The institutional reform of the Belgian state seems to run parallel with a redefinition of the whole of Belgian society. 'Subnationalism' has overtaken the traditional ethno-linguistic definitions which used to provide a basis for political identification and mobilisation. The territorial demarcation of the regions and the politicisation of cultural life on both sides of the linguistic border constitute basic ingredientsfor 'nationbuilding'projects in Flanders and Wallonia. A number of elements are distinguished to explain why the 'nationalism' of the regions will have (...) repercussions on the political developments in the capital area. Language and territoriality have always played a special role in Brussels. Changes in connection with definitions of territoriality and identity now seem to create opportunities to redefine the relationship between the communities in Brussels. It is not inconceivable that, in the long run, the linguistic divide wilt fade out and wilt be replaced by an identification on the basis of a territorial criterion shared by all the Brussels' inhabitants. (shrink)

The view that agents are not obliged to do more than their initial fair shares when their fellow duty bearers fail to comply has prominent defenders, including Liam Murphy and David Miller. While Murphy thinks that asking agents to take up other agents’ slack would be unfair, Miller claims that slack-taking cannot be required because primary responsibility does not migrate from noncompliers to compliers. This paper argues, by contrast, that there are a number of circumstances in which there is a (...) duty to take up the slack even though it is unfair and even though responsibility stays where it is. The central claim is that what agents owe to third parties is a separate issue from how they relate to fellow duty bearers. This proposal also runs counter to familiar defenses of slack-taking that weigh its unfairness against the moral importance of the interests at stake for third parties. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 50, Issue 3, Page 271-300, Summer 2022.

Rhythmus figuriert in Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness als wirkmächtige Sinneserfahrung, die Körper affiziert und auf diese Weise Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen Menschen und Maschinen oder aber Europäern und »Barbaren« herstellt. Er wird somit zu einem zentralen Ort der Aushandlung von Ängsten vor der Ansteckung durch das Fremde, wie sie für die britische Literatur zur Zeit der Jahrhundertwende typisch waren. Georg Vasold Am Urgrund der Kunst. Rhythmus und Kunstwissenschaft, ca. 1921. Auf der Suche nach einer zeitgemäßen kunsthistorischen Terminologie entdeckten zu Beginn des (...) 20. Jahrhunderts immer mehr Kunsthistoriker den Rhythmus. Dieser stellte in Aussicht, den zunehmend fragwürdig gewordenen Stilbegriff zu ersetzen. An die Stelle der »ausdruckslosen formalistischen Stilgeschichte« (Julius von Schlosser) sollte eine Rhythmusforschung treten, die die Lebendigkeit des modernen Daseins mitdenkt. Der Rhythmus wurde dabei als Gestaltkategorie aufgefaßt, d.h. als ein anthropologisch fundiertes Gesetz, das alle menschlichen Tätigkeiten, und somit auch die Kunstproduktion, maßgeblich bestimmt. (shrink)

In light of new biomedical technologies, such as artificial reproduction, stem cell research, genetic selection and design, the question of what we owe to future persons-and unborn life more generally-is as contested as ever. In A Theory of Unborn Life: From Abortion to Genetic Manipulation, author Anja J. Karnein provides a novel theory that shows how our commitments to persons can help us make sense of our obligations to unborn life. We should treat embryos that will develop into persons (...) in anticipation of these persons. But how viable is this theory? Moreover, what does it mean to treat embryos in anticipation of the future persons they will develop into? Exploring the attractiveness of this approach for Germany and the U.S. - two countries with very different legal approaches to valuing unborn life-Karnein comes to startling conclusions to some of today's greatest ethical and legal debates. (shrink)

