The structuralist account3.2 Kitcher’s unificationism3.3 Darden and theory change in science4 A Common Lacuna: Where is Causality?5 Woodward’s Interventionist Account of Causation6 Causal Bayes Nets and Their Interrelations6.1 Causal Bayes nets6.2 Relations among causal nets6.3 Credal nets and their interrelations7 The Theory of the Gene and its Causal Graph8 A First Exemplar: Stem Length in Pea Plants8.1 Three crosses on stem length in pea plants8.2 The causal graph for stem length in pea plants8.3 Morgan’s explanatory principles and the credal net for stem length in pea plants9 Explaining Mendel’s Crosses: A Causal–Structural Account10 Monohybrid Crosses with Complete Dominance11 Exemplars,Explanatory Patterns, Generic Credal Nets, and Mechanism Schemas12 Incomplete Dominance13 Anomalies14 Multi-hybrid Crosses with Independent Assortment15 Multi-hybrid Crosses with Linkage and Crossing-Over16 Double Crossing-Over and the Linear Order of the Gene17 Causal–Structural Explanation18 Explanatory Unification19 Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

The Christian church had its early development in the Hellenistic, Greco-Roman world and for that reason it can certainly be stated that the church was “Hellenized”. But how should we define this Hellenization? And what should be our judgement of it? The collection of essays entitled Hellenization revisited centers on an important theme.

The Christian church had its early development in the Hellenistic, Greco-Roman world and for that reason it can certainly be stated that the church was “Hellenized”. But how should we define this Hellenization? And what should be our judgement of it? The collection of essays entitled Hellenization revisited centers on an important theme.

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 71-73.

Clinical ethics support (CES) for health care professionals and patients is increasingly seen as part of good health care. However, there is a key drawback to the way CES services are currently offered. They are often performed as isolated and one-off services whose ownership and impact are unclear. This paper describes the development of an integrative approach to CES at the Center of Expertise and Care for Gender Dysphoria (CEGD) at Amsterdam University Medical Center. We specifically aimed to integrate CES (...) into daily work processes at the CEGD. In this paper, we describe the CES services offered there in detail and elaborate on the 16 lessons we learned from the process of developing an integrative approach to CES. These learning points can inform and inspire CES professionals, who wish to bring about greater integration of CES services into clinical practice. (shrink)

Ethicists differ considerably in their reasons for using empirical data. This paper presents a brief overview of four traditional approaches to the use of empirical data: “the prescriptive applied ethicists,” “the theorists,” “the critical applied ethicists,” and “the particularists.” The main aim of this paper is to introduce a fifth approach of more recent date (i.e. “integrated empirical ethics”) and to offer some methodological directives for research in integrated empirical ethics. All five approaches are presented in a table for heuristic (...) purposes. The table consists of eight columns: “view on distinction descriptive-prescriptive sciences,” “location of moral authority,” “central goal(s),” “types of normativity,” “use of empirical data,” “method,” “interaction empirical data and moral theory,” and “cooperation with descriptive sciences.” Ethicists can use the table in order to identify their own approach. Reflection on these issues prior to starting research in empirical ethics should lead to harmonization of the different scientific disciplines and effective planning of the final research design. Integrated empirical ethics (IEE) refers to studies in which ethicists and descriptive scientists cooperate together continuously and intensively. Both disciplines try to integrate moral theory and empirical data in order to reach a normative conclusion with respect to a specific social practice. IEE is not wholly prescriptive or wholly descriptive since IEE assumes an interdepence between facts and values and between the empirical and the normative. The paper ends with three suggestions for consideration on some of the future challenges of integrated empirical ethics. (shrink)

Empirische Ethik ist ein relativ neues Vorgehen in der Ethikforschung, das vor allem in der Medizinethik angewandt wird. Dieser Beitrag bespricht die kennzeichnenden Charakteristika der empirischen Ethik und unterscheidet zwischen generalistischer und kontextualistischer empirischer Ethik. Zuerst werden verschiedene Beispiele beider Arten von empirischer Ethik vorgestellt, danach werden für beide Ansätze mögliche Schwachpunkte diskutiert. Die Schlussfolgerung des Beitrages besteht darin, dass das Entstehen der empirischen Ethik eine positive Entwicklung ist. Empirische Ethik sollte jedoch als eine Ergänzung der traditionellen philosophischen Medizinethik betrachtet (...) werden, und nicht als die bessere Alternative. (shrink)

The use of coercion is morally problematic and requires an ongoing critical reflection. We wondered if not knowing or being uncertain whether coercion is morally right or justified is related to professionals’ normative attitudes regarding the use of coercion. This paper describes an explorative statistical analysis based on a cross-sectional survey across seven wards in three Norwegian mental health care institutions. Descriptive analyses showed that in general the 379 respondents a) were not so sure whether coercion should be seen as (...) offending, b) agreed with the viewpoint that coercion is needed for care and security, and c) slightly disagreed that coercion could be seen as treatment. Staff did not report high rates of moral doubt related to the use of coercion, although most of them agreed there will never be a single answer to the question ‘What is the right thing to do?’. Bivariate analyses showed that the more they experienced general moral doubt and relative doubt, the more one thought that coercion is offending. Especially psychologists were critical towards coercion. We found significant differences among ward types. Respondents with decisional responsibility for coercion and leadership responsibility saw coercion less as treatment. Frequent experience with coercion was related to seeing coercion more as care and security. This study showed that experiencing moral doubt is related to some one’s normative attitude towards coercion. Future research could investigate whether moral case deliberation increases professionals’ experience of moral doubt and whether this will evoke more critical thinking and increase staff’s curiosity for alternatives to coercion. (shrink)