At times we are told that our habitual way of thinking has become obsolete given the new challenge we are facing. Some of the conceptual resources at our disposal are no longer capable of addressing the challenge at hand. Therefore, they lose their appeal and are rejected. But only in contrast to these intellectual resources does the challenge appear as a challenge. So it seems that we are confronted with a paradox: we need the intellectual resources for their uselessness. For (...) a proper understanding of this paradox and to unravel it, I will distinguish between de dicto and de re readings of philosophical texts. This distinction is borrowed from the neo-pragmatist Robert Brandom. A de dicto reading of a text is concerned with what its author says. A de re reading of a text is concerned with what its author talks about. Unpacking this distinction allows us to evaluate the method of engaging with our stock of conceptual resources as part of scholarly argument. (shrink)

The “exemplification theory of history” is proposed to account for the relationship between the past and historical narratives. The theory states that what belongs to the past according to some narrative does so in order to exemplify the historical thesis of that narrative. As such the theory explains how the past receives its meaning. This implies that the past has no intrinsic historical meaning itself. Moreover, it follows that historical narratives possess an autonomy of their own with regard to the (...) past. It is argued that the exemplification theory of history goes to the heart of narrativist philosophy of history. This claim is supported by the key arguments of three narrativist philosophers: Arthur Danto, Louis Mink and Frank Ankersmit. The distinction between the history of social individuals and the identification of such individuals turns out to be fundamental in this respect. The article concludes by distinguishing between a Platonic and an Aristotelian view on narrative and by explaining why we ought to prefer the former to the latter. (shrink)

This essay takes Arthur Danto’s end-of-art thesis as a case in point of a substantive philosophy of history. Such philosophy explains the direction that art has taken and why that direction could not have been different. Danto never scrutinized the philosophy of history that his end-of-art thesis presumes. I aim to do that by drawing a distinction between what I refer to as the common view of history and the philosophical view of history, and by arguing that we need the (...) latter if we want to properly assess the plausibility of the end-of-art thesis. (shrink)

The problem how to ascertain the truth about the past is as old as history itself. But until the work of Louis Mink, no clear distinction was made between questions concerning the truth of statements on the past and questions concerning the truth of historical narratives as a whole. A narrative, Mink argues, is not simply a conjunction of statements on the past. Therefore its truth cannot be a function of the truth of its individual statements. The problem of narrative (...) truth is according to him thus: although each statement asserting a relation between events is subject to confirmation and disconfirmation, the combination of interrelations as established by the historical narrative is not, even though such combination of interrelations represents a real combination in past reality and is claimed to be true. As if to further complicate the problem, Mink maintains that history shares its form with fiction. Three and a half decades after Mink formulated the problem of narrative truth, it has not been dealt with in a satisfying manner. Mink does not solve nor dissolve the problem he posed. That task is taken up in this essay. It will move us away from the vocabulary of literary theory towards a pragmatist account of narrative truth. (shrink)

This comprehensive book covers the research, theory, policy and practice context of unusual reproduction using third parties. Olga Van den Akker details the psychological adaptation required to continuing changes in public opinion, advances in technologies and new legislations in surrogate motherhood and discusses their impact at an individual, societal and global level. She describes the competing interests and interactions between legal, organisational, personal, social, psychological and cultural issues in relation to biological and genetic surrogate and commissioning parenthood. This book (...) is intended for professionals, practitioners, academics and students interested in the complexities of unusual reproduction using multidisciplinary perspectives. (shrink)

An important artistic topic of Italian Renaissance painting was the rendering of the human figure. As leading actors in a painted narrative, figures had to convince beholders of the reality of the matter depicted with appropriated attitudes and gestures. This article is about two ways of drawing or rather constructing the human figure artists developed to achieve this goal. The first was only an adaptation to an old method: because of the rather simple and coarse elements used, constructions often resulted (...) in faulty pictures and were for that matter often criticized. As this article will show, the second method involved a new and very successful drawing skill, which not just required a different kind of knowledge of visual forms but of procedures of moving the hand, too. (shrink)

