The modern critical approach to things hagiographical still wavers when it comes to taking leave of twelve lines of iambic invective, branded with wonderful delicacy of touch on the saintly foreheads of two Palestinian brothers, Theodore and Theophanes, the so-called “Graptoi”. Barry Baldwin, noting that C.A. Trypanis, unlike the great B. Bury and others, was inclined to disbelieve the story, could not help expressing the hope that it was true (An Anthology of Byzantine Poetry, Amsterdam 1985, pp. 142–3). It is (...) of course only one of the many stories concocted by iconodule propaganda. The central question has to be formulated in more general terms: how is history made? History here primarily in the sense of the construction of the past by the Byzantines themselves, was embodied in historical narratives moving between hagiography and historiography. Trying to lay bare the basis and elements of such constructs will always remain a major task of critical historical scholarship. (shrink)

Script analysis is often used in research that focuses on gender and technology design. It is applied as a method to describe problematic inscriptions of gender in technology and as a tool for advancing more acceptable inscriptions of gender in technology. These analyses are based on the assumption that we can design technologies that do justice to gender. One critique on script analysis is that it does not engage with the emergent effects of design. The authors explore this critique with (...) the help of two vignettes taken from their design research. In this article they ask: How to design for gender if gender and design are emergent? The authors present two design strategies, degendering design and undesigning design and propose a new approach to doing justice to gender in design. This perspective foregrounds ethics in the design process, in particular the accountability of technology designers. (shrink)

The central topic of this paper is a mobile phone application, ‘InformaCam’, which turns metadata from a surveillance risk into a method for the production of public proof. InformaCam allows one to manage and delete metadata from images and videos in order to diminish surveillance risks related to online tracking. Furthermore, it structures and stores the metadata in such a way that the documentary material becomes better accommodated to evidentiary settings, if needed. In this paper I propose InformaCam should be (...) interpreted as a ‘forensic device’. By using the conceptualization of forensics and work on socio-technical devices the paper discusses how InformaCam, through a range of interventions, rearranges metadata into a technology of evidence. InformaCam explicitly recognizes mobile phones as context aware, uses their sensors, and structures metadata in order to facilitate data analysis after images are captured. Through these modifications it invents a form of ‘sensory data forensics'. By treating data in this particular way, surveillance resistance does more than seeking awareness. It becomes engaged with investigatory practices. Considering the extent by which states conduct metadata surveillance, the project can be seen as a timely response to the unequal distribution of power over data. (shrink)

van der Velden, Matthew In the context of twenty-first-century Australia, Catholic secondary colleges are facing an ever-dwindling number of student enrolments coming from a Catholic background. Students that identify themselves as members of the Roman Catholic Church occupy a wide spectrum of positions along the faith and sacramental journey of the Catholic tradition. In Catholic colleges around Australia, there are a number of Catholic students, sometimes referred to as 'cradle Catholics', who received all of the sacraments of initiation during (...) their childhood, through either sacramental programs attached to their Catholic primary schooling or catechesis sessions provided by their parish. However, there are also a large number of Catholic students who have not received all of the sacraments of initiation, often only receiving baptism as an infant. Additionally, at Catholic colleges there can also be a large number of students who are members of other faith communities, such as Anglicans and members of other Protestant Churches, whose baptism is recognised by the Roman Catholic Church, yet are unable to fully participate in the sacramental opportunities provided by their school, such as the Eucharist and reconciliation. The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults is a powerful process for supporting students such as these to access a more fully formed Catholic faith and sacramental life. (shrink)

