In the history of Jewish, Christian and Muslim culture, religious identity was not only formed by historical claims, but also by the usage of certain images: “images of God”, “images of the others”, “images of the self.”This book includes a discussion of the role of these images in society and politics, in theology and liturgy, yesterday and today.

In historiography Calvinism has suffered from several interpreters who have sought to recruit it for this or that contemporary school of thought. In this article I will discuss some of these approaches developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. On the basis of recent research it is argued that it historically and theologically incorrect to force Calvinism into an overall system which is controlled by theological or socio-political ‘unit ideas’ or even a ‘central dogma.’ Instead the historian of theology should (...) attempt to develop a historical approach to the Reformed tradition after Calvin that is not influenced by nineteenth or twentieth century agenda's that impose categories of modern theology onto early modern theologians. Such an approach takes account of the complexity and wide variety of post-Reformation Reformed tradition. (shrink)

Welfare-friendly outdoor poultry husbandry systems are associated with potentially higher public health risks for certain hazards, which results in a dilemma: whether to choose a system that improves chicken welfare or a system that reduces these public health risks. We studied the views of citizens and poultry farmers on judging the dilemma, relevant moral convictions and moral arguments in a practical context. By means of an online questionnaire, citizens and poultry farmers judged three practical cases, which illustrate the dilemma of (...) improving chicken welfare or reducing public health risks for Campylobacter, avian influenza and dioxin. Furthermore, they scored the importance of moral arguments and to what extend they agreed with moral convictions related to humans and chickens. Citizens were more likely than farmers to choose a system that benefits chicken welfare at the expense of public health. These different judgments could be explained by differing moral convictions and valuations of moral arguments. Judgments of citizens and farmers were associated with moral arguments and convictions, predominantly with those regarding the value of chickens and naturalness. Citizens agreed stronger with moral convictions regarding the intrinsic value of chickens and regarding naturalness than farmers did, while farmers agreed stronger with conviction regarding fairness. We argue that opinions of citizens and farmers are context-dependent, which may explain the differences between these groups. It implies that opinions of different stakeholder groups should be considered in order to achieve successful innovations in poultry husbandry, which are supported by society. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to shed light on the dynamics of regional identity construction and deconstruction. We will argue that four forms of identity can be identified that are linked through various processes of change. To that end, we will theoretically conceptualise 'identity' by discussing historical and current scholarly debates on identity in a variety of scientific disciplines. Then, we will argue that the mutual contradiction of the current theories is a paradox if seen from the angle of regional (...) identity construction and deconstruction. Building upon elements from the various theoretical approaches, we propose a heuristic model describing the dynamics of identity construction and deconstruction, which will be explored by means of the example of the Green Heart region, a spatial planning concept in western Holland. (shrink)

Why act when the effects of one’s act are negligible? For example, why boycott sweatshop or animal products if doing so makes no difference for the better? According to recent proposals, one may still have a reason to boycott in order to avoid complicity or participation in harm. Julia Nefsky has argued that accounts of this kind suffer from the so-called “superfluity problem,” basically the question of why agents can be said to participate in harm if they make no difference (...) to it. This paper develops and responds to Nefsky’s challenge. (shrink)

We give a model for iterated belief change in multi-agent systems. The formal tool we use for this is a combination of modal and dynamic logic. Two core notions in our model are the expansion of the knowledge and beliefs of an agent, and the processing of new information. An expansion is defined as the change in the knowledge and beliefs of an agent when it decides to believe an incoming formula while holding on to its current propositional beliefs. To (...) prevent our agents from forming inconsistent beliefs they do not expand with every piece of information they receive. Instead, our agents remember their original beliefs and every piece of information they receive. After every receipt of information they decide which subset of the received information should be incorporated into their original beliefs. This procedure is called the processing of new information. We show that our model of belief update behaves in an intuitive way and that it is not sensitive to criticism on comparable models. (shrink)

