Argument quality has consistently been shown to have strong and lasting persuasive effects. The question is what criteria people use to distinguish strong from weak arguments and how these criteria relate to the ones proposed in normative argumentation theory. In an experiment 235 participants without training in argumentation theory rated the acceptance of 30 claims about the desirability of a consequence that were supported by either an argument from analogy, from authority, or from consequences. The supporting arguments were systematically manipulated (...) to violate argument type specific criteria. Participants proved sensitive to the violation of most, but not all, argument type specific criteria. From a normative perspective these findings suggest that people act in a fairly adequate way. These findings also enable a more precise description of what people may do when critically appraising arguments, which has important implications for the use of argument quality as a methodological tool in persuasion research. (shrink)

Can argumentation schemes play a part in the critical processing of argumentation by lay people? In a qualitative study, participants were invited to come up with strong and weak arguments for a given claim and were subsequently interviewed for why they thought the strong argument was stronger than the weak one. Next, they were presented with a list of arguments and asked to rank these arguments from strongest to weakest, upon which they were asked to motivate their judgments in an (...) interview. In order to assess whether lay people apply argument scheme specific criteria when performing these tasks, five different argumentation schemes were included in this study: argumentation from authority, from example, from analogy, from cause to effect, and from consequences. Laypeople’s use of criteria for argument quality was inferred from interview protocols. The results revealed that participants combined general criteria from informal logic and scheme-specific criteria. The results supported the conventional validity of the pragma-dialectical argument scheme rule in a strong sense and provided a more fine-grained view of central processing in the Elaboration Likelihood Model. (shrink)

In the present research we investigated gender-specific beliefs about emotional behaviour. In Study 1, 180 respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with different types of beliefs (prescriptive, descriptive, stereotypical, and contra-stereotypical) regarding the emotional behaviour of men and women. As anticipated, respondents agreed more with descriptive than with prescriptive beliefs, and more with stereotypical than with contra-stereotypical beliefs. However, respondents agreed more with stereotypical beliefs about the emotional behaviour of women than with those about men. These results were (...) replicated in Study 2 with a sample of 75 students and 80 nonstudents. In Study 3, a sample of 279 respondents rated the extent of agreement with the same items, this time with respect to then own emotional behaviour. A similar pattern of results was obtained, although agreement rates were higher than in Study 1 and 2. (shrink)

In the last decade the term spirituality has become popular in common discourse, as well as in psychological studies of religion. To many, it partly replaces the concept of religion, subsuming the aspects most important to psychology, while narrowing religion down to the formal, the institutional and the outer. At the same time spirituality, in contrast to religion, obtained a number of positive connotations. These changes seem to be sufficiently substantiated neither by new discoveries nor by radically new insights in (...) our field.Pargament offered a theoretical solution according to which spirituality is conceived as the key and unique function of religion, namely, the search for the sacred. This solution saves the concept of religion from losing its breadth and vitality while assigning the concept of spirituality a useful function in the psychology of religion. To support this solution, the author gives reasons for using the concept of spirituality, in scientific discourse, in the sense given to it by Pargament. When popularizing the psychology of religion and for facilitating communication with workers in other fields, the now usual, very broad and rather vague meaning of the term serves well. A brief review of questionnaires of spirituality is given. Their cursory content analysis confirms the author's conclusions. (shrink)

Over a century ago European explorers in Eastern Turkestan (southern Xinjiang) made a remarkable discovery: the Sunni inhabitants of Khotan were engaged in elaborate veneration of the Shiʿi twelve Imams, whom they believed to be buried at various holy sites in the Khotan region. This paper investigates Khotan’s net work of holy sites and the narratives that were attached to them, from the sixteenth century to the present. While the political landscape of the present may sometimes make the Sunni-Shiʿi divide (...) appear natural, the case of Eastern Turkestan, which had its own, idiosyncratic approach to sectarian identity, reminds us that the maintenance of such a Sunni-Shiʿi consensus on sectarian designation was dependent on networks of knowledge reproduction that did not embrace the entirety of the Muslim world. Pre-Islamic sacred geographies, the power of locally networked holy sites, the phenomenon of textual appropriation, and a popular and eclectic manuscript tradition overwhelmed weak sectarian distinctions, bringing Muslim followers of the Hanafi legal tradition to pray at the purported tombs of Twelver Imams. (shrink)