ObjectiveInformed consent is a prerequisite for caesarean section, the commonest surgical procedure in low- and middle-income settings, but not always acquired to an appropriate extent. Exploring perceptions of health care workers may aid in improving clinical practice around informed consent. We aim to explore health workers’ beliefs and experiences related to principles and practice of informed consent.MethodsQualitative study conducted between January and June 2018 in a rural 150-bed mission hospital in Southern Malawi. Clinical observations, semi-structured interviews and a focus group (...) discussion were used to collect data. Participants were 22 clinical officers, nurse-midwives and midwifery students involved in maternity care. Data were analysed to identify themes and construct an analytical framework.ResultsDefinition and purpose of informed consent revolved around providing information, respecting women’s autonomy and achieving legal protection. Due to fear of blame and litigation, health workers preferred written consent. Written consent requires active participation by the consenting individual and was perceived to transfer liability to that person. A woman’s refusal to provide written informed consent may pose a dilemma for the health worker between doing good and respecting autonomy. To prevent such refusal, health workers said to only partially disclose surgical risks in order to minimize women's anxiety. Commonly perceived barriers to obtain a fully informed consent were labour pains, language barriers, women’s lack of education and their dependency on others to make decisions.ConclusionsHealth workers are familiar with the principles around informed consent and aware of its advantages, but fear of blame and litigation, partial disclosure of risks and barriers to communication hamper the process of obtaining informed consent. Findings can be used to develop interventions to improve the informed consent process. (shrink)

Prenatal expectations about what children will be like after birth may provide a context for how parents perceive their infant's actual temperament. We examined how these expectations and perceptions are associated and together predict early parenting behavior, with parenting behavior in turn predicting changes in temperament. Reports of 125 families about their expectations of their unborn child's temperament, their infant's temperament at 4 and 12 months post-partum, and their hostile, responsive, warm, and overprotective parenting were included. We also included data (...) from an independent sample of 168 mothers, with the same measures, except that mothers reported on Big Five personality traits at T1. Results indicated that in both samples, parents' expectations were positively associated with perceptions of infant temperament. Prenatal expectations and newborn temperament independently predicted parenting behavior, and maternal and paternal parenting in turn predicted infant temperament at T3, controlling for infant temperament at T2. Although overall findings indicated associations between a more difficult temperament and more negative/less positive parenting, significant combinations of specific traits and parenting behaviors were sample-specific—indicating that more research is necessary to draw a conclusion about specific links. Both maternal and paternal expectations about their unborn child's temperament appear to carry over into the postpartum reality and provide a context for shaping early interactions between caregivers and their children, which may further shape the developing temperament of the child. (shrink)

Background and aim With the increasing interest in lifestyle, health and consequences of unhealthy lifestyles for the healthcare system, a new kind of solidarity is gaining importance: lifestyle solidarity. While it might not seem fair to let other people pay for the costs arising from an unhealthy lifestyle, it does not seem fair either to punish people for their lifestyle. However, it is not clear how solidarity is assessed by people, when considering disease risks or lifestyle risks. The aim of (...) this study was to investigate the degree of solidarity with lifestyle as well as with other factors that are related to health outcomes—for example, old age—and the relation between this degree of solidarity and various characteristics. Methods This cross-sectional study is part of the Dutch longitudinal SMILE study. Data on the degree of solidarity with different lifestyles and old age, and the relation between the degree of solidarity and various demographic and other variables were obtained in a questionnaire survey. Results Solidarity with smokers and overweight people was moderate, as was solidarity with older people. Respondents were ambivalent about athletes. Respondents who were younger, male and highly educated, and those with a healthy lifestyle, a small social network, high quality of life and an internal locus of control, showed low solidarity. Conclusions Solidarity with an unhealthy lifestyle and old age is moderate and the degree of solidarity varies among the different subgroups. (shrink)

Formulating how biomimicry relates to nature has been crucial to ‘deepening’ its theory. Currently, an autopoietic model of nature dominates the literature. However, advances in the natural and human sciences have demonstrated that autopoiesis does not adequately explain complex, dynamic, responsive, and situated systems. This article draws on Beth Dempster’s (1998) characterisation of ecosystems as sympoietic, that is as homeorhetic, evolutionary, distributively controlled, unpredictable, and adaptive, and on Donna Jeanne Haraway’s (2016) critique that entities do not pre-exist their relationships. We (...) argue that using sympoietic processes of becoming as our model, measure, and mentor impacts biomimicry’s practice and relation to sustainability. Taking John Todd’s Living Machines as a case study, we explicate how sympoiesis unfurls autopoiesis. By integrating advances in the natural and human sciences into the philosophy of biomimicry, we address the limitations of the autopoietic model and provide a more comprehensive and adequate model of ‘nature.’. (shrink)