This paper analyses the republican notion of non-domination from the viewpoint of individual dignity. It determines the aspect of individual dignity that republicans are concerned with and scrutinises how it is safeguarded by non-domination. I argue that the notion of non-domination as it is formulated by Pettit contains a number of ambiguities that need to be addressed. I discuss these ambiguities and argue for specific solutions that place great importance on a person’s moral beliefs and his status as a moral (...) being amongst others. Furthermore, I argue that the impunity interpretation is to be favoured over the immunity interpretation of non-domination. I show that whilst these solutions accord well with many important republican tenets, they have other implications that contradict known republican positions. In particular, I show there is both room and a need for retributivism within republicanism. (shrink)

This textbook not only provides the student with a solid foundation in ethics, but introduces students to the most important themes relevant to business today. Issues such as human rights violation down in the supply chain, the effect business has on nature and the environment, and inclusiveness are each discussed in separate chapters, which discuss their importance, but also their challenges. While there are numerous business ethics textbooks, few take a philosophical approach to business ethics. However, without introducing philosophical ethics, (...) discussions about business ethics are bound to get stuck in fallacies and paradoxes. This textbook therefore fills an important societal gap by providing an introduction to profound philosophical issues in clear language at a philosophically high, but accessible level. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to shed light on the dynamics of regional identity construction and deconstruction. We will argue that four forms of identity can be identified that are linked through various processes of change. To that end, we will theoretically conceptualise 'identity' by discussing historical and current scholarly debates on identity in a variety of scientific disciplines. Then, we will argue that the mutual contradiction of the current theories is a paradox if seen from the angle of regional (...) identity construction and deconstruction. Building upon elements from the various theoretical approaches, we propose a heuristic model describing the dynamics of identity construction and deconstruction, which will be explored by means of the example of the Green Heart region, a spatial planning concept in western Holland. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to shed light on the dynamics of regional identity construction and deconstruction. We will argue that four forms of identity can be identified that are linked through various processes of change. To that end, we will theoretically conceptualise 'identity' by discussing historical and current scholarly debates on identity in a variety of scientific disciplines. Then, we will argue that the mutual contradiction of the current theories is a paradox if seen from the angle of regional (...) identity construction and deconstruction. Building upon elements from the various theoretical approaches, we propose a heuristic model describing the dynamics of identity construction and deconstruction, which will be explored by means of the example of the Green Heart region, a spatial planning concept in western Holland. (shrink)

Dishonesty is ubiquitous in our world. The news is frequently filled with high-profile cases of corporate fraud, large-scale corruption, lying politicians, and the hypocrisy of public figures. On a smaller scale, ordinary people often cheat, lie, misreport their taxes, and mislead others in their daily life. Despite such prevalence of cheating, corruption, and concealment, people typically consider themselves to be honest, and often believe themselves to be more moral than most others. This book aims to resolve this paradox by addressing (...) the question of why people are dishonest all too often. What motivates dishonesty, and how are people able to perceive themselves as moral despite their dishonest behaviour? What personality and interpersonal factors make dishonesty more likely? And what can be done to recognize and reduce dishonesty? This is a fascinating overview of state-of-the-art research on dishonesty, with prominent scholars offering their views to clarify the roots of dishonesty. (shrink)

This contribution aims at deconstructing a Christian master narrative that interprets Josephus as crucial support for the New Testament message that the Temple had to become a ruin, in line with the will of God. It argues for an alternative interpretation, namely that both Jesus of Nazareth and Josephus considered the Temple to be still relevant, albeit in different ways. For Jesus the Temple was the self-evident cultic centre of Judaism and a special place to experience his relationship with God. (...) None of Jesus’ statements about the Temple in their original context necessarily implies that Jesus assumed that the institution of the Temple would stop functioning in the near future or at the end of time. Josephus’s perspective on the Temple changes in his works. The elaborate description of Jerusalem and the Temple in War 5 reads as a written monument of the past, but several passages in Josephus’s Antiquities and Against Apion imply that the Temple was still important after 70 CE. Josephus may have reckoned with the possibility that the Temple was going to be rebuilt if the Romans allowed for it.This contribution is dedicated to Pieter G.R. de Villiers, a modest but sophisticated scholar and a good friend. (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.