This paper (presented during the Physis: Inhabiting the Earth conference, Florence, Italy, October 28?31, 1986) examines the evolution of social structure from the new perspective of findings indicating that how the relations between the female and male halves of humanity are structured has profoundly affected human social organization as well as the direction of cultural evolution. Drawing from archeological data and the study of ancient myths, it briefly traces the development of western culture through Paleolithic, Neolithic, and historic times. It (...) also presents data indicating that there is a viable alternative to the present, potentially lethal, emphasis on technologies of domination and destruction. (shrink)

In this article, I assess the prospects for the limitarian thesis that someone has too much wealth if they exceed a specific wealth threshold. Limitarianism claims that there are good political and/or ethical reasons to prevent people from having such ‘surplus wealth’, for example, because it has no moral value for the holder or because allowing people to have surplus wealth has less moral value than redistributing it. Drawing on recent literature on distributive justice, I defend two types of limitarian (...) principles of justice. First, limitarian midlevel principles draw on the limitarian thesis to specify normative commitments for guiding institutional design and individual actions. Second, the limitarian presumption draws on that thesis to specify what a just allocation of wealth requires under epistemic constraints. Such a presumption says that without substantive reasons to the contrary, we should regard a distribution as unjust if some people’s wealth exceeds the limitarian threshold. Furthermore, I will argue that we must reject a possible but implausible interpretation of limitarianism as an ideal distributive pattern. Yet both as a midlevel principle and as a presumption, limitarianism can play an important role in theorizing about justice in the real world. (shrink)

Sovereignty and strategic autonomy are felt to be at risk today, being threatened by the forces of rising international tensions, disruptive digital transformations and explosive growth of cybersecurity incidents. The combination of AI and cybersecurity is at the sharp edge of this development and raises many ethical questions and dilemmas. In this commentary, I analyse how we can understand the ethics of AI and cybersecurity in relation to sovereignty and strategic autonomy. The analysis is followed by policy recommendations, some of (...) which may appear to be controversial, such as the strategic use of ethics. I conclude with a reflection on underlying concepts as an invitation for further research. The goal is to inspire policy-makers, academics and business strategists in their work, and to be an input for public debate. (shrink)

Sovereignty and strategic autonomy are felt to be at risk today, being threatened by the forces of rising international tensions, disruptive digital transformations and explosive growth of cybersecurity incidents. The combination of AI and cybersecurity is at the sharp edge of this development and raises many ethical questions and dilemmas. In this commentary, I analyse how we can understand the ethics of AI and cybersecurity in relation to sovereignty and strategic autonomy. The analysis is followed by policy recommendations, some of (...) which may appear to be controversial, such as the strategic use of ethics. I conclude with a reflection on underlying concepts as an invitation for further research. The goal is to inspire policy-makers, academics and business strategists in their work, and to be an input for public debate. (shrink)

Sovereignty and strategic autonomy are felt to be at risk today, being threatened by the forces of rising international tensions, disruptive digital transformations and explosive growth of cybersecurity incidents. The combination of AI and cybersecurity is at the sharp edge of this development and raises many ethical questions and dilemmas. In this commentary, I analyse how we can understand the ethics of AI and cybersecurity in relation to sovereignty and strategic autonomy. The analysis is followed by policy recommendations, some of (...) which may appear to be controversial, such as the strategic use of ethics. I conclude with a reflection on underlying concepts as an invitation for further research. The goal is to inspire policy-makers, academics and business strategists in their work, and to be an input for public debate. (shrink)

A central question in contemporary ethics and political philosophy concerns which entities have moral status. In this article, I provide a detailed analysis of the view that moral status comes in degrees. I argue that degrees of moral status can be specified along two dimensions: (i) the weight of the reason to protect an entity’s morally significant rights and interests; and/or (ii) the rights and interests that are considered morally significant. And I explore some of the complexities that arise when (...) we link degrees of moral status to the weight of reasons to protect bundles and/or the content and size of these bundles, in particular regarding the attribution of moral status to nonparadigmatic entities (e.g. people with severe cognitive disabilities, children, embryos and foetuses, robots, non-human animals, ecosystems, and rivers). (shrink)

(1997). Action research and human evolution: David Loye's lifelong exploration of moral sensitivity. World Futures: Vol. 49, The Dialatic of Evolution: Essays in Honor of David Loye, pp. 89-101.

