How to teach value-loaded critical thinking in philosophical classroom discussions? An important aim of education is that students learn to think critically about moral issues. Philosophy is one of the subjects that is expected to contribute to this aim, because of its subject matter and the dialogic teaching methods. The aim of this study is to explore how philosophical classroom discussions can promote value-loaded critical thinking. First, we discuss the work of Dewey, Arendt and Habermas on moral reasoning and educational (...) literature on critical thinking, in order to find characteristics of philosophical classroom discussions in which students engage in value-loaded critical thinking. These characteristics are: the discussions are 1) genuine dialogues, in which 2) logical reasoning and 3) moral values are addressed in 4) a transfer-oriented manner. Second, we translate these characteristics into teaching strategies, based on empirical research complemented with examples from philosophical classroom discussions. We conclude that philosophical classroom discussions might promote value-loaded critical thinking by open and critical investigation of values; with an emphasis on logically valid reasoning (in the context of meaningful examples). However, we recommend further development of teaching strategies for perspective-taking, de- and recontextualisation, and reflection. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate Kripke models, used to model knowledge or belief in a static situation, and action models, used to model communicative actions that change this knowledge or belief. The appropriate notion for structural equivalence between modal structures such as Kripke models is bisimulation: Kripke models that are bisimilar are modally equivalent. We would like to find a structural relation that can play the same role for the action models that play a prominent role in information updating. Two (...) action models are equivalent if they yield the same results when updating Kripke models. More precisely, two action models are equivalent if it holds for all Kripke models that the result of updating with one action model is bisimilar to the result of updating with the other action model. We propose a new notion of action emulation that characterizes the structural equivalence of the important class of canonical action models. Since every action model has an equivalent canonical action model, this gives a method to decide the equivalence of any pair of action models. We also give a partial result that holds for the class of all action models. Our results extend the work in van Eijck et al. (Synthese 185(1):131–151, 2012). (shrink)

This paper examined the existence of gender differences in the degree to which leader’s perceptions of successor potential is influenced by interpersonal fit. In Study 1 (n = 97 leaders and n = 280 followers) multi-source field data revealed that for male leaders, ratings of followers’ potential as successors were positively related to interpersonal fit, measured by the degree to which followers’ saw their leadership as being close and interpersonal (i.e., being coaching, transformational and leading by example). For female leaders, (...) these relationships were absent, suggesting that they are less driven by interpersonal fit. In Study 2 (n = 311 leaders) a scenario study provided causal evidence that male leaders rated potential successors more positively when they perceived greater interpersonal fit with followers, whereas female leaders’ successor ratings where not informed by fit perceptions. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications for gendered leadership successor perceptions in organizations. (shrink)

Ethical guidelines protecting medical research participants have been criticized for stripping the sociocultural contexts of research. This critique is urgent considering ongoing calls to account for participant diversity in recruitment and inclusion procedures. Our intersectional analysis of illness narratives explores how sociostructural factors might play a role in participants’ exposure to research-related harm in clinical trials. Although widening participation does respond to generalizability concerns, we argue that gendered, classed, and ableist processes of self-silencing could simultaneously enhance risk of harm for (...) participants with multiple oppressed identities. To prevent this, researchers might actively involve participants when designing trials. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 2 Seiten: 513-514.

India and the Heartlands: An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange. By Gagan D. S. Sood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xvii + 338. $99.99, £64.99.

Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order. Edited by Brian Spooner and William L. Hanaway. Penn Museum International Research Conferences, vol. 4. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2012; distributed by University of Pennsylvania Press. Pp. xviii + 437. $59.95, £39.

Liao and Carbonell discuss the role of (supposed) racial differences and racism in two medical devices: pulse oximeters and spirometers. They show that what might seem like cases of mere bias, are...