The agri-food system is facing a range of social-ecological threats, many of which are caused and amplified by industrial agriculture. In response, numerous sustainable agriculture narratives have emerged, proposing solutions to the challenges facing the agri-food system. One such narrative that has recently risen to prominence is regenerative agriculture. However, the drivers for the rapid emergence of regenerative agriculture are not well understood. Furthermore, its transformative potential for supporting a more sustainable agri-food system is underexplored. Through a genealogical analysis of (...) four prominent sustainable agriculture narratives; organic agriculture, conservation agriculture, sustainable intensification, and agroecology; we consider how regenerative agriculture’s growing momentum can be contextualised within existing narratives and explore the implications this might have for its transformative potential. This analysis reveals that the genealogies of these sustainable agriculture narratives have led to a number of contestations and complementarities which have coalesced to drive the emergence of regenerative agriculture. We also find that, in contrast to agroecology, regenerative agriculture shares with other Global North narratives a limited scope for offering transformative pathways for agricultural production. This is largely due to their inadequate consideration of power and equity issues in the agri-food system. We argue that regenerative agriculture therefore risks inhibiting deeper agri-food system transformations that address both social and ecological challenges and is not the unifying sustainable agriculture narrative it claims to be. Nonetheless, regenerative agriculture could contribute towards a broader plurality of sustainable agriculture narratives that collectively might enable a transformation to a more sustainable, diverse, and just agri-food system. (shrink)

This work by fourteen authors, on the topic of aesthetic values, ethics, and education, gathers contributors from diverse backgrounds. University professors, theologians, international practitioners, music performers, and literary artists from different continents, i.e. Africa, Asia, and Europe, explore the profound intersection between intercultural and universal values, ethical considerations, and education through arts. The book presents essays and poems addressing the value and role of arts in challenging cultural and societal norms to nurture reasoning and social responsibility, and ultimately to promote (...) intercultural dialogue and understanding with ethics in aesthetic value and education to foster respect and collaboration. In exploring the profound intersection between these parameters through arts, this book invites readers to reimagine the world, ethics, and critical thinking in contemporary society. (shrink)

Wilke et al. make significant headway in gaining a better understanding of the influence affect cues may have on action perception and judgement. In our view their account also brings up a row of important questions demanding further research. This concerns the role of conceptual and non-conceptual content and the different effects emotions of the same valence may play in the perception and judgement of action.

This book explores the structure and function of memory and imagination, as well as the relation and interaction between the two states. It is the first book to offer an integrative approach to these two emerging areas of philosophical research. The essays in this volume deal with a variety of forms of imagining and remembering. The contributors come from a range of methodological backgrounds: empirically minded philosophers, analytic philosophers engaging mainly in conceptual analysis, and philosophers informed by the phenomenological tradition. (...) Part 1 consists of novel contributions to ontological issues regarding the nature of memory and imagination and their respective structural features. Part 2 focuses on questions of justification and perspective regarding both states. The chapters in Part 3 discuss issues regarding memory and imagination as skills or abilities. Finally, Part 4 focuses on the relation between memory, imagination, and emotion. Philosophical Perspectives on Memory and Imagination will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of memory, philosophy of imagination, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. (shrink)

Background: Despite the growing potential of mobile-based technologies, innovative interventions targeting the reduction of acute stress in daily life remain under-researched. Music listening is an easy-to-administer activity that is associated with lower levels of biological and self-reported stress. However, the application of music as an intervention in moments of acute stress in daily life remains to be examined. We developed a just-in-time intervention delivering music in moments of stressful experiences in daily life and tested its feasibility using a mixed methods (...) approach.Methods: In this uncontrolled pilot study, the ecological momentary music intervention was tested by 10 chronically stressed women aged 23.5 ± 3.3 years. Over 18 consecutive days, whenever participants reported stressful experiences, they were encouraged to listen to a self-compiled playlist. Subjective stress levels and saliva samples were assessed at three time points per stress report. We analyzed app-based log data, in-the-moment responses, questionnaire data, and semi-structured interview data.Results: On average, participants’ compliance with the study protocol lay at 70%. Overall, 65 stressful experiences were reported, 51 of which were followed by music listening, for an average duration of 12:53 min. Complete data were provided for 46 stressful experiences. Participants reported immediate relaxation and distraction through music listening. The interviews revealed that the intervention was easy to use and that music listening in moments of perceived stress was viewed as a new and pleasant activity. Several aspects of the protocol were identified, which should be improved in future studies.Conclusion: Since repeated stressful experiences in daily life can pose a threat to physical and mental integrity, interventions that are easily applicable and deliver support when needed most are necessary. Following minor adaptations, the EMMI can be considered as a feasible approach to target psychobiological stress responses in daily life, which is worthy of investigation in future larger-scale trials. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate how children use their participation in research as a potential transformative social practice in everyday life. The concept of transformative social practice will be discussed in relation to the notion of transformation. Through empirical examples provided by Holly (12) and Oliver (11), the article argues that research processes open up possibilities for understanding ourselves (researchers and participants) in new ways. ‘Life Mapping’ - as dialogical method in research with children - will be (...) presented and reflected upon as a way for children to develop different understandings of themselves, their families, and everyday life. This emphasizes the connection between the use of child-relevant methodologies and how specific children can bring dialogues from the research process in to play in their everyday lives. Data is drawn from a qualitative study and is a part of a PhD project studying children’s everyday lives with two households as a result of parental divorce. The project involves ten children aged 8- 12 and their parents. (shrink)

Die gängigen Prognosen, nach denen die Religionen im Kontext der Moderne oder im Zuge der Globalisierung an Bedeutung verlieren würden, haben sich nicht bestätigt. Das Gegenteil ist der Fall: Jenseits von nihilistischen Entwürfen und virtuellen Konstruktionen öffneten sich auch und gerade in der Literatur Räume für die Belebung religiöser Weltsicht. Ausgehend von Heinrich Böll und seiner Anfang der 1960er Jahre eingeleiteten Distanzierung von der Institution Kirche, wird am Beispiel von Botho Strauß und Peter Handke, die seit den 1970er und 1980er (...) Jahren eine ins Metaphysische zielende Subjektivität repräsentieren, eine Renaissance des Religiösen konstatiert, die sich in den Werken des jüngeren Autors Ralf Rothmann seit den 1990er Jahren mit selbstbewusster Deutlichkeit fortschreibt. Anhand der geistesgeschichtlichen Trias Gnostizismus, Philosophie und Mystik nimmt die Verfasserin eine Fokussierung vor, die die ästhetischen Konzeptionen der Autoren deutlich werden lässt und sie zueinander in Beziehung setzt. (shrink)

New forms of artificial intelligence on the one hand and the ubiquitous networking of “everything with everything” on the other hand characterize the fourth industrial revolution. This results in a changed understanding of human–machine interaction, in new models for production, in which man and machine together with virtual agents form hybrid teams. The empirical study “Socializing with robots” aims to gain insight especially into conditions of development and processes of hybrid human–machine teams. In the experiment, human–robot actions and interactions were (...) closely observed in a virtual environment. Robots as partners differed in shape and behavior. Participants were instructed to achieve an objective that could only be achieved via close teamwork. This paper unites different aspects from core disciplines of social robotics and psychology contributing to anthropomorphization with the empirical insights of the experiment. It focuses on the psychological effects on anthropomorphization and mechanization, taking the inter- and transdisciplinary field of social robotics as a starting point. (shrink)

Weak Quantum Theory (WQT) and the Model of Pragmatic Information (MPI) are two psychophysical concepts developed on the basis of quantum physics. The present study contributes to their empirical examination. The issue of the study is whether WQT and MPI can not only explain ‘psi’-phenomena theoretically but also prove to be consistent with the empirical phenomenology of extrasensory perception (ESP). From the main statements of both models, 33 deductions for psychic readings are derived. Psychic readings are defined as settings, in (...) which psychics support or counsel clients by using information not mediated through the five senses. A qualitative approach is chosen to explore how the psychics experience extrasensory perceptions. Eight psychics are interviewed with a half-structured method. The reports are examined regarding deductive and inductive aspects, using a multi-level structured content analysis. The vast majority of deductions is clearly confirmed by the reports. Even though the study has to be seen as an explorative attempt with many aspects to be specified, WQT and MPI prove to be coherent and helpful concepts to explain ESP in psychic readings. (shrink)

Introspective as well as empirical evidence indicates that emotions shape our thinking in numerous ways. Yet, this modificatory aspect of emotions has received relatively little interest in the philosophy of emotion. I give a detailed account of this aspect. Drawing both on the work of William James and adverbialist conceptions of perception, I sketch a theory of emotions that takes these aspects into consideration and suggest that we should understand emotions as manners of thinking.

The spreading of COVID-19 misinformation on social media could have severe consequences on people's behavior. In this paper, we investigated the emotional expression of misinformation related to the COVID-19 crisis on Twitter and whether emotional valence differed depending on the type of misinformation. We collected 17,463,220 English tweets with 76 COVID-19-related hashtags for March 2020. Using Google Fact Check Explorer API we identified 226 unique COVID-19 false stories for March 2020. These were clustered into six types of misinformation. Applying the (...) 226 classifiers to the Twitter sample we identified 690,004 tweets. Instead of running the sentiment on all tweets we manually coded a random subset of 100 tweets for each classifier to increase the validity, reducing the dataset to 2,097 tweets. We found that only a minor part of the entire dataset was related to misinformation. Also, misinformation in general does not lean towards a certain emotional valence. However, looking at comparisons of emotional valence for different types of misinformation uncovered that misinformation related to “virus” and “conspiracy” had a more negative valence than “cures,” “vaccine,” “politics,” and “other.” Knowing from existing studies that negative misinformation spreads faster, this demonstrates that filtering for misinformation type is fruitful and indicates that a focus on “virus” and “conspiracy” could be one strategy in combating misinformation. As emotional contexts affect misinformation spreading, the knowledge about emotional valence for different types of misinformation will help to better understand the spreading and consequences of misinformation. (shrink)

Asthereisa permanent shortage of human organs for transplantation purposes new methods to provide organs are being developed. The author deals with these new developments as there are artificial organs, genetically engineered animal organs and therapeutical cloning or embryonie stem cells to cultivate human organs. The goal of the article is to give an overview on these approaches and to summarize ethical aspects related to research, development and application of these methods.

Pedagogy in general is not only ruled by planning, explicit normative framings, and governmental strategies, but its topics, such as the success or the failure of teaching or learning processes or learners’ precarious or promising personality development, are also decisively influenced by unspoken, silent, corporal, spatial, material, barred, or alienated dimensions of pedagogy. Gender as an analytical category encloses these dimensions, as well as being a social category. In this essay, three sets of arguments, referring to implicit or tacit knowing, (...) to bodiliness and corporeality, and to performativity and mimesis will be used to explain the tacit side of gender as a dimension of pedagogy. (shrink)

Ein Dekonstruktivist sagt: "Ich rede von der Demokratie als von etwas Kommendem."l Doch die Rede soIl hier nicht von einer empirisch gestiitz­ ten Vorhersage oder einer normativen Utopie sein, sondern von der ethisch­ politischen Perspektive, die die Geste der Dekonstruktion offnet. Den Hori­ zont dieser Perspektive bildet die Demokratie, dessen Unerreichbarkeit in der politischen Praxis der Demokratisierung affirmiert wird. Dekonstruktion und Demokratisierung stehen dabei weder in einem parallelen noch einem additiven Verhiiltnis, auch wenn die Konjunktion "und" dies suggerieren mag. Es (...) handelt sich um zwei offene, einander verschiebende Prozesse, deren Verschriinkung diese Studie darlegen mochte. Eine temporale Meta­ pher tragt dabei solange, wie sie nicht teleologisch miBverstanden wird: Die Demokratie ist die Zukunft der Dekonstruktion,2 wenn die Dekonstruktion die andere Gegenwart bleibt. Die Spur einer dekonstruktiven Bewegung hat sich lange schon, minde­ stens seit einem Jahrhundert, vergegenwartigt.3 An sie gekoppelt ist gleich­ wohl die Angst vor einem Nihilismus, der das emanzipatorische Verspre­ chen verneinen konnte. Als anti-moderne Reaktion, die sich schein bar nicht auf Zukiinftiges beziehen kann, wird die Dekonstruktion immer wieder als Zeitgeisterscheinung zuriickgewiesen. Doch phanomenologische Periodisie­ rungsversuche, die die Subversion moderner rationalistischer Essenzen wie Subjekt, Gesellschaft und Geschichte etwa als ideologischen Ausdruck der Entwicklung zum Spatkapitalismus oder auch als intellektuelle Konsequenz der politischen Aufbruchsstimmung der sechziger Jahre interpretieren wol- Friedrich Nietzsche, Menschliches. Allzumenschliches. Ein Buch for /reie Geister, Slimtli­ che Werke Bd. 3 (Stuttgart 1964),313. 2 Vgl. zu dieser Fonnulierung auch Simon Critchley, The Ethics a/Deconstruction. Derrida and Levinas (Oxford/Cambridge 1992), 241. (shrink)

Drawing on interviews with women and men who serve on the supervisory boards of German stock-listed companies, this qualitative study examines why some female directors seek to augment gender equality in their organizations while others do not. Those who take action do so both in formal board processes and in informal settings. A sense of belonging to women as a social group and a sense of responsibility for women in the organization are key factors in explaining why some female directors (...) contribute to gender equality. In addition, the study highlights the relevance of a board culture supportive of gender equality and positive expectations by other organizational members about female directors’ role in advancing gender equality. Board chairs influence how supportive female directors perceive the organizational context to be. Where the organizational context is not seen as supportive, those who take equality-related action anyway are experienced directors. Surprisingly, the presence of other women on the board does not appear to be related to whether or not female directors take action. Examining female directors’ actions and paying close attention to both their identities and their specific organizational settings shows how the interplay between social identity and situational opportunities and constraints affects board behavior. (shrink)

The focus of this article is on elderly patients’ and nursing staff perceptions of privacy in the care of elderly patients/residents in five European countries. Privacy includes physical, social and informational elements. The results show that perceptions of privacy were strongest in the UK (Scotland) and weakest in Greece. Country comparisons revealed statistically significant differences between the perceptions of elderly patients and also between those of nurses working in the same ward or long-term care facility. Perceptions of privacy by patients (...) and their nursing staff were quite similar in Finland, Germany and the UK. In contrast, in Greece and Spain these perceptions were different: nurses believed that they took account of their patients’ privacy needs more often than the patients themselves felt this was the case. Among Spanish and UK patients, an association was found between lower levels of independence and comparatively less positive perceptions of privacy. No associations were established between nurses’ perceptions and their demographic factors. This is the third of a set of five articles published together in this issue of Nursing Ethics in which the results of this comparative research project are presented. (shrink)

This paper investigates how a performative understanding of a woman’s right to care can become part of a feminist politics which is able to transcend the well-worn dichotomies we find both within and without feminist literature, such as difference versus equality, difference versus repronormativity, and rights as freedom versus rights as domination. Drawing on my own research, I argue that claiming the right to care does not simply push women more deeply into motherhood resulting in even more control and regulation (...) of their lives, but that claiming care rights enables women to speak for themselves. Following the work of Linda Zerilli this paper argues that claiming women’s rights should, above all, be viewed as performative activities which contribute to democratic practices. (shrink)

This introduction outlines the threefold contribution that this Focus section on research film offers. First, it introduces the vast collection of films from the former Institute for Scientific Film (Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film [IWF]), arguably the most ambitious endeavor ever undertaken to manage the distribution, production, and archiving of research films. At the same time, the institute’s questionable roots in the National Socialist education system and in war research are addressed. Second, the introduction points out that the Focus section (...) enters largely uncharted terrain in the history of research films. Third, it argues that a focus on the multiple reuses of research films, as this section attempts, not only suits the medium specificity of film but helps us to map the aesthetic, intermedial, and cultural-political practices of disseminating knowledge. In this vein, the organizers asked established scholars working on film and science to share with us a short story of a reused research film. Scott Curtis, Vinzenz Hediger, Anja Laukötter, and Hanna Rose Shell responded. Their contributions can be found in the supplementary materials to the online edition. (shrink)