This study is focused on unsustainable agri-food systems, especially intensive livestock farming and its resulting environmental harms. Specifically we focus on the development of technologies that seek to mitigate these environmental harms. These technologies are generally developed as incremental innovations in response to government regulation. Critics of these technological solutions allege that these developments legitimate unsustainable food production systems and are incapable of supporting agri-food systems transformation. At the same time, technology developers and other actors seek to present these technologies (...) as the legitimate solution to agri-environmental harms. Our study seeks to explore the perceptions and constructions of legitimacy for technologies that are developed to reduce ammonia emissions in intensive livestock farming in Flanders (Belgium). We use a qualitative case study, employing semi-structured interviews and workshops, with technology developers of ammonia-emission reducing technologies and stakeholders in the intensive livestock farming industry in Flanders. What our study shows is that technologies developed to reduce emissions are dependent on regulative legitimacy. The normative and cognitive legitimacy of these technologies is lacking, both due to ties to the intensive livestock industry and due to uncertainty over the performance of these technologies. With the delegitimation of intensive livestock farming, the legitimacy of these technologies is also under threat. In response, technology developers are looking to (re-)construct this legitimacy through knowledge claims over the performance of their technologies. We show several ways for other actors to deal with this, centred on either re-legitimising technologies to maintain the status quo, or to contest these knowledge claims and use them to disrupt path dependencies. (shrink)

The paper discusses two answers to the question, How to address the harmful effects of technology? The first response proposes a complete separation of science from culture, religion, and ethics. The second response finds harm in the logic and method of science itself. The paper deploys a feminist technoscience approach to overcome these accounts of neutral or deterministic technological agency. In this technoscience perspective, agency is not an attribute of autonomous human users alone but enacted and performed in socio-material configurations (...) of people and technology and their ‘intra-actions’. This understanding of agency is proposed as an alternative that opens up for the reconfiguration of design and use for more ethical effects, such as the cultivation of cognitive justice, the equal treatment and representation of different ways of knowing the world. The implication of this approach is that design becomes an adaptive and ongoing intra-active process in which more desirable configurations of people and technology become possible. (shrink)

A comparison between the Prolegomena of Chapter II of De iure praedae and the Prolegomena of De iure belli ac pacis leads to the conclusion that the ideas of Grotius on legal systematization have changed considerably between 1604 and 1625. Whereas Grotius starts in IPC with general principles with a rather unclear distinction between leges and regulae, in IBP he gives first the philosophical and theological basis of international law, intertwined by a concise set of general legal rules, mostly derived (...) from Roman law after its reception in Western Europe. The general outlines of legal systematization in the early-modern period are expounded. In the attempts of legal systematization the concept of subjective rights is essential. These subjective rights are not, as is sometimes assumed, a medieval renewal of legal technique, but can be found essentially already in classical Roman law of the first centuries AD.The institutional system is not yet visible in De iure praedae, it might be different for De iure belli ac pacis. Significant here are possibly the expressions ius ad bellum and ius in bello. (shrink)

AbstractWhen considering the manner of death, two categories can be distinguished, namely natural death and unnatural death. Though most physicians think that the distinction between the two is evident, this is not the case.When comparing the Netherlands, Belgium, England and Germany it is noticed that the terms natural and unnatural might be used in law but are not defined by law. In practice, the term unnatural death is used when there is an external cause of death, but even that turns (...) out to not be sufficient in making an obvious difference between the two terms. Different countries may even label the same death differently. A, at times philosophical and semantic, discussion shows that when it comes to causes of death a very large grey area exists between natural and unnatural causes of death. The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany even have the possibility to label a death as natural without actually knowing the cause of death.In conclusion, we recommend a new system in which the circumstances surrounding a death are properly investigated. This should lead to a report to an independent legal expert, who is able to decide if and what conclusion can be drawn, from a judicial and a public point of view, thereby, making the distinction and the use of the terms natural and unnatural/nonnatural obsolete. (shrink)

Developmental research suggests that young children tend to value dominant individuals over subordinates. This research, however, has nearly exclusively been carried out in Western cultures, and cross-cultural research among adults has revealed cultural differences in the valuing of dominance. In particular, it seems that Japanese culture, relative to many Western cultures, values dominance less. We conducted two experiments to test whether this difference would be observed in preschoolers. In Experiment 1, preschoolers in France and in Japan were asked to identify (...) with either a dominant or a subordinate. French preschoolers identified with the dominant, but Japanese preschoolers were at chance. Experiment 2 revealed that Japanese preschoolers were more likely to believe a subordinate than a dominant individual, both compared to chance and compared to previous findings among French preschoolers. The convergent results from both experiments thus reveal an early emerging cross-cultural difference in the valuing of dominance. (shrink)