Regenerative Medicine promises to develop treatments to regrow healthy tissues and cure the physical body. One of the emerging developments within this field is regenerative implants, such as jawbone or heart valve implants, that can be broken down by the body and are gradually replaced with living tissue. Yet challenges for embodiment are to be expected, given that the implants are designed to integrate deeply into the tissue of the living body, so that implant and body become one. In this (...) paper, we explore how regenerative implants may affect the embodied experience of implant recipients. To this end, we take a phenomenological approach. First, we explore what insights the existing phenomenological and empirical literature on embodiment offers regarding the experience of illness and of living with regular (non-regenerative) implants and organ transplants. Second, we apply these insights to better understand how future implant recipients might experience living with regenerative implants. Third, we conclude that concepts and considerations from the existing phenomenological literature do not sufficiently address what it might be like to live with an implantable technology that, over time, becomes one with the living body. We argue that the interwovenness and intimate relationship of people living with regenerative implants should be understood in terms of ‘entanglement’. Entanglement allows us to explore the complexities of human-technology relations, acknowledging the inseparability of humans and implantable technologies. Our theoretical foundations regarding the role of embodiment may be tested empirically once more people will be living with regenerative implants. (shrink)

BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, national governments took restrictive measures, such as a visitors ban, prohibition of group activities and quarantine, to protect nursing home residents against infections. As ‘safety’ prevailed, residents and close relatives had no choice but to accept the restrictions. Their perspectives are relevant because the policies had a major impact on them, but they were excluded from the policy decisions. In this study we looked into the moral attitudes of residents, close relatives and volunteers regarding (...) the restrictions in retrospect, and what moral lessons they considered important.MethodsWe conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with residents and close relatives and one focus group meeting with volunteers working in nursing homes. Data were transcribed verbatim and analyzed inductively. Subsequently, three Socratic dialogue meetings with residents, close relatives and volunteers were organized in which first analysis outcomes were discussed and dialogues were fostered into moral lessons for future pandemics. Outcomes were combined with moral theory following an empirical bioethics design. ResultsCritical perspectives regarding the COVID-19 restrictions grew in time. Various moral values were compromised and steered moral lessons for our future. The participants recognized three moral lessons as most important. First, constructing tailored (well-balanced) solutions in practice is desirable. Second, proper recognition is needed for the caring role that close relatives fulfill in practice. Third, a responsive power distribution should be in place that includes all stakeholder perspectives who are affected by the restrictions. DiscussionComparing the results with moral theory strengthens the plea for inclusion of all stakeholder groups in decision-making processes. To further concretize the moral lessons, tailored solutions can be realized with the use of moral case deliberations. Proper recognition includes actions addressing moral repair and including counter-stories in the debate. Responsive power distribution starts with providing clear and trustworthy information and including all perspectives. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 2 Seiten: 514-517.

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 2 Seiten: 548-550.

It may soon become possible not just to replace, but to re-grow healthy tissues after injury or disease, because of innovations in the field of Regenerative Medicine. One particularly promising innovation is a regenerative valve implant to treat people with heart valve disease. These implants are fabricated from so-called ‘smart’, ‘lifelike’ materials. Implanted inside a heart, these implants stimulate re-growth of a healthy, living heart valve. While the technological development advances, the ethical implications of this new technology are still unclear (...) and a clear conceptual understanding of the notions ‘smart' and ‘lifelike' is currently lacking. In this paper, we explore the conceptual and ethical implications of the development of smart lifelike materials for the design of regenerative implants, by analysing heart valve implants as a showcase. In our conceptual analysis, we show that the materials are considered ‘smart’ because they can communicate with human tissues, and ‘lifelike’ because they are structurally similar to these tissues. This shows that regenerative valve implants become intimately integrated in the living tissues of the human body. As such, they manifest the ontological entanglement of body and technology. In our ethical analysis, we argue this is ethically significant in at least two ways: It exacerbates the irreversibility of the implantation procedure, and it might affect the embodied experience of the implant recipient. With our conceptual and ethical analysis, we aim to contribute to responsible development of smart lifelike materials and regenerative implants. (shrink)