(1991). Cooperation, competition, and gylany: Cultural evolution from a new dynamic perspective. World Futures: Vol. 31, Cooperation: Toward a Post-Modern Ethic, pp. 169-179.

There is growing consensus that we need a new paradigm if we are to solve the global problems that are the result of actions and policies stemming from prevailing paradigms or cognitive maps. Theories are cognitive maps. This article summarizes cultural transformation theory, which proposes that to solve our mounting global problems we need a clearer understanding of the self-organizing interaction of two basic movements in cultural evolution. The first consists of technological phase changes, including the most recent shift from (...) industrial to electronic, nuclear, and biochemical technologies. The second consists of shifts in a system's orientation to what, based on three decades of transdisciplinary research, the author identifies as the socio-economic, gender, and cultural configurations characteristic of the dominator and partnership models. The article calls for a reassessment of earlier theories as the basis for effective action to accelerate the shift to a world orienting to the partnership rather than dominator model as a basis for a sustainable, equitable, and peaceful future. (shrink)

The authors discuss the idea that sexual inequality may be a key to the world problematique. New findings from the social sciences, history, and prehistory are presented indicating a correlation between social violence and male?dominated culture.

Spirituality and ultimacy are inextricably linked. Underlying the plurality of spiritualities are myriad ways to construe the identity of the transcendent. In a Christian sense, the notion of the divine with a Trinitarian identification is central. The article examines the implications of such a naming of God for spirituality. Attention is paid to the relationship between doctrinal theology and spirituality as well as to scholarly reflection already undertaken on a so-called Trinitarian spirituality. The article suggests guidelines for future work and (...) emphasises that an adequate account should be given of how Trinitarian theology is undertaken as symbolising and hermeneutical endeavour. Some unique features of this spirituality are profiled, and it is argued that a Trinitarian imagining of the divine may generate perspectives not possible in an unqualified monotheistic approach. (shrink)

Schleiermacher’s approach to the doctrine of God has attracted interest in contemporary theological scholarship. The article tries to map the major features of his God-construal and a number of perspectives are highlighted. Attention is given to the general sentiments of his project, the history of interpretation, the question of a primary referent for ‘God’ and the centrality of causation, the role of structure in his Glaubenslehre and finally the attribute tradition and the doctrine of the Trinity. The second part of (...) the article engages Schleiermacher’s interpretation from the developments in especially the Trinitarian Renaissance since the last part of the 20th century. A number of critical divergences are identified, for example, the preference given to plurality, greater appreciation for the immanent Trinity, a Trinitarian approach to the attributes and an expansive notion of the ‘practical’ implications of the Trinity. Critical questions about ‘Schleiermacher’s God’ are raised in the conclusion. (shrink)

The re-appreciation of the Trinitarian confession in the twentieth century is widely considered a major theological development. Recently, several critical voices emerged, questioning the direction of these explorations. As response, the article identifies major emphases of this rediscovery, namely, the return to sources, the clarification of the function of the confession and its re-envisioning of the nature of divinity, the more centring of the Christian vision in one material principle, the heuristic potential for practical questions and the need for apophatism. (...) The article appreciatively intimates the subtler dynamics to the enthusiasm for the Trinity and briefly highlights the presence of transcendence, narrativity, imagination, analogy and spirituality in the discourse. Some suggestions have been provided for future reflection. (shrink)