In three experiments, picture quality between test items was manipulated to examine whether subjects’ expectations about the fluency normally associated with these different stimuli might influence the effects of fluency on preference or familiarity-based recognition responses. The results showed that fluency due to pre-exposure influenced responses less when objects were presented with high picture quality, suggesting that attributions of fluency to preference and familiarity are adjusted according to expectations about the different test pictures. However, this expectations influence depended on subjects’ (...) awareness of these different quality levels. Indeed, imperceptible differences seemed not to induce expectations about the test item fluency. In this context, fluency due to both picture quality and pre-exposure influenced direct responses. Conversely, obvious, and noticed, differences in test picture quality did no affect responses, suggesting that expectations moderated attributions of fluency only when fluency normally associated with these different stimuli was perceptible but difficult to assess. (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)

Introduction 1. Alexander in Modern Scholarship; The Present Translation The anti-Manichaean treatise of Alexander of Lycopolis has for a long time been...

The objective of this study was to explore the participants’ processing strategies on the mere exposure effect, object decision priming and explicit recognition. In Experiments 1, we observed that recognition and the mere exposure effect for unfamiliar three-dimensional objects were not dissociated by plane rotations in the same way as recognition and object decision priming. However, we showed that, under identical conditions, prompting analytic processing at testing produced a large plane rotation effect on recognition and the mere exposure effect similar (...) to that observed for object decision priming. Furthermore, inducing a non-analytic processing strategy at testing produced a reduced plane rotation effect on recognition and object decision, similar to that observed for the mere exposure effect. These findings suggest that participants’ processing strategies influence performance on the three tasks. (shrink)

Background Since the enactment of the euthanasia law in the Netherlands, there has been a lively public debate on assisted dying that may influence the way patients talk about euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide with their physicians and the way physicians experience the practice of EAS. Aim To show what developments physicians see in practice and how they perceive the influence of the public debate on the practice of EAS. Methods We conducted a secondary analysis of in-depth interviews with 28 Dutch (...) physicians who had experience with a complex case of EAS. Respondents were recruited both by the network of physicians working for SCEN as well as via a national questionnaire, wherein participating physicians could indicate their willingness to be interviewed. Results Three themes came up in analysing the interviews. First, the interviewed physicians experienced a change in what patients would expect from them: from a role as an involved caregiver to being the mere performer of EAS. Second, interviewees said that requests for EAS based on non-medical reasons came up more frequently and wondered if EAS was the right solution for these requests. Last, respondents had the impression that the standards of EAS are shifting and that the boundaries of the EAS regulation were stretched. Conclusions The perceived developments could make physicians less willing to consider a request for EAS. Our results also raise questions about the role of physicians and of EAS in society. (shrink)

Can a person’s degree of wellbeing be affected by things that do not enter her experience? Experientialists deny that it can, extra-experientialists affirm it. The debate between these two positions has focused on an argument against experientialism—the experience machine objection—but few arguments exist for it. I present an argument for experientialism. It builds on the claim that theories of wellbeing should not only state what constitutes wellbeing, but also which entities are welfare subjects. Moreover, the claims it makes about these (...) two issues should have a certain coherence with each other. I argue that if we accept a particular plausible answer to the second question—namely that all and only sentient beings are welfare subjects—extra-experientialist theories face a problem of coherence. While this problem can typically be solved, doing so will involve steps that are unattractive. On experientialist theories, on the other hand, the answer to these questions cohere perfectly. (shrink)