BackgroundAberrant functioning of the autonomic nervous system is an important factor in the occurrence of antisocial behavior. Baseline autonomic functioning and the responsivity of the ANS have been related to psychopathic traits and aggression. Here we investigated whether a naturalistic sample of male multi-problem young adults present with similar autonomic deficits in relation to their psychopathy and aggression as previous studies observed in clinical samples.MethodsIn a sample of 112 multi-problem young adults, baseline autonomic functioning and autonomic responsivity to emotional stimuli (...) were assessed through four physiological measures: heart rate, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, pre-ejection period, and skin conductance. 27 control participants were included primarily to assess whether the task worked appropriately. Participants watched a neutral 5 min video to assess baseline autonomic functioning and watched two sad clips to assess autonomic reactivity to sadness. We investigated the association between autonomic functioning and self-reported psychopathic traits and aggression within the multi-problem group.ResultsWe found no significant associations between autonomic functioning and psychopathy and aggression.ConclusionThese null-findings highlight the importance of research in naturalistic samples in addition to research in clinical and general populations samples and underscore the complexity of translating research findings into practical and clinical implications. (shrink)

Nudges have gained popularity as a behavioral change tool that aims to facilitate the selection of the sensible choice option by altering the way choice options are presented. Although nudges are designed to facilitate these choices without interfering with people’s prior preferences, both the relation between individuals’ prior preferences and nudge effectiveness, as well as the notion that nudges ‘facilitate’ decision-making have received little empirical scrutiny. Two studies examine the hypothesis that a social proof nudge is particularly effective when people (...) have no clear prior preference, either because people are indifferent (in a colour-categorization task; Study 1, N = 255) or because people experience a choice conflict (making shopping decisions about meat products; Study 2, N = 97). Both studies employed a social proof nudge to steer participants’ choices. The potential facilitating effect of the nudge was tested using a mouse-tracker paradigm that implicitly assessed experienced uncertainty during decision-making. Results showed that the nudge was effective in steering participants’ decisions; the facilitation effect (i.e., reduced uncertainty regarding the decision) was only observed for conflicting preferences, but not under indifference. A better understanding of when and how nudges can influence individuals’ behavior may help in deciding whether nudges are an appropriate policy tool for changing particular undesirable behavior. (shrink)

This article presents a study of the discourse characteristics of interaction within a virtual community. The data are from the text-based chat forum of an online community of learners and teachers of English. The forum is the meeting place for community members, and is an international site of language use with participants from a range of linguistic backgrounds. Within this context, some pertinent themes are investigated which relate to a relatively recent form of discourse, synchronous text-based computer-mediated communication. The discussion (...) centres on the interplay between the technological attributes of the medium and the linguistic, discourse and sociocultural conditions within which the participants interact. How do these elements combine to shape the discourse? This question is addressed with reference to the cohesive feature of conversational floor. Because there is a lack of coordination of turn transfer in SCMC interaction, conversational floor emerges as an organizing principle in preference to models of conversation based on turn taking. (shrink)

Multilevel wayfinding research in environmental psychology and architecture exhibits a strong compatibility with Jeffery et al.'s representation of space. We identify a need for capturing verticality in spatial analysis techniques such as space syntax and argue for investigating inter-individual differences in the ability to mentally integrate the cognitive maps of separate floors in buildings.

Policy decisions during and after the New Deal tied the U.S. social contract to the employment contract, by conditioning eligibility and benefit levels for core welfare-state programs on work status and performance. The resulting system of social provision, however, embodied a set of assumptions about labor-market conditions that began to unravel with the structural economic shifts that began in the mid-1970s. Work was expected to provide open doors to employment, stable floors of security and stability over time, income ladders promising (...) adequate and rising earnings, and safety nets providing public and/or private protections against unforeseen or unavoidable hardships. Each of these assumptions was undermined by fundamental changes in the market, and this, in turn, has redefined patterns of social provision. As a result, core welfare-state programs have become less effective at meeting their own objectives of providing adequate social protections for rising numbers of working Americans. These trends preceded the recent recession and weak recovery, and cannot be reversed by the return of robust growth or pre-recession employment levels, in the absence of more fundamental change in the social contract. The roots of the current dilemma lie in the 1930s-40s, when politically mobilized employers fought alongside conservative policymakers to constrain the scope of the original system of social protections during and after the New Deal. In recent decades, they have battled to keep even this limited system from reaching those it was intended to assist, by blocking or limiting reform initiatives in areas such as employment policy, the minimum wage, health and pension insurance and modernization of the unemployment compensation system. (shrink)

