We invite systematic consideration of the metaphors of cycles and circulation as a long-term theme in the history of the life and environmental sciences and medicine. Ubiquitous in ancient religious and philosophical traditions, especially in representing the seasons and the motions of celestial bodies, circles once symbolized perfection. Over the centuries cyclic images in western medicine, natural philosophy, natural history and eventually biology gained independence from cosmology and theology and came to depend less on strictly circular forms. As potent ‘canonical (...) icons’, cycles also interacted with representations of linear and irreversible change, including arrows, arcs, scales, series and trees, as in theories of the Earth and of evolution. In modern times life cycles and reproductive cycles have often been held to characterize life, in some cases especially female life, while human efforts selectively to foster and disrupt these cycles have harnessed their productivity in medicine and agriculture. But strong cyclic metaphors have continued to link physiology and climatology, medicine and economics, and biology and manufacturing, notably through the relations between land, food and population. From the grand nineteenth-century transformations of matter to systems ecology, the circulation of molecules through organic and inorganic compartments has posed the problem of maintaining identity in the face of flux and highlights the seductive ability of cyclic schemes to imply closure where no original state was in fact restored. More concerted attention to cycles and circulation will enrich analyses of the power of metaphors to naturalize understandings of life and their shaping by practical interests and political imaginations. (shrink)

Samenvatting van de grote wijsgerige systemen van Plato tot en met Hegel, gevolgd door een kritische analyse van de metafysica als uitingsvorm van westers intellectualisme.

The European Commission’s proposal to address antimicrobial resistance using transferable exclusivity vouchers (TEVs) is fundamentally flawed. European policymakers and regulators should consider alternatives, such as better funding for basic and clinical research, use of advance market commitments funded by a pay-or-play tax, or enacting an EU Fund for Antibiotic Development.

This article challenges Nicholas Wolterstorff’s rights-based reading of Old Testament orphans by arguing that the prophetic demand for their cause not only assumes a right-order ethos championed in the Torah, but in doing so exposes the shortcomings in how justice is defined for orphaned children within current rights ideology, whether theistic or not. I present the orphan’s historical trajectory towards becoming socially vulnerable as the final stage in the transition from the kinship-redeemer justice of Israelite village clans to the chesed (...) justice of the patronage economy in emerging urban conditions. In light of these conditions, I show how the orphan laws in Deuteronomy are, counter to Wolterstorff’s claims of corruption, attempting to re-create in legal terms the kinship bond and chesed benevolence that defines the orphan’s justice as the return to a family. I argue that the prophet does not blame inherently corrupt laws, but rather blames patrons and elders who have ignored good laws and ignored right-order by forgetting their brothers’ and sons’ children. (shrink)

As a nexus of fertility’s finitude and female midlife, menopause is a physical and cultural phenomenon through which the relation between the medicalization of the female reproductive cycle and normative attitudes toward aging become expressed. Age, like other systems of separation, can function as an “instrument of regulatory regimes” and shows similarities to gender in its body-bound, surface-focused, and morally coded position in the sociomedical sphere. However, although age is an influential social category, its reliance on historical and epistemic constructions (...) of the body has not been politicized to a degree comparable to other categories like gender, race, and sexuality. As Kathleen. (shrink)

In this review, we provide an overview of the dynamic changes within the microbiota and its metabolites that are implicated in establishing and maintaining gastrointestinal homeostasis during various stages of microbial colonization. The gradual conversion of the gut microbiota toward a mutualistic microbial community involves replacement of pioneer gut colonizers with bacterial taxa that are characteristic for the adult gut. An important microbial signature of homeostasis in the adult gut is the prevalence and activity of a diverse spectrum of bacterial (...) species that produce beneficial metabolites through metabolic interactions between microbial groups. Deciphering these microbial signatures and their metabolites that govern short and long‐term equilibrium, as well as imbalances in host‐microbial relationships, may provide novel diagnostic tools and/or therapeutic targets for specific disorders associated with intestinal dysbiosis and loss of homeostasis. (shrink)

Classroom discussion is frequently proposes as an essential part of democratic citizenship education. Literature, however, pays little attention to what kind of discussion is most effective and how teachers can facilitate a discussion. This study aims to contribute to the development of a framework for analysing the characteristics of classroom discussions and the different roles teachers can adopt in guiding a discussion on controversial issues. In addition, we investigated how the way teachers guide the discussion is related to the structure (...) and content features of the discussion. The framework was used to analyse five classroom discussions in secondary education. Our framework appeared to be useful for revealing differences in the structure and content features of the classroom discussions and in the way teachers guide the discussion. The results also indicated that a high degree of teacher regulation was related to high content quality and more participation from students. A high degree of stu... (shrink)