What constitutes the nature of pleasure? According to hedonic phenomenalism, pleasant experiences are pleasant in virtue of some phenomenological features. According to hedonic attitudinalism, pleasure involves an attitude—a class of mental states that necessarily have an object. Consequently, pleasures are always _about_ something. We argue that hedonic attitudinalism is not able to accommodate pleasant moods. We first consider this argument more generally, and then consider what we call _the globalist strategy response_ to the possible objectless of moods, namely that pleasant (...) moods have general, or undetermined, objects. We then discuss the case of blissful meditative states, and argue that the globalist strategy is not able to accommodate all pleasant states. (shrink)

Measures of happiness are increasingly being used throughout the social sciences. While these measures have attracted numerous types of criticisms, a crucial aspect of these measures has been left largely unexplored—their calibration. Using Eran Tal’s recently developed notion of calibration we argue first that the prospect of continued calibration of happiness measures is crucial for the science of happiness, and second, that continued calibration of happiness measures faces a particular problem—The Two Unknowns Problem. The Two Unknowns Problem relies on the (...) claim that individuals are necessarily a part of the measurement apparatus in first person measures of happiness, and the claim that we have no reason to believe that the evaluation standards people employ are invariant across individuals and time. We argue that calibrating happiness measures therefore involves solving an equation with two unknowns—an individual’s degree of happiness, and their evaluation standards—which is, generally, not possible. Third, we consider two possible escape routes from this problem and we suggest that the most promising route requires yet unexplored empirical and theoretical work on linking happiness to behavioral or neural evidence. (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)

Cancers often express hundreds of genes otherwise specific to germ cells, the germline/cancer (GC) genes. Here, we present and discuss the hypothesis that activation of a “germline program” promotes cancer cell malignancy. We do so by proposing four hallmark processes of the germline: meiosis, epigenetic plasticity, migration, and metabolic plasticity. Together, these hallmarks enable replicative immortality of germ cells as well as cancer cells. Especially meiotic genes are frequently expressed in cancer, implying that genes unique to meiosis may play a (...) role in oncogenesis. Because GC genes are not expressed in healthy somatic tissues, they form an appealing source of specific treatment targets with limited side effects besides infertility. Although it is still unclear why germ cell specific genes are so abundantly expressed in cancer, from our hypothesis it follows that the germline's reproductive program is intrinsic to cancer development. (shrink)

An increasing number of older patients have to decide on a treatment plan for advanced chronic kidney disease, involving dialysis or conservative care. Shared decision-making is recommended as the model for decision-making in such preference-sensitive decisions. The aim of SDM is to come to decisions that are consistent with the patient’s values and preferences and made by the patient and healthcare professional working together. In clinical practice, however, SDM appears to be not yet routine and needs further implementation. A shift (...) from a biomedical to a person-centered conception might help to make the process more shared. Shared should, therefore, be interpreted as two persons bringing two perspectives to the table, that both need to be explored during the decision-making process. Starting from the patient’s perspective will enable to determine the mutual goals of care first and, subsequently, determine the best way for achieving those goals. To perform such SDM, the healthcare professional needs to become a skilled companion, being part of the patient’s relational context, and start asking the right questions about what matters to the patient as person. In this article, we describe the need for a person-centered conception of SDM for the setting of older patients with advanced CKD. (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.

The frequent occurrence of comorbidity has brought about an extensive theoretical debate in psychiatry. Why are the rates of psychiatric comorbidity so high and what are their implications for the ontological and epistemological status of comorbid psychiatric diseases? Current explanations focus either on classification choices or on causal ties between disorders. Based on empirical and philosophical arguments, we propose a conventionalist interpretation of psychiatric comorbidity instead. We argue that a conventionalist approach fits well with research and clinical practice and resolves (...) two problems for psychiatric diseases: experimenter’s regress and arbitrariness. (shrink)