Peng and Nisbett put forward an influential theory of the influence of culture on the resolution of contradiction. They suggested that Easterners deal with contradiction in a dialectical manner, trying to reconcile opposite points of view and seeking a middle-way. Westerners, by contrast, would follow the law of excluded middle, judging one side of the contradiction to be right and the other to be wrong. However, their work has already been questioned, both in terms of replicability and external validity. Here (...) we test alternative interpretations of two of Peng and Nisbett’s experiments and conduct a new test of their theory in a third experiment. Overall, the Eastern and Western participants behaved similarly, failing to exhibit the cross-cultural differences observed by Peng and Nisbett. Several interpretations of these failed replications and this failed new test are suggested. Together with previous failed replications, the present results raise questions about the breadth of Peng and Nisbett’s interpretation of cross-cultural differences in dealing with contradiction. (shrink)

Should a debate of the choice between metaphorical investigation and epistemological realism in organizational research be prioritized as Willy McCourt called for in Organization Studies? We argue here against doing any such thing — a ‘realism’ debate in organizational theory would merely be a ‘red herring’. Theoretical investigation from Ricoeur to Derrida has liberated us from the need to re-visit the theme, but examination of Gareth Morgan's intellectual development, as begun by McCourt, is of interest because it reveals two very (...) different ‘realisms’. What is of interest about ‘realism’ is not an eitherlor of either ‘realism’ or ‘constructivism’, but a polyphony of the many voices of research. (shrink)

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has already caused large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and will continue to do so for manyyears after hostilities have ceased mainly because of the emissions linked to the rebuilding of destroyed or damaged housing, public buildings, infrastructure, factories, and the like. My aim in this paper is to discuss how in a time of climate emergency such emissions of war should impact the political morality of states initiating, continuing, and (...) ending war (through a just and enduring peace) as understood by just war theory (JWT). My point of departure is a study by Lennard de Klerk and six co-authors detailing the emissions of the first year of the Russo-Ukrainian war. (shrink)

To understand pre-Fregean theories of judgment and proposition, such as those found in Locke and the Port-Royal logic, it is important to distinguish between propositions in the modern sense and propositions in the pre-Fregean sense. By making this distinction it becomes clear that these pre-Fregean theories cannot be meant to solve the propositional attitude problem. Notwithstanding this fact, Locke and Arnauld are able to make a distinction between asserted and unasserted propositions (in their sense). The way Locke makes this distinction (...) turns out to be very different from the way it is made by Arnauld. (shrink)

Ernest Mandel theorised the capitalist world economy as an articulated system of capitalist, semi-capitalist and precapitalist relations of production, linked to each other by capitalist relations of exchange and domination by the capitalist world market. This seems to be an interesting starting point for an historically well-founded theory, building on and going beyond Marx's work, of the worldwide expansion of the capitalist mode of production from its origins to the present. In his attempt to formulate his theory, Mandel did not (...) succeed in resolving all difficulties, however. His main works – Marxist Economic Theory and Late Capitalism – show a number of dangling loose ends. The central question is whether these loose ends are merely technical difficulties or whether they reveal fatal flaws in the theory as a whole. In order to come a step closer to answering this question, a conference was organised in Amsterdam, November 2003. This introduction formulates the five, closely interrelated issues that were highlighted at this conference. (shrink)

Masters Thesis -- Stellenbosch University, 2019.