Carl Knight argues that lexical sufficientarianism, which holds that sufficientarian concerns should have lexical priority over other distributive goals, is ‘excessive’ in many distinct ways and that sufficientarians should either defend weighted sufficientarianism or become prioritarians. In this article, I distinguish three types of weighted sufficientarianism and propose a weighted sufficientarian view that meets the excessiveness objection and is preferable to both Knight’s proposal and prioritarianism. More specifically, I defend a multi-threshold view which gives weighted priority to benefits directly above (...) and below its thresholds, but gives benefits below the lowest threshold lexical priority over benefits above the highest threshold. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of thresholds in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of what sort of role is played by the idea of a threshold within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around views that employ thresholds. In this article, I develop an account of the concept of thresholds in distributive justice. I argue that this concept contains three elements, which threshold views deploy when ranking possible distributions. These elements are (i) (...) the level of the threshold, (ii) what constitutes the value of the threshold, and (iii) how benefits above and below the threshold must be allocated. I highlight three contributions that this particular account of thresholds makes: it clarifies the nature of the shift that occurs at the threshold; it resolves a common misunderstanding about headcount principles; and it shows how the arbitrariness objection can be met. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that limitarian policies are a good means to further political equality. Limitarianism, which is a view coined and defended by Robeyns, is a partial view in distributive justice which claims that under non-ideal circumstances it is morally impermissible to be rich. In a recent paper, Volacu and Dumitru level two arguments against Robeyns’ Democratic Argument for limitarianism. The Democratic Argument states that limitarianism is called for given the undermining influence current inequalities in income and wealth (...) have for the value of democracy and political equality. Volacu and Dumitru’s Incentive Objection holds that limitarianism places an excessive and inefficient burden on the rich in ensuring political equality. The Efficacy Objection holds that even if limitarianism limits excessive wealth it still fails to ensure the preservation of political equality. In this paper, I will argue that both of these objections fail, but on separate grounds. I argue that the Incentive objection fails because one could appeal to limitarian policies that are different from the ones discussed by Volacu and Dumitru and which escape the problem of reduced productivity. I argue against the Efficacy Objection that limitarian policies are a partial but highly valuable step towards establishing political equality, and that they can and should complement or be complemented by other strategies. (shrink)

In this article, I assess the prospects for the limitarian thesis that someone has too much wealth if they exceed a specific wealth threshold. Limitarianism claims that there are good political and/or ethical reasons to prevent people from having such ‘surplus wealth’, for example, because it has no moral value for the holder or because allowing people to have surplus wealth has less moral value than redistributing it. Drawing on recent literature on distributive justice, I defend two types of limitarian (...) principles of justice. First, limitarian midlevel principles draw on the limitarian thesis to specify normative commitments for guiding institutional design and individual actions. Second, the limitarian presumption draws on that thesis to specify what a just allocation of wealth requires under epistemic constraints. Such a presumption says that without substantive reasons to the contrary, we should regard a distribution as unjust if some people’s wealth exceeds the limitarian threshold. Furthermore, I will argue that we must reject a possible but implausible interpretation of limitarianism as an ideal distributive pattern. Yet both as a midlevel principle and as a presumption, limitarianism can play an important role in theorizing about justice in the real world. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism. I argue that sufficientarianism combines three claims: a priority claim that we have non-instrumental reasons to prioritize benefits in certain ranges over benefits in other ranges; a continuum claim that at least two of those ranges are on one continuum; and a deficiency claim that the lower a range on a continuum, the more priority benefits in that range have. This characterization of sufficientarianism sheds new light on two long-standing philosophical (...) debates, namely about the distinctiveness of sufficientarianism as a distributive principle and about the common objections to sufficientarianism. (shrink)

Background The European Union aims to optimize patient protection and efficiency of health-care research by harmonizing procedures across Member States. Nonetheless, further improvements are required to increase multicenter research efficiency. We investigated IRB procedures in a large prospective European multicenter study on traumatic brain injury, aiming to inform and stimulate initiatives to improve efficiency. Methods We reviewed relevant documents regarding IRB submission and IRB approval from European neurotrauma centers participating in the Collaborative European NeuroTrauma Effectiveness Research in Traumatic Brain Injury. (...) Documents included detailed information on IRB procedures and the duration from IRB submission until approval. They were translated and analyzed to determine the level of harmonization of IRB procedures within Europe. Results From 18 countries, 66 centers provided the requested documents. The primary IRB review was conducted centrally or locally and primary IRB approval was obtained after one, two or three review rounds with a median duration of respectively 50 and 98 days until primary IRB approval. Additional IRB approval was required in 55% of countries and could increase duration to 535 days. Total duration from submission until required IRB approval was obtained was 114 days and appeared to be shorter after submission to local IRBs compared to central IRBs. Conclusion We found variation in IRB procedures between and within European countries. There were differences in submission and approval requirements, number of review rounds and total duration. Research collaborations could benefit from the implementation of more uniform legislation and regulation while acknowledging local cultural habits and moral values between countries. (shrink)