This article discusses the moment in which normative ideas about aging and reproductive embodiment became conceptually linked in the mid-nineteenthcentury medicalization of menopause. The reading centers on the first English book-length publication on menopause, written by E. J. Tilt in 1857, and Foucault’s concept of the medical gaze. I analyze mechanisms of observing, conceptualizing, and treating the body in relation to time and discuss their function in affirming and reworking social norms of age and gender. In doing so, I highlight (...) the political work implicit in contesting conceptualizations of female reproductive bodies, their age-specific pathologies, and directives of surveillance employed in discourses surrounding women’s reproductive health. (shrink)

Freezing Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the Gender Politics of Aging is the fourth path-breaking monography in the flourishing literature on egg freezing in just a few years. In April 2019, The Oocyte Economy: The Changing Meaning of Human Eggs by the renowned Australian social scientist Catherine Waldby, was published, the first book to examine the emergence of a global market for eggs through biomedical innovation. In September 2019, sociologist Kylie Baldwin of De Montfort University published Egg Freezing, Fertility and Reproductive (...) Choice: Negotiating Responsibility, Hope and Modern Motherhood, in which she explores the experiences of some pioneering women who are having eggs frozen in the United... (shrink)

In this paper a corporate social responsibility audit is developed following the underlying methodology of the quality award/excellence models. Firstly the extent to which the quality awards already incorporate the development of social responsibility is examined by looking at the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the European Quality Award. It will be shown that the quality awards do not yet include ethical aspects in relation to social responsibility. Both a clear definition of social responsibility and an improved audit instrument (...) are required. A definition and an audit instrument are developed which stimulate movement in that direction and help organisations to reflect on their position in relation to social responsibility. (shrink)

Organizations such as the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI and the IEEE have recently formulated ethical principles and (moral) values that should be adhered to in the design and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). These include respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, fairness, transparency, explainability, and accountability. But how can we ensure and verify that an AI system actually respects these values? To help answer this question, I propose an account for determining when an AI system can be said to embody (...) certain values. This account understands embodied values as the result of design activities intended to embed those values in such systems. AI systems are here understood as a special kind of sociotechnical system that, like traditional sociotechnical systems, are composed of technical artifacts, human agents, and institutions but—in addition—contain artificial agents and certain technical norms that regulate interactions between artificial agents and other elements of the system. The specific challenges and opportunities of embedding values in AI systems are discussed, and some lessons for better embedding values in AI systems are drawn. (shrink)

In this study, an attempt is made to understand why Burke at the same time refers to the natural law and to the principle of inheritance as moral standards for the human will. Indeed, the latter principle implies reverence to a particular tradition, whereas natural law is a universal standard, binding all people. First, the meaning of the principle of inheritance in Burke's critique of the French Revolution is explained, and next the conception of the natural law he implicitly adopts. (...) In the latter, the close link between the doctrine of the natural law and the doctrine of prudence deserves our particular attention. It is the task of prudence to give concrete form to the natural law in a way of life and a constitution, by adapting it to the concrete circumstances of a particular society. For Burke, however, this adaptation is the work of the practical reason of many generations and many individuals. Man's individual reason is too limited to invent a good social order. The latter is rather the unintended consequence of a process of bargaining and accommodation. It is thus wise and natural for Burke that people bend their eyes to the tradition as to an instantiation of the natural law. In normal circumstances, individuals do not need to appeal immediately to the principles of natural law. In the next section then, it is shown that it is Burke's conception of Providence which enables him to believe that the tradition represents here and now the natural law. Moreover, the practical substitution of the natural law by the principle of inheritance affects Burke's understanding of prudence. Prudence no longer receives its moral direction in the first place from the natural affections but from the prejudices. The habituation to a way of life and culture provides people with a practical knowledge of what is good here and now. They learn to act in a habitual manner without needing an abstract and universal theory. According to Burke, only 'narrative discourses', interpreting and articulating the 'spirit' of the constitution can have some meaning for the practical direction of our lives. The study ends in an interrogation of this last point. Doesn't a community ever need a universal and abstract theory in order to go on living as a moral community ? And what can it expect from such a moral, c.q. political theory? (shrink)