Human cognition is unique in the way in which it relies on combinatorial (or compositional) structures. Language provides ample evidence for the existence of combinatorial structures, but they can also be found in visual cognition. To understand the neural basis of human cognition, it is therefore essential to understand how combinatorial structures can be instantiated in neural terms. In his recent book on the foundations of language, Jackendoff described four fundamental problems for a neural instantiation of combinatorial structures: the massiveness (...) of the binding problem, the problem of 2, the problem of variables, and the transformation of combinatorial structures from working memory to long-term memory. This paper aims to show that these problems can be solved by means of neural “blackboard” architectures. For this purpose, a neural blackboard architecture for sentence structure is presented. In this architecture, neural structures that encode for words are temporarily bound in a manner that preserves the structure of the sentence. It is shown that the architecture solves the four problems presented by Jackendoff. The ability of the architecture to instantiate sentence structures is illustrated with examples of sentence complexity observed in human language performance. Similarities exist between the architecture for sentence structure and blackboard architectures for combinatorial structures in visual cognition, derived from the structure of the visual cortex. These architectures are briefly discussed, together with an example of a combinatorial structure in which the blackboard architectures for language and vision are combined. In this way, the architecture for language is grounded in perception. Perspectives and potential developments of the architectures are discussed. Key Words: binding; blackboard architectures; combinatorial structure; compositionality; language; dynamic system; neurocognition; sentence complexity; sentence structure; working memory; variables; vision. (shrink)

The notion of cognitive act is of importance for an epistemology that is apt for constructive type theory, and for epistemology in general. Instead of taking knowledge attributions as the primary use of the verb 'to know' that needs to be given an account of, and understanding a first-person knowledge claim as a special case of knowledge attribution, the account of knowledge that is given here understands first-person knowledge claims as the primary use of the verb 'to know'. This means (...) that a cognitive act is an act that counts as cognitive from a first-person point of view. The method of linguistic phenomenology is used to explain or elucidate our epistemic notions. One of the advantages of the theory is that an answer can be given to some of the problems in modern epistemology, such as the Gettier problem. (shrink)

The contention in this paper is that the theological-political disputes Spinoza was concerned with 350 years ago are similar to the conspiratorial disputes we experience today. The world in Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus, a political intervention in his time, serves as a “mirror image”, that is to say, it deals with the same problem we face today albeit in a different mode. Understanding our contemporary condition under the auspices of a Spinozist perspective, problems in countermeasures to the conspiratorial disputes come to (...) light. Scholarly work and practice focus on the epistemological dimension of conspiracy theories, tying in the extent to which they are problematic to the degree in which they deal in untruth. However, the lesson from Spinoza’s analysis of the theological-political disputes is that such theories do not deal in truth, but, in affect, they do not spring from a lack of education but a lack of certainty. The work of Spinoza opens up a different approach, and if our aim is like that of the TTP, to defend political life against the threat of civil war, such a different approach is in order. (shrink)

In this thesis, I investigate realist, anti-realist and pluralist views in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of complexity. The philosophy of science can inform the philosophy of complexity and vice versa because we can consider scientific inquiry to largely involve the study of complex systems. I however find that the relevant realist, anti-realist and pluralist views are problematic in various ways, and that a version of pragmatism suggests a promising alternative. This version of pragmatism incorporates elements of pluralism, (...) but maintains a commitment to epistemic hierarchy, convergence and progress. The way to develop such a version of pragmatism is, I argue, by rebooting William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science. Whewell however held to the following two transcendental claims: 1. Empirical inquiry undertaken in science properly practiced can reveal necessary truths. 2. The revelation of such necessary truths grants us a glimpse of the mind of God. Such transcendental claims are obviously at odds with pragmatism. There are however core features of Whewell’s view that are notably pragmatist in nature, features that explicitly inspired Charles Sanders Piece’s convergent pragmatism. These are as follows: 3. Subject and object (or mind and world) are inextricably entwined during scientific inquiry; they are not separated by anything like a correspondence relationship. 4. Science progresses via what Whewell calls the consilience of inductions (an ongoing merging of scientific theories, a merging that increases our understanding of the world over time). I modify Whewell’s view by stripping away its transcendental elements while maintaining its pragmatist elements. What remains is, I argue, a robust and novel kind of pragmatism suitable for being introduced into the contemporary philosophy of science. Whewell suitably-pragmatised can offer new insights into ongoing debates, particularly those around the nature of scientific progress, scientific truth and scientific understanding. (shrink)

This paper is on the update semantics for might of Veltman. Threeconsequence relations are introduced and studied in an abstract setting.Next we present sequent-style systems for each of the consequence relations.We show the logics to be complete and decidable. The paper ends with asyntactic cut elimination result.