The rise of multi-stakeholder institutions (MIs) involving the ultra-processed food (UPF) industry has raised concerns among food and public health scholars, especially with regards to enhancing the legitimacy and influence of transnational food corporations in global food governance (GFG) spaces. However, few studies have investigated the governance composition and characteristics of MIs involving the UPF industry, nor considered the implications for organizing global responses to UPFs and other major food systems challenges. We address this gap by conducting a network analysis (...) to map global MIs involving the UPF industry, drawing data from web sources, company reports, business and market research databases, and academic and grey literature. We identified 45 such global food system MIs. Of these, executives from the UPF industry or affiliated interest groups held almost half (_n_ = 263, or 43.8%) of the total 601 board seat positions. Executives from a small number of corporations, especially Unilever (_n_ = 20), Nestlé (_n_ = 17), PepsiCo Inc (_n_ = 14), and The Coca-Cola Company (_n_ = 13) held the most board seat positions, indicating centrality to the network. Board seats of these MIs are dominated by executives from transnational corporations (_n_ = 431, or 71.7%), high-income countries (_n_ = 495, or 82.4%), and four countries (United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) (_n_ = 350, or 58.2%) in particular. This study shows that MIs involving the UPF industry privilege the interests of corporations located near exclusively in the Global North, draw legitimacy through affiliations with multi-lateral agencies, civil society groups and research institutions, and represent diverse corporate interests involved in UPF supply chains. Corporate-anchored multi-stakeholderism, as a form of GFG governance, raises challenges for achieving food systems transformation, including the control and reduction of UPFs in human diets. (shrink)

Lee and Schwarz interpret meta-analytic research and replication studies as providing evidence for the robustness of cleansing effects. We argue that the currently available evidence is unconvincing because publication bias and the opportunistic use of researcher degrees of freedom appear to have inflated meta-analytic effect size estimates, and preregistered replications failed to find any evidence of cleansing effects.

Theoretical arguments and empirical investigations indicate that a high proportion of published findings do not replicate and are likely false. The current position paper provides a broad perspective on scientific error, which may lead to replication failures. This broad perspective focuses on reform history and on opportunities for future reform. We organize our perspective along four main themes: institutional reform, methodological reform, statistical reform and publishing reform. For each theme, we illustrate potential errors by narrating the story of a fictional (...) researcher during the research cycle. We discuss future opportunities for reform. The resulting agenda provides a resource to usher in an era that is marked by a research culture that is less error-prone and a scientific publication landscape with fewer spurious findings. (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)

Up till the 1980s narrativist philosophers of history were mainly interested in the cognitivist dimension of historical narrative. With Hayden White this interest was exchanged for an exclusive preoccupation with the literary aspects of the historian’s narrative representation of the past. However, it may seem that a revival of pre-Whitean narrativist philosophy of history is at hand. Two recent books suggest as much: one by Chiel van den Akker published in 2018 and one more by Paul Roth that (...) came out in 2020. Obviously, a narrativist revival can take two different forms. It may aim at providing pre-Whitean narrativism with a more up-to-date philosophical basis or at guiding it into new directions. It will be argued in this review-essay that the book by Roth mainly does the former, whereas the book by Van den Akker does both. (shrink)