This comprehensive and accessible book is designed for use by students following the Theory of Knowledge course in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme. The book is also useful for students following other critical thinking courses. The fundamental question in Theory of Knowledge is 'How do you know? In exploring this question, the author encourages critical thinking across a range of subject areas and helps students to ask relevant questions, use language with care and precision, support ideas with evidence, argue (...) coherently and make sound judgements. All chapters include the following features: - preliminary quotations to prompt critical thinking - questions and exercises to encourage students to actively engage with the material - reading resources to explore some of the topics in greater depth - illustrations to support the text Richard van de Lagemaat has more than 20 years' experience in international education. (shrink)

It often appears that leading politicians in Belgium consider the results of the municipal elections in the light of national polities. They stick to the thesis that the municipal poll-results, at least in the bigger towns, are more and more influenced by the constellation of the nation's politics.Is it really so that the municipal elections indicate the hearings of the national political situation? Can one draw conclusions from the results of these elections as if they were national ones? And can (...) one,any how, compare municipal to parliamentary elections? By comparison of the results of municipal elections 1964 and of parliamentary elections 1965 it was checked which shifts in party-choice havehappened during this short period of eight months. If no oscillations, or only a few, were detected between both elections, one could conclude that the municipal elections 1964 indicated indeed the hearings of the parliamentary elections 1965.Successively, the national and provincial results of these elections were compared and the party-shifts on national and provincial level were calculated.To make a relevant comparison between the election-results on a lower level, a comparable basic unity had to be found. As there were no municipal data available at parliamentary elections on one side, andonly municipal results at the municipal elections on the other side, the least possible unity for which parliamentary election-results are known, the electoral canton namely, was chosen as a comparison-basis. For that purpose however the results per party had to be additioned in all municipalities belonging to one canton.Part of the electoral cantons was unfit for use as comparison-material for two reasons : the highly varied and often strongly local-coloured political party-structure on one hand, the big number of municipalitieswithout elections on the other hand. So we were bound to make a choice out of 212 electoral cantons. Finally the cantons with a maximum of 4 municipalities were chosen, which limited the number of cantons to 28. These cantons were classified by degree of urbanisation according to the typology of W. Van Waelvelde and H. Van der Haegen.In that classification the percentages of votes in favour of the political parties, at the occasion of these elections, were tabulated and compared.The participating parties and lists were grouped as much as possible around the traditional parties to which they were most related. So we distinguish in Flanders : CVP, BSP, PVV, VU, CPB and other parties ;in the Walloon region: PSC, PSB, PLP PCB, French-speaking lists and other parties.For this analysis we also thought it was relevant to control separately the shifts of the electoral corps in the Flemish, the Walloon and the Brussels cantons. These shifts were then specified according to thedegree of urbanisation.To measure the size of the party-shifts for these elections, the external election-shift standard was calculated for the chosen Flemish, Walloon and Brussels cantons, with a special attention for the degree of urbanisation. Finally we examined which attitude was assumed by the government, the governmental and the opposition parties, in relation to the results of the municipal 1964 elections.It appeared that some notable party-shifts had been realized during the short period between the municipal elections of 1964 and the legislative elections of 1965. In general, a certain polarization has taken place due to a centrifugal vote-shift to the left and still more to the right. The direction of vote-shifts, which had shown at the municipal elections of 1964, was affirmed at the legislative elections of 1965 and for some parties, CVP and PVV namely, it was even accentuated. The parallelism between both elections in relation to the direction of the vote-shifts did not mean however that the size of these shifts was the same everywhere. The image of the shifts was different according to linguistic region and degree of urbanisation.The analysis of the urbanisation-degree showed that the level of oscillations grew higher as the urbanisation-degree grew lower. Seen per linguistic region, the largest shifts had taken place in the Walloon cantons. According to the calculations of the electoral shift standards during the period 1964-1965, the lowest oscillations were noted in the Flemish and Brussels cantons, i.e. the voting-behaviour of the big agglomerations during the municipal elections of 1964 were the closest to the national electoral pattern. Seen that way they were, up to a certain degree, a value-measure for the general policy.Finally the remark should be made that the limitation to the two above-mentioned elections does not allow any generalization of the obtained conclusions. The short period between those elections was itself an exceptional situation which may have been of influence on the results of the comparisons. (shrink)