U.S. conservation policy, both in structure and in practice, places a heavy burden on conservationists to halt development projects, rather than on advocates of development to defend their proposed actions. In this paper, we identify this structural phenomenon in several landmark environmental policies and in practice in the contemporary debate concerning oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The burdens placed on conservation can be understood in terms of constraints—as conservation ‘floors’ and degradation ‘ceilings’. At base, these floors and (...) ceilings emerge out of underlying consequentialist commitments that assume that our environmental activity can be justified by appeal primarily to ends. A series of intuition pumps guides our argument to instead shift the conservation discourse away from these consequentialist commitments to more widely justify activities on our public lands. (shrink)

The word is generally regarded as having two distinct and separate meanings: threshing-floor, and garden, orchard, or vineyard. Like the classical the word must originally have denoted a threshing-floor. How the second, and apparently incongruous, meaning became attached to it has never been explained. Both are found in Homer. In the Iliad the horses of Achilles trample down the dead like oxen treading the barley on the well-built threshing-floor; the arrow rebounds from the breastplate of Menelaos like (...) beans or chickpeas flying off the blade of the winnowing shovel on the great threshing-floor; the dust of the conflict that lay white on the Achaeans is likened to the whitening heaps when the wind drives off the chaff on the holy threshing-floors when men are winnowing and Demeter separates the chaff from the grain. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 1 Seiten: 262-264.

Based on an ethnographic study in a Danish residential care center, this article shows how the interplay of a sensor-floor technology and currently influential values of person-centeredness, privacy, and security in care transforms care work and care interactions between residents and care workers. Based on an understanding of care as realized in a heterogeneous collective of human and nonhuman actors, this article illustrates how new modes of monitoring and interpreting residents’ care needs at a distance arise, and how a (...) new organization of work focusing on quick and responsive care is established. These new care practices lead to conflicts between the values of privacy and security, to ambivalent experiences among care workers of simultaneously increased security and insecurity in work, and, paradoxically, also often to a decentering rather than person-centering of care. Instead of accommodating simultaneous compliance to the values of privacy, security, and person-centeredness, the use of the sensor-floors makes the tensions between these values continuously and loudly present in daily care practices. (shrink)

The classical qualitative theory of belief change due to Alchourrón, Gärdenfors and Makinson has been widely known as being characterised by two packages of postulates. While the basic package consists of six postulates and is very weak, the full package that adds two further postulates is very strong. I revisit two classic constructions of theory contraction, viz., relational possible worlds contraction and entrenchment-based contraction and argue that four intermediate levels can be distinguished that play - or ought to play - (...) important roles within qualitative belief revision theory. Levels 3 and 4 encode two ways of interpreting the idea of imperfect discrimination of the plausibilities of possible worlds or propositions. (shrink)

The author presents the previously unknown text of the outstanding Soviet philosopher and historian of science Boris Mikhailovich Hessen. The author analyzes the report of Boris M. Hessen at the Second international Congress on the history of science and technology in London (1931). He considers as well some published works of B.M. Hessen, mainly his book on the philosophical interpretation of the theory of relativity. He argues that it is time to start introducing unpublished texts by B.M. Hessen into scientific (...) circulation. This will make the study of his work more thorough and increase the reliability of conclusions made by specialists in Hessen’s legacy. This publication offers the reader the text of B.M. Hessen, extracted from the archive: the report of B.M. Hessen at a meeting of the Presidium of the Communist Academy about the trip to the London Congress. (shrink)

The theory of theory change due to Alchourrón, Gärdenfors and Makinson ("AGM") has been widely known as being characterized by two sets of postulates, one being very weak and the other being very strong. Commenting on the three classic constructions of partial meet contraction, safe contraction and entrenchment-based construction, I argue that three intermediate levels can be distinguished that play decisive roles within the AGM theory.