In this contribution we will briefly discuss the shareholders' need for social, ethical and environmental information and the efforts of corporations to address this need. Looking at three cases, we will raise some doubt with regard to the adequacy of corporate SEE reporting to meet the needs of shareholders. We will discuss the following three cases: BP's investments in Azerbaijan, Nike's management of its labour conditions, of child labour and security issues, and Monsanto's production of genetically modified seeds.

Limitarianism holds that there is an upper limit to how many resources, such as wealth and income, people can permissibly have. In this article, I examine the conceptual structure of limitarianism. I focus on the upper limit and the idea that resources above the limit are ‘excess resources’. I distinguish two possible limitarian views about such resources: (i) that excess resources have zero moral value for the holder; and (ii) that excess resources do have moral value for the holder but (...) that their claim to such resources is outweighed by other normative concerns. Moreover, I argue that, depending on the values limitarianism seeks to promote, limitarians should care about the number of people with excess resources or the total amount of excess resources (or both), that they can adopt redistributive measures and/or predistributive measures, and that some versions of limitarianism should take into account the distribution of risk among those above the riches line. (shrink)

Almost everyone believes that freedom from deprivation should have significant weight in specifying what justice between generations requires. Some theorists hold that it should always trump other distributive concerns. Other theorists hold that it should have some but not lexical priority. I argue instead that freedom from deprivation should have lexical priority in some cases, yet weighted priority in others. More specifically, I defend semi-strong sufficientarianism. This view posits a deprivation threshold at which people are free from deprivation, and an (...) affluence threshold at which people can live an affluent life, even though their lives may be even further improved beyond that point. I argue that freedom from deprivation in one generation lexically outweighs providing affluence in another generation; in all other cases, freedom from deprivation does not have lexical priority. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the social and ethical issues that arise as a result of digitization based on six dominant technologies: Internet of Things, robotics, biometrics, persuasive technology, virtual & augmented reality, and digital platforms. We highlight the many developments in the digitizing society that appear to be at odds with six recurring themes revealing from our analysis of the scientific literature on the dominant technologies: privacy, autonomy, security, human dignity, justice, and balance of power. This study shows that (...) the new wave of digitization is putting pressure on these public values. In order to effectively shape the digital society in a socially and ethically responsible way, stakeholders need to have a clear understanding of what such issues might be. Supervision has been developed the most in the areas of privacy and data protection. For other ethical issues concerning digitization such as discrimination, autonomy, human dignity and unequal balance of power, the supervision is not as well organized. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of thresholds and limits in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of their role within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around threshold views in distributive justice. In this thesis, I develop an account of the conceptual structure of such views. Such an account helps understand and characterize threshold views, can subsume what may seem to be different debates about such views under one conceptual header, and can be (...) used to further examine and develop patterns of justice that draw on thresholds. In light of this account, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism which sheds new light on the distinctiveness of sufficientarianism as a distributive principle and on the common objections to sufficientarianism. Moreover, I examine and defend limitarianism, which is the view that people should not have more than a certain amount of wealth. In particular, I argue in favour of limitarianism as a midlevel principle for guiding institutional design and individual actions and, furthermore, as a specification of what a just allocation of wealth requires under epistemic constraints. (shrink)

Conventional categories of creativity are being deconstructed after the so-called postmodern debate. This article takes this process deeper, to what we will show is the hidden subtext of gender underlying how creativity has been socially constructed. It also proposes a more contextualized approach to creativity that takes into account both its individual and social dimensions and how this relates to what Eisler (1987) has called a partnership rather than dominator model of society.

(2013). Human Possibilities: An Integrated Systems Approach. World Futures: Vol. 69, The Complexity of Life and Lives of Complexity, pp. 269-289.