We establish completeness and the finite model property for logics featuring the pooling modalities that were introduced in Van De Putte and Klein. The definition of our canonical models combines standard techniques with a so-called “puzzle piece construction”, which we first illustrate informally. After that, we apply it to the weakest classical logics with pooling modalities and investigate the technique’s potential for the axiomatization of stronger logics, obtained by imposing well-known frame conditions on the models.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop an ethical framework for the marketing of corporate social responsibility. Methods The approach is a conceptual one based on virtue ethics and on the corporate identity literature. Furthermore, empirical research results are used to describe the opportunities and pitfalls of using marketing communication tools in the strategy of building a virtuous corporate brand. Results/conclusions An ethical framework that addresses the paradoxical relation between the consequentialist perspective many proponents of the marketing of (...) CSR adopt, and ethical perspectives which criticize an exclusive profit-oriented approach to CSR. Furthermore, three CSR strategies in relation to the marketing of CSR are discussed. For each CSR strategy it is explored how a corporation could avoid falling into the promise/performance gap. (shrink)

In Belgium, as in most countries, each Minister or Secretary is assisted by a limited number of trusted collaborators who constitute the Ministerial Office.The article is an attempt to shed a light on the Chief Ministerial Officer who is the closest collaborator of the Minister.In order to show the role of the Chief Ministerial Officer, the article first describes the tasks, powers and composition of the Ministerial Office to proceed to a more extensive analysis of the functions, the appointment of (...) the Chief Ministerial Officer, and the question whether he can exercise executive power.The most important tasks of the Chief Ministerial Officer are: organization and coordination of the Office and its activities, acting as a «Liaison-Officer» with the Minister, passing on of information, exercising of a form of internal, political and administrative control.The article closes with some more personal remarks, pointing out a few guidelines which a Chief Ministerial Office, should keep in mind. (shrink)

There is no agreement on how nanoethics should proceed. In this article I focus on approaches for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology, which is as of yet one of the most difficult and urging tasks for nanoethics. I discuss and criticize two existing approaches for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology and propose a network approach as alternative. I discuss debates in nanoethics about the desirable role of ethics in nanotechnological development and about the newness of ethical issues in nanotechnology. On (...) basis of a critical analysis of both debates, I formulate a number of desiderata for a method for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology and argue that the network approach that my colleagues and I have developed for ethical issues in research and development networks is also appropriate in nanotechnology. (shrink)

We propose a pragmatist account of value change that helps to understand how and why values sometimes change due to technological developments. Inspired by John Dewey’s writings on value, we propose to understand values as evaluative devices that carry over from earlier experiences and that are to some extent shared in society. We discuss the various functions that values fulfil in moral inquiry and propose a conceptual framework that helps to understand value change as the interaction between three manifestations of (...) value distinguished by Dewey, i.e., “immediate value,” “values as the result of inquiry” and “generalized values.” We show how this framework helps to distinguish three types of value change: value dynamism, value adaptation, and value emergence, and we illustrate these with examples from the domain of technology. We argue that our account helps to better understand how technology may induce value change, namely through the creation of what Dewey calls indeterminate situations, and we show how our account can integrate several insights on moral change offered by other authors. (shrink)

In the value sensitive design literature, there has been little attention for how values may change during the adoption and use of a sociotechnical system, and what that implies for design. A value change taxonomy is proposed, as well as a number of technical features that allow dealing with value change.

Current theories propose that our sense of curiosity is determined by the learning progress or information gain that our cognitive system expects to make. However, few studies have explicitly tried to quantify subjective information gain and link it to measures of curiosity. Here, we asked people to report their curiosity about the intrinsically engaging perceptual ‘puzzles’ known as Mooney images, and to report on the strength of their aha experience upon revealing the solution image (curiosity relief). We also asked our (...) participants (279) to make a guess concerning the solution of the image, and used the distribution of these guesses to compute the crowdsourced semantic entropy (or ambiguity) of the images, as a measure of the potential for information gain. Our results confirm that curiosity and, even more so, aha experience is substantially associated with this semantic information gain measure. These findings support the expected information gain theory of curiosity and suggest that the aha experience or intrinsic reward is driven by the actual information gain. In an unannounced memory part, we also established that the often reported influence of curiosity on memory is fully mediated by the aha experience or curiosity relief. We discuss the implications of our results for the burgeoning fields of curiosity and psychoaesthetics. (shrink)