Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain. By Sarah Stroumsa. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. Pp. xxi + 220. $35, £28.

People struggling with addiction are neither powerless over their addiction, nor are they fully in control. Lewis vigorously objects to the brain disease model of addiction, because it makes people lose belief in their self-efficacy, and hence hinders their recovery. Although he acknowledges that there is a compulsive state in addiction, he objects to the claim that this compulsion is carved in stone. Lewis argues that the BDMA underestimates the agency of addicted people, and hence hinder their recovery. Lewis’s work (...) offers us a very much to be welcomed neurobiology of recovery. It offers addicted people a hopeful and respectful narrative for their recovery that treats them as agents rather than as damaged brains. However, I argue that overestimating people’s agency can also result in people losing belief in their self-efficacy. Lewis’s strong focus on the agency of addicted people might not match their experiences of struggle, hence reinforcing their feelings of guilt when they fail to control their use. I propose to replace the notion of addiction as a disease with a notion of a disease-like stage in addiction. I call this stage the duress stage in addiction, in which the addictive behaviour is largely impervious to the agent’s values and to available techniques of self-control. However, the agent can overcome this stage by developing new techniques of self-control, by building on their self-concept and belief in self-efficacy, by changing their environments and habits, and by engaging in projects that are meaningful to the agent. (shrink)

Psychiatric classification, as exemplified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is dealing with a lack of trust and credibility—in the scientific, but also in the public realm. Regarding the latter in particular, one possible remedial measure for this crisis in trust lies in an increased integration of patients into the DSM revision process. The DSM, as a manual for clinical practice, is forced to make decisions that exceed available data and involve value-judgments. Regarding such decisions, public epistemic (...) trustworthiness requires that these value-judgments should be representative of those of the affected public, and that the public has a reason to believe such a representation to be realized. Due to the long tradition of distrust in psychiatry, such a reason can in this case best be provided by an actual integration of patients into the decision-making process, rather than by their representation through scientific experts. (shrink)

When doing research among vulnerable populations, researchers are obliged to protect their subjects from harm. We will argue that traditional ethical guidelines are not sufficient to do this, since they mainly focus on direct harms that can occur: for example, issues around informed consent, fair recruitment and risk/harm analysis. However, research also entails indirect harms that remain largely unnoticed by research ethical committees and the research community. Indirect harms do not occur during data collection, but in the analysis of the (...) data, and how the data is presented to the scientific and wider societal community. Highly stigmatized research subjects, like substance‐dependent parents, are especially at risk of encountering indirect harm, because the prejudice against them is so persistent. In this paper we discuss two forms of indirect harm. First, researchers have to be aware how their results will be preceived by society. Even when subjects are presented in an objective way, further, out of porportion stigmatization can occur. Researchers sometimes try to counteract this by whitewashing their results, at the risk of downplaying their respondents’ problems. The second risk researchers face is that their own normative judgements influence how they question such parents, report results and interpret statements. Researchers’ own normative judgements may influence the way they present their subjects. This article reviews a broad range of research that exhibits such indirect harms, discussing how and why indirect harms occur and formulating corresponding recommendations on how to prevent them. (shrink)

The Turing Test is one of the most disputed topics in artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. This paper is a review of the past 50 years of the Turing Test. Philosophical debates, practical developments and repercussions in related disciplines are all covered. We discuss Turing's ideas in detail and present the important comments that have been made on them. Within this context, behaviorism, consciousness, the 'other minds' problem, and similar topics in philosophy of mind are discussed. We (...) also cover the sociological and psychological aspects of the Turing Test. Finally, we look at the current situation and analyze programs that have been developed with the aim of passing the Turing Test. We conclude that the Turing Test has been, and will continue to be, an influential and controversial topic. -/- (This paper was reprinted in: The Turing Test: The Elusive Standard of Artificial Intelligence, J. H. Moor, ed., Kluwer Academic, pp. 23-78, 2003.). (shrink)