Sound and complete axiomatizations are provided for a number of different logics involving modalities for the knowledge of multiple agents and operators for branching time, extending previous work of Halpern, van der Meyden and Vardi [to appear, SIAM Journal on Computing] for logics of knowledge and linear time. The paper considers the system constraints of synchrony, perfect recall and unique initial states, which give rise to interaction axioms. The language is based on the temporal logic CTL*, interpreted with respect to (...) a version of the bundle semantics. (shrink)

Background Notwithstanding the need to produce evidence-based knowledge on medications for pregnant women, they remain underrepresented in clinical research. Sometimes they are excluded because of their supposed vulnerability, but there are no universally accepted criteria for considering pregnant women as vulnerable. Our aim was to explore whether and if so to what extent pregnant women are vulnerable as research subjects. Method We performed a conceptual and empirical analysis of vulnerability applied to pregnant women. Analysis A conceptual analysis supports Hurst's definition (...) of vulnerability. Consequently, we argue that pregnant women are vulnerable if they encounter an identifiably increased likelihood of incurring additional or greater wrong. According to the literature, this increased likelihood could exist of four alleged features for pregnant women's vulnerability: informed consent, susceptibility to coercion, higher exposure to risk due to lack of knowledge, vulnerability of the fetus. Discussion Testing the features against Hurst's definition demonstrates that they all concern the same issue: pregnant women are only vulnerable because a higher exposure to risk due to lack of scientific knowledge comprises an increased wrong. Research Ethics Committees have a responsibility to protect the vulnerable, but a higher exposure to risk due to lack of scientific knowledge is a much broader issue and also needs to be addressed by other stakeholders. Conclusions The only reason why pregnant women are potentially vulnerable is to the extent that they are increasingly exposed to higher risks due to a lack of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, the discussion can advance to the development of practical strategies to promote fair inclusion of pregnant women in clinical research. (shrink)

Abstract‘Social inclusion’ is the leading ideal in services and care for people with intellectual disabilities in most countries in the Global North. ‘Social inclusion’ can refer simply to full equal rights, but more often it is taken to mean something like ‘community participation’. This narrow version of social inclusion has become so ingrained that it virtually goes unchallenged. The presumption appears to be that there is a clear moral consensus that this narrow understanding of social inclusion is good. However, that (...) moral consensus is not clear in the case of people with profound intellectual and/or multiple disabilities (PIMD), who are not able to express their needs and preferences verbally. Moreover, social inclusion has proven to be difficult to conceptualize and implement for people with PIMD. Therefore, it becomes imperative to ask about the ethical rationale of the narrow understanding of social inclusion. For what reasons do we think social inclusion is good? And do those reasons also apply for people with PIMD? This article addresses these questions by providing an ethical analysis of the ideal of social inclusion for people with PIMD. It discusses four ethical arguments for social inclusion and probes their relevance for people with PIMD. The article argues that none of these arguments fully convince of the value of the narrow understanding of social inclusion for people with PIMD. It ends with advocating for an ethical space for imagining a good life for people with PIMD otherwise. (shrink)

The concept of meaningful work is used to evaluate the quality of work. Typical cases of meaningless work that have been used to clarify this concept are assembly line work, and work involving other types of mindless tasks, but also David Graeber's ‘bullshit jobs’. I argue that there are at least two fundamental reasons to care about meaningful work: reasons from the wellbeing of the worker and reasons pertaining to meaningfulness of the worker's life. I first argue that a concept (...) of meaningful work needs to reflect these two values, but that these two values may come apart. Because of this, accounts that provide a single answer to the question to what extent a particular work context is meaningful work for a particular worker are unable to reflect these two values. I then survey three promising accounts of meaningful work: perfectionism, which captures the self-interested aspect of meaningful work well but fails to capture the meaningfulness aspect appropriately; consequentialism, which captures the meaningfulness aspect well but fails to capture the self-interested aspect; and Wolf's Fitting Fulfilment View of meaningful projects, which can be read as addressing both concerns but leads to implausible judgments about meaningful work. I then argue that we should conceive of the concerns that fall under the notion of meaningful work as two separate concepts and values. The best work incorporates both these dimensions but falling short on either dimension is problematic for different reasons. (shrink)