Este artículo sostiene que Platón constituye un interlocutor fructífero para la Teoría crítica. Desde un diálogo con Axel Honneth, argumentaremos primero que la metodología de crítica social desarrollada en la República posee elementos constructivo-racionales y reconstructivo-hermenéuticos. Luego, enfatizaremos dos conceptos prefigurados en dicha obra que, mediante Hegel, yacen en el trasfondo de la Teoría crítica, a saber: holismo y patología social. Ello nos permitirá articular, como conclusión, una “dialéctica de la justicia” que, en el sentido de Adorno & Horkheimer, recorre (...) la obra de Honneth. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to describe the implementation and outcomes of an Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing treatment-program for women with posttraumatic stress disorder after childbirth.MethodsA prospective cohort-study with pre- and post-measurements was carried out in the setting of an academic hospital in the Netherland. Included were women who gave birth to a living child at least 4 weeks ago, with a diagnosis of PTSD, or severe symptoms of PTSD combined with another psychiatric diagnosis. All received up to (...) 8 sessions of EMDR-therapy. The posttraumatic stress disorder Checklist for DSM-5 was administered before and after treatment. Trauma history was assessed before treatment with the Life Events Checklist for the DSM-5, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Childbirth Perception Scale. Descriptive statistics were used.ResultsForty-four women were referred, 26 met the inclusion criteria. After treatment, none of the women met the criteria for diagnosis of PTSD after on average 5 weekly sessions of EMDR- therapy. These outcomes are promising, as they were achieved in women with relatively high levels of psychiatric comorbidity and high rates of previous mental health treatment.ConclusionImplementing an EMDR-treatment program for women with PTSD after childbirth in the setting of an academic hospital is feasible and effective. Key factors for success include a close collaboration between the relevant hospital departments and a thorough case conceptualization addressing the etiology of the PTSD. (shrink)

This book discusses issues regarding conceptualization, governance and implementation of responsible innovation. It treats different approaches to making responsible innovation a reality and it contains new case studies that illustrate challenges and solutions. Research on Responsible Innovation is by its nature highly multidisciplinary, and also pro-active, design-oriented and policy-relevant. Until a few years back, the concept of Responsible Innovation was hardly used - nowadays it is increasingly receiving attention from both researchers and policy makers. This is indispensable reading for anyone (...) interested in or working on innovation. (shrink)

BackgroundWith advances in sequencing technologies, increasing numbers of people are being informed about a genetic disease identified in their family. In current practice, probands are asked to inform at-risk relatives about the diagnosis. However, previous research has shown that relatives are sometimes not informed due to barriers such as family conflicts. Research on family communication in genetic diseases aims to explore the difficulties encountered in informing relatives and to identify ways to support probands in this.Main bodyResearch on family communication may (...) also reveal that participants did not inform their relatives about the risk of a serious genetic condition, even when preventive and treatment options are available. Researchers may then face a dilemma: Do they need to warn at-risk relatives about the finding? Or do they keep silent due to prior confidentiality agreements with study participants?ConclusionsWe believe that the absolute confidence promised to research participants outweighs the interests of their relatives, even though it can be claimed that relatives at risk of a genetic disease do, in principle, have a right to know information collected about their health. Not respecting confidentiality agreements could cause distrust between researchers and research participants and possibly harm the relationship between probands and relatives. Relatives' health interests can still be taken into account without jeopardizing participant trust, by considering alternative scenarios, including sharing general study findings on the barriers participants experience with their healthcare professionals and by offering participants psychosocial support for family communication. (shrink)

Libertarian paternalism involves the idea that it is justified to shape the context in which people make important choices in a way that they are nudged to options that would be better for them, wh...

ABSTRACTBoth auditory and visual emotional memories can be made less emotional by loading working memory during memory recall. Taxing WM during recall can be modality specific (giving an audit...

Several authors have pointed at opportunities to develop the well-established Business Balanced Scorecard into a Scorecard that enables companies to integrate sustainability into their strategy. Recent case studies and research experiences show that social and environmental targets are more widely recognized as strategic drivers for management. However, experiments also show that the traditional Scorecard has its limits when it comes to e.g. stakeholder management and product chain management. The European Corporate Sustainability Framework(ECSF) program distinguishes several ambition levels for Corporate Sustainability/corporate (...) Responsibility. The traditional Balanced Scorecard is suitable for companies that aim for Compliance-driven CS/cror for Profit-driven CS/cr, where the financial bottom line is the ultimate indicator for success. More ambitious companies want to balance economic, social and ecological targets in a Community-driven CS/sror Synergy-driven CS/cr.For ambitious companies, we propose a format of a Responsive Business Scorecard (RBS). The Responsive Scorecard enables companies to score at Profit, People and Planet, at the same time to integrate stakeholder demands into internal programs to improve performance. The RBS includes five Perspectives: Customers&Suppliers, Financiers&Owners, Society&Planet, Internal Process and Employees&Learning.We assessed the practical feasibility of a Responsive Scorecardin food and tourist industries. In the food industry, we analyzed whether existing business priorities of Italian companies can adequately fill a Responsive scorecard.Our conclusion is that traditional topics like finance, customers and employees are readily filled, but that sustainability topics like chain management (suppliers) and environmental performance (planet) need further elaboration. The tourist sector is dominated by Small and Medium Sized Enterprises. We investigated whether existing eco-labels for camping-sites and marinas can be developed into Responsive Scorecards. Our conclusion is that such a sector specific development of a Responsive Scorecard is possible. Further research has to show what is the value added of the new scorecard for companies in the tourist sector. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive overview of current developments in the field of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). Divided into three parts, the book first presents reflections on the concept of RI from various angles: how did it come about, who is involved and how might in be applied in various contexts, such as the academic environment or in developing countries. The second part discusses the actual application of RRI to technology development: for climate engineering, water management and energy technology (...) along with a general discussion on how to integrate RRI in innovation trajectories. The last part offers a closer look at the application of RRI to the business context. This part offers lessons from comparable concepts such as social and sustainability innovation as well as insights from two case-studies, one in the food sector and the other in data management. As a whole, the book contributes to the ongoing development of the framework of RRI by giving an overview of the state-of-the art research, presenting the lessons learned from several case studies, and showing the way for future application of RI in other fields and cultural contexts, such as industry and developing countries. (shrink)