Does the moral badness of pain depend on who feels it? A common, but generally only implicitly stated view, is that it does not. This view, ‘unitarianism’, maintains that the same interests of different beings should count equally in our moral calculus. Shelly Kagan’s project in How to Count Animals, more or less is to reject this common view, and develop an alternative to it: a hierarchical view of moral status, on which the badness of pain does depend on who (...) feels it. In this review essay, we critically examine Kagan’s argument for status hierarchy. In particular, we reject two of the central premises in his argument: that moral standing is ultimately grounded in agency and that unitarianism is overdemanding. We conclude that moral status may, despite Kagan’s compelling argument to the contrary, not be hierarchical. (shrink)

We present a test of a revised version of the Second Language Linguistic Perception (L2LP) model, a computational model of the acquisition of second language (L2) speech perception and recognition. The model draws on phonetic, phonological and psycholinguistic constructs to explain a number of L2 learning scenarios. However, a recent computational implementation failed to validate a theoretical proposal for a learning scenario where the L2 has less phonemic categories than the native language (L1) along a given acoustic continuum. According to (...) the L2LP, learners faced with this learning scenario must not only shift their old L1 phoneme boundaries but also reduce the number of categories employed in perception. Our proposed revision to L2LP successfully accounts for this updating in the number of perceptual categories as a process driven by the meaning of lexical items, rather than by the learners’ awareness of the number and type of phonemes that are relevant in their new language, as the previous version of L2LP assumed. Results of our simulations show that meaning-driven learning correctly predicts the developmental path of L2 phoneme perception seen in empirical studies. Additionally, and to contribute to a long-standing debate in psycholinguistics, we test two versions of the model, with the stages of phonemic perception and lexical recognition being either sequential or interactive. Both versions succeed in learning to recognize minimal pairs in the new L2, but make diverging predictions on learners' resulting phonological representations. In sum, the proposed revision to the L2LP model contributes to our understanding of L2 acquisition, with implications for speech processing in general. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Match-fixing is a major ethical issue in sports. Although research interest in match-fixing has increased in recent years, we remain largely in the dark regarding how both betting- and non-betting-related match-fixing relate to the moral decision-making of those involved. Drawing on Rest’s theory of morality and on the perceptions of a large sample of participants in Flemish sports, this study indicates that most match-fixing incidents are non-betting-related, while moral motivation and associated challenges clearly differ according to the type of (...) match-fixing. Therefore, each type of match-fixing requires different preventive measures. (shrink)

Work has always been a significant source of ethical questions, philosophical reflection, and political struggle. Although the future of work in a sense is always at stake, the issue is particularly relevant right now, in light of the advent of advanced AI systems and the collective experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has reinvigorated philosophical discussion and interest in the study of the future of work. The purpose of this survey article is to provide an overview of the emerging philosophical (...) field that engages with the future of work, with a special focus on equality and justice, and to outline a research agenda that can help the field to develop further. Section 2 provides some historical context for the current surge in interest in the topic. Then, we discuss what work is and whether there is a philosophy of work (Section 3). The four main sub-debates we then turn to concern the value of work (Section 4), distributive justice and work (Section 5), productive justice (Section 6), and institutional reforms prompted by changes in how work is organized (Section 7). The final section discusses the importance of the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory in philosophical investigations into the future of work. (shrink)

Serena Olsaretti argues that desert cannot serve as a plausible principle of stakes for luck egalitarianism. In this discussion note, we defend the claim that she is too pessimistic about this by introducing a simple, but plausible, desert-based account of stakes that is immune to her argument.

This paper examines the increasingly popular view that new insights from the science of subjective well-being (SSWB) should play a prominent role in the determination of public policy. Though there are instrumental reasons for caring about societal happiness too, these political aspirations of the SSWB appear to be mostly intrinsically motivated. As the intrinsic value of happiness is endorsed across the political happiness as a fitting response to the state of the world, authenticity, and merit – it is shown that (...) different views of the conditionality of the intrinsic value of happiness have widely diverging policy implications, which greatly undermines the political aspirations of the SSWB. (shrink)