Compassion unites people during times of suffering and distress. Unfortunately, compassion cannot take away suffering. Why then, is compassion important for people who suffer? Nurses work in a domain where human suffering is evidently present. In order to give meaning to compassion in the domain of professional care, it is necessary to describe what compassion is. The purpose of this paper is to explore questions and contradictions in the debate on compassion related to nursing care. The paper reviews classical philosophers (...) as well as contemporary scientists' main arguments on compassion. First, I will examine the relationship between compassion and suffering. Second, how does one recognize serious suffering? This issue raises questions about the role of imagination and the need for identification. Third, literature describes compassion as an emotion. Some philosophers consider emotions uncontrollable feelings; others see a clear rational dimension in emotions. In order to determine what compassion is, it is necessary to weigh these contradictional arguments. Fourth, I will discuss motives for compassion. Is compassion an act of altruism or egoism? In this debate Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are well‐known opponents. Today, analysis of their arguments leads to some surprising conclusions. Fifth, there is the issue of fault and compassion. Can we only feel compassionate when people who suffer are not to blame for their own suffering? Such a condition faces professional caretakers with a dilemma which needs a thorough analysis if compassion is to be of use in the field of professional care. Finally, I will explore the moral meaning of compassion. Compassion, described as a concept with cognitive as well as affective dimensions, also has volitional and behavioural aspects. These aspects specifically are of importance to nursing care and further research of compassion in the nursing domain. (shrink)

The philosophical aspects of Greek medicine are now more widely appreciated, not only by historians of science and medicine but also by students of philosophy in a more narrow sense. There has also been a greater appreciation of the fact that Greek medical writers not only reflect a derivative awareness of developments in philosophy but that they also actively contributed to the formation of philosophical thought more strictly defined, for instance by developing concepts and methodologies for the acquisition of knowledge (...) and understanding. Yet the consequences of this for a renewed study of the formation of Greek philosophy have yet to be drawn; and disciplinary boundaries between historians of medicine on the one hand and philosophers and historians of philosophy on the other still pose obstacles to an integrated account of Greek thought that takes on board the contributions by the medical writers. Some preliminary remarks may therefore be in order. (shrink)

We analyze the cognitive strategies underlying performance in the Number task, a Math game that requires both arithmetic fluency and mathematical creativity. In this game all elements in a set of numbers have to be used precisely once to create a target number with basic arithmetic operations. We argue that some instances of this game are NP complete, by showing its relation to the well-known Partition problem. We propose heuristics based on the distinction in forward and backward reasoning. The Number (...) Game is part of Math Garden, a popular online educational platform for practicing and monitoring math skills using innovations in computerized adaptive testing. These educational games generate enormous amounts of rich data on children's cognitive development. We found converging evidence for the use of forward proximity heuristics in the data of Math Garden, consisting of more than 20 million answers to 1,700 items. Item difficulties and the structure of correct answers were analyzed. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the relationship between Christian religiosity, attitudes towards corporate social responsibility, and CSR behavior of executives. We distinguish four types of CSR attitudes and five types of CSR behavior. Based on empirical research conducted among 473 Dutch executives, we find that CSR attitudes mediate the influence of religiosity on CSR behavior. Intrinsic religiosity positively affects the ethical CSR attitude and negatively affects the financial CSR attitude, whereas extrinsic religiosity stimulates the philanthropic CSR attitude. Financial, ethical, and (...) philanthropic CSR attitudes significantly affect some types of CSR behaviors. However, because religiosity has opposing effects on the three attitudes, the joint mediation effect of the three attitudes is negligible. Furthermore, we find a direct negative influence of intrinsic religiosity on diversity and a direct positive influence on charity. (shrink)