Ethical issues of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important because they can have significant effects on human liberty, happiness, and people’s ability to lead a good life. They are also of functional interest because they can determine whether technologies are used and whether their positive potential can unfold. For these reasons, policy makers are interested in finding out what these issues are and how they can be addressed. The best way of creating ICT policy that is sensitive to ethical (...) issues pertain to being proactive in addressing such issues at an early stage of the technology life cycle. The present paper uses this position as a starting point and discusses how knowledge of ethical aspects of emerging ICTs can be gained. It develops a methodology that goes beyond established futures methodologies to cater for the difficult nature of ethical issues. The authors outline how the description of emerging ICTs can be used for an ethical analysis. (shrink)

In the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness, participants have commonly been instructed to report their conscious content. This, it was claimed, risks confounding the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) with their preconditions, i.e., allocation of attention, and consequences, i.e., metacognitive reflection. Recently, the field has therefore been shifting towards no-report paradigms. No-report paradigms draw their validity from a direct comparison with no-report conditions. We analyze several examples of such comparisons and identify alternative interpretations of their results and/or methodological issues in all (...) cases. These go beyond the previous criticism that just removing the report is insufficient, because it does not prevent metacognitive reflection. The conscious mind is fickle. Without having much to do, it will turn inward and switch, or timeshare, between the stimuli on display and daydreaming or mind-wandering. Thus, rather than the NCC, no-report paradigms might be addressing the neural correlates of conscious disengagement. This observation reaffirms the conclusion that no-report paradigms are no less problematic than report paradigms. (shrink)

The costs of the COVID-19 pandemic are yet to be calculated, but they include the loss of millions of lives and the destruction of countless livelihoods. What is certain is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has changed the way we live for the foreseeable future. It has forced many to live in ways they would have previously thought impossible. As well as challenging scientists and medical professionals to address urgent value conflicts in the short term, COVID-19 has raised slower-burning value questions (...) for corporations, public institutions, governments, and policymakers. In simple terms, the pandemic has brought what we care about into sharp relief, both collectively and individually. Whether this revaluation of our values will last beyond the current pandemic is unknown. Once COVID-19 has been tamed, will the desire to return to our previous lives be irresistible? Or will living under pandemic conditions have taught us something that will be incorporated into how we design our future lives and technologies? These are hard questions for the ethics of technology, which this volume aims to explore and address. (shrink)

Ethical issues of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important because they can have significant effects on human liberty, happiness, their ability to lead a good life. They are also of functional interest because they can determine whether technologies are used and whether their positive potential can unfold. For these reasons policy makers are interested in finding out what these issues are and how they can be addressed. The best way of creating ICT policy that is sensitive to ethical issues (...) would be to be proactive and address such issues at early stages of the technology life cycle. The present paper uses this position as a starting point and discusses how knowledge of ethical aspects of emerging ICTs can be gained. It develops a methodology that goes beyond established futures methodologies to cater for the difficult nature of ethical issues. The paper goes on to outline some of the preliminary findings of a European research project that has applied this method. (shrink)