This contribution includes three selected works from an exhibition on _Cyborg Encounters_. These works deal with hybrid connections of human and non-human species that (might) emerge as a result of enhancement technologies and bio-technological developments. They offer not only an artistic exploration of contemporary but also futuristic aspects of the subject. Followed by an introduction by Melike Şahinol, _Critically Endangered Artwork_ (by Ayşe Melis Okay) highlights Turkey’s ongoing problems of food poverty and the amount of decreasing agricultural lands. It displays (...) seeds of a promising endemic plant to mitigate these problems using the seeds of the _Thermopsis Turcica_, a herbaceous perennial endemic plant. _Ecomasculinist Pregnancy_ (by Burak Taşdizen and Charles John McKinnon Bell) follows the design fiction methodology and illustrates a future scenario through a patient’s diary and the medical letters he receives during his pregnancy with an extinct sea-lion. _Polluted Homes_ (by Beyza Dilem Topdal) is a fictional art installation consisting of polychaete species evolved in time under the ecological circumstances prevalent in the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara today. These works show, that manufacturing life has consequences, not only for the human body and its physical appearance, but also, for example, for gender orders, the social structure of society, and even the environment, and thus for (re)shaping (non)living matter and their environments. This Art-Science Collection intends to provide an impetus for debate about the extent to which cyborg encounters should be taken seriously. (shrink)

Bu çalışmada klasik eserlerden modern çalışmalara kadar birçok dilsel araştırmaya konu olan dilsel örüntünün son dönem dil çalışmalarına yansıması olan tedâmm olgusunun Arap dilinde cümlenin anlamsal bütünlüğüne katkısı ele alınmıştır. Bu olgu aslı itibariyle tüm dillerde farklı şekillerde bulunan temel örüntünün nasıllığını gözler önüne seren, şekilsel bir olgudur. Dilde iki unsurun birbirini gerektirmesi (istilzâm) veya kesinlikle yan yana gelmemesi (tenâfî) gibi durumlar tedâmm olgusu bağlamında incelenir. Her fiilin bir fâilinin (merfu bir isminin) olması, ism-i mevsûlün bir sıla cümlesine ihtiyaç duyması, (...) sıfat ile mevsuf, mudâf ile mudâfun ileyh birliktelikleri istilzâm kapsamında değerlendirilirken; mudâf olan kelimenin fiil, zamir veya şart edatı olmaması tenâfî bağlantısı bağlamında ele alınır. İstilzâm ve tenâfî bağlantıları tedâmm olgusunun temel taşlarını oluştururken art arda gelen kelimelerin cümlenin söz diziminde belirli konuma sahip olmalarını gerekli kılan tevârud /tertipsel bağlantı da tedâmm olgusunun ayrılmaz bir bileşenidir. Bu konum göz önüne alınmayıp ihlal edildiğinde, cümlede meydana gelen anlamsal boşluklar sebebiyle cümle, öğrenilmiş dil kalıplarının dışına çıkar. Bu yönüyle cümleyi oluşturan kelimeler arasındaki doğal dizemsel bağlantı ya da cümle içerisinde kelimenin, kendisine eşlik eden diğer kelimelerle uyumlu birlikteliği de tedâmm olgusunun kapsamına girmektedir. Ayrıca bazı dilbilimciler, tertipsel bağlantıyı makam kavramıyla da ilişkilendirerek tedâmm olgusunu nahvî uyumun ötesinde belâğî bir üslup bağlamında değerlendirilmeye müsait hale getirmişlerdir. Bu açıdan bakıldığında tedâmm olgusuna çağdaş dilciler context of situation/ durumun bağlamı olarak nitelenen bir yön kazandırmıştır ki bu yönüyle tedâmm olgusu cümleye, nahvî örüntüden daha fazla anlamsal katkı sağlamaktadır. Bu çalışma, dildeki doğal örüntüye dikkat çekerek tedâmm olgusunun anlaşılmasıyla zihinde netleşen hazif, zikir, istitâr, rütbe ve takdir gibi olguların daha net anlaşılmasına katkı sağlaması açısından önemlidir. Çalışma, tedâmm olgusunun cümlenin anlamsal bütünlüğüne katkısını ortaya koymaya çalışan nitel bir araştırma olup, çalışmada veri toplama araçlarından belge inceleme aracı kullanılmıştır. Veri çözümleme aşamasında ise doküman analizi ve betimsel analiz teknikleri kullanılmıştır. Çalışma neticesinde, tedâmm olgusunun, alt unsurlarıyla birlikte cümlede anlamsal bütünlüğü sağladığı, bu bağlantıya dikkat edilerek oluşturulan cümlelerin anlamsal açıdan daha uyumlu bir bütünlük oluşturduğu görülmektedir. Cümledeki bu uyumu sağlayan tedâmm bağlantısının, alışılagelmiş ve genel kabul görmüş cümle örüntülerinin gramatik kurallara uygun bir şekilde kullanımını içerdiği sonucuna ulaşılmaktadır. Ayrıca bu bağlantı, konuşulan ortamın gereğine uygun söylenmiş lafızların içinde bulunulan makama uygun olarak yorumlanmasını da kapsamaktadır. (shrink)

This paper explores some ideas of Wilfrid Sellars to raise two difficulties for a naturalistic approach to the mind. The first difficulty, which is methodological, is a corollary of Sellars’s distinction between two images of man-in-the-world, the manifest and the scientific image. For Sellars, taking science seriously requires that we think of it as constructing a unified image of man-in-the-world of its own. I argue that it is the rivalry between the manifest and the scientific image which gives rise to (...) the mind-body-problem. The challenge for a naturalistic solution to the mind-body-problem is that it is not legitimate to isolate single scientific results from their theoretical context in order to integrate them piecemeal into the manifest image. According to Sellars, a satisfactory solution to the mind-body-problem must attempt nothing less than a fusion of both images which somehow respects and preserves the unity of each. The second, substantial difficulty for a naturalistic approach to the mind is that of coming to terms with the normativity of the mental. Many interpreters take Sellars to hold that normativity sets the mental apart from the rest of nature. Against this I argue that according to Sellars the living is governed by norms of its own. It follows that normativity cannot serve as the mark of the mental. I argue that according to Sellars the distinguishing feature of the mental lies elsewhere, namely in the way in which normative force comes about. Unlike biological norms, the norms of thought owe their force to a common practice of mutual evaluation. However, the assumption that there are norms in animate nature should make it easier for naturalists to accept that the mental is characterized by norms of its own. (shrink)

Psychiatric classification is highly controversial, as could be witnessed again with the latest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). These controversies comprise multiple kinds of critiques by a variety of actors. It is unlikely that all these issues will be overcome by one perfect solution in the future. Rather, it is precisely the DSM’s “one-size-fits-all-approach” that lies at the root of many of the current problems. To restore the scientific and public credibility of psychiatric classification, (...) a multi-dimensional pluralist response is thus needed: (1) theoretical pluralism, meaning a promotion of different research projects and heuristic strategies, (2) taxonomic pluralism, which allows for different classifications used in research versus clinical practice, and (3) participatory pluralism, which concerns the diversity of perspectives and stakeholders in DSM-revisions. (shrink)

This article supports calls for an increased integration of patients into taxonomic decision making in psychiatry by arguing that their exclusion constitutes a special kind of epistemic injustice: preemptive testimonial injustice, which precludes the opportunity for testimony due to a wrongly presumed irrelevance or lack of expertise. Here, this presumption is misguided for two reasons: the role of values in psychiatric classification and the potential function of first-person knowledge as a corrective means against implicitly value-laden, inaccurate, or incomplete diagnostic criteria (...) sets. This kind of epistemic injustice leads to preventable epistemic losses in psychiatric classification, diagnosis, and treatment. (shrink)

This article critically examines the paradigm shift from the attention economy to the intimacy economy—a market system where personal and emotional data are exchanged for customized experiences that cater to individual emotional and psychological needs. It explores how AI transforms these personal and emotional inputs into services, thereby raising essential questions about the authenticity of digital interactions and the potential commodification of intimate experiences. The study delineates the roles of human–computer interaction and AI in deepening personal connections, significantly impacting emotional (...) dynamics, and underscores AI’s role in various applications, from healthcare to grief tech, highlighting both enhancements in emotional connections and potential disruptions to genuine human interactions. An AI-mediated framework (AMIE) is introduced to assess how AI reshapes these connections and the overall digital society through personalized interactions. This framework explores the interplay between human emotions and AI-generated responses within the new Avatar Sphere, emphasizing the necessity for regulatory measures to safeguard digital identities, recognize emotional data as intellectual property, and maintain system transparency. It highlights the critical need for maintaining genuine human interactions and advocates for context-aware consent, continuous monitoring, and cross-cultural considerations to foster ethical AI practices. Leveraging blockchain technology and decentralized autonomous organizations, the framework proposes methods to enhance individual control over emotional data, mitigating the commodification risks. The findings contribute to ongoing discussions on AI ethics, digital privacy, and the future of human-AI interactions, providing valuable insights for cultivating a responsible intimacy economy. (shrink)

Philosophia, hayret ve merak duyguları üzerinden itici gücünü kazanan bir tür “pathos”u şart koşar. Ancak o, etkilenimin yanı sıra bu hâle eşlik eden etkin bir düşünme imkânıyla yani “logos”la tamamlanır. İç içe geçerek birbirini bütünleyen iki durum, “aporia” denilen problem bağlamında en belirgin görünümüne kavuşur. Felsefe tarihinde “aporia”, etkin bir biçimde Platon düşüncesinde kullanılır. Bilme faaliyeti içinde büyüyen bir kriz gibi duran “aporia”, diyaloglarda, genellikle bilmediğini bilmeme ve bilmediğini fark etmeye yönelme gibi iki tipik durumun ortaya çıkmasına vesile olur. Bununla (...) birlikte “aporia”, diyaloglarda bambaşka bir anlamda daha tezahür eder. Bu ikinci ve ilkinin de zemini olan “aporia”, Sokrates’in “Bildiğim tek şey hiçbir şey bilmediğimdir” iddiasıyla temsil edilir. Çalışmamızda, Platon’un diyaloglarının paradigmatik unsurları üzerinden “aporia”nın ne tür bir “pathos-logos” rabıtası ekseninde işlendiğini çeşitli katmanları bakımından analiz ediyoruz. Amacımız, diğerlerine temel olan ve beşerî bilgeliğe götüren çıkmazın philosophianın sınırını nasıl çizdiğini göstermektir. (shrink)

This article critical examines Gilbert and colleagues’ study (Gilbert et al. 2017) claims on how deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease (PD) can influence people’s self-concept.

While the transmission of Greek philosophy and science via the Muslim world to western Europe in the Middle Ages has been closely scrutinized, the fate of the Arabic philosophical and scientific legacy in later centuries has received less attention, a fault this volume aims to correct. The authors in this collection discuss in particular the radical ideas associated with Averroism that are attributed to the Aristotle commentator Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and challenge key doctrines of the Abrahamic religions. This volume examines (...) what happened to Averroes's philosophy during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Did early modern thinkers really no longer pay any attention to the Commentator? Were there undercurrents of Averroism after the sixteenth century? How did Western authors in this period contextualise Averroes and Arabic philosophy within their own cultural heritage? How different was the Averroes they created as a philosopher in a European tradition from Ibn Rushd, the theologian, jurist and philosopher of the Islamic tradition? (shrink)

Today, there is a growing consensus among philosophers in Africa, Latin America and other regions of the world that the history of philosophy has to consider both written and oral sources in the reconstruction of the history of philosophy. Even though it is usually not denied that philosophy also expresses itself in oral practices, such as conversation or instruction, the question remains as to how oral philosophical traditions can become part of a history of philosophy. This is subject to a (...) number of methodological questions. On the basis of discourses in contemporary African philosophy as well as examples from other regions of the world, this article discusses selected methodological challenges that oral traditions pose for the historiography of philosophy, with a focus on the relation between philosophy and written texts and philosophy and practice. It is argued that a turn to philosophical practices can offer new insights into philosophy in oral societies. (shrink)

Das Kitāb Sidrat al-muntahā des Pseudo-Ibn Waḥšīya: Einleitung, Edition und Übersetzung eines hermetisch-allegorischen Traktats zur Alchemie. By Christopher Braun. Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, vol. 327. Berlin: Klaus Schwartz, 2016. Pp. 160. €39.80.

Las "Cuestiones Sicilianas" son el primer texto conservado del filósofo y sufí Ibn Sab'in de Murcia (c. 614/1217-668/1270). Aunque el prólogo del texto pretende que se trata de respuestas a preguntas mandadas por Federico II al mundo árabe, parece más probable que se trate de un manual introductorio para estudiantes árabes de filosofía, discutiendo cuatro problemas específicos y controvertidos como manera de presentar conceptos generales de la filosofía aristotélica. Este artículo analiza la estructura y la manera de argumentar en las (...) Cuestiones Sicilianas. Dedica su atención en particular a la relación entre el Sufismo y la filosofía y a las fuentes del texto, sobre todo los textos filosóficos de Ibn Rusd. Interpreta a Ibn Sab'in y sus Cuestiones Sicilianas como un reflejo del ambiente intelectual en el Oeste del Mediterráneo durante los últimos años de los Almohades. El texto fue posiblemente compuesto en un contexto que tenía que ver con los t.alaba, y refleja también unos aspectos claves de la ideología Almohade. (shrink)

This study of the Sicilian Questions of the philosopher and mystic Ibn Sabٴ īn of Murcia interprets the structure and sources of the text as a reflection of intellectual life in the late Almohad Arab West.

The articles in this volume dedicated to Hans Daiber, one of the pioneering scholars in the history of Islamic thought in the Middle Ages, offer new insights into this field from a variety of perspectives: philological, philosophical, and historical.

In this paper I will argue that liberal multiculturalism is neither a necessary nor a convincing extension of liberalism. In evaluating the two main strands of liberal multiculturalism, I will first analyse the approaches of Charles Taylor and Bhikhu Parekh as the main proponents of the version that focuses on the cultures themselves and raises the issue of the value of cultures in connection with public discourse. I will then turn to Amy Gutmann and Will Kymlicka as liberal multiculturalists who (...) use the liberal norm of individual equality as a starting point. I will show that the arguments adduced in favour of liberal multiculturalism fail, due to the following shortcomings. Taylor’s approach is underspecified with respect to the relationship between the process of evaluating cultures and its outcome. Gutmann’s theory fails to bridge the gaps between the individual, cultural belonging and positive duties of the state. Parekh’s and Kymlicka’s theories lead back to liberalism. I conclude that the idea of cultural difference has little of substance to add to the liberal view of social justice. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have identified pervasive gender discrimination in science as an institution, as well as gender bias in the very content of many scientific theories. An ameliorative project at heart, feminist philosophy of science has inquired into the social and epistemological roots and consequences of these problems and into their potential solutions. Most feminist philosophers agree on a need for diversity in scientific communities to counter the detrimental effects of gender bias. Diversity could thus serve as a unifying concept for (...) a potential consensus of the field. Yet there are substantial differences in the kinds and roles of diversity envisaged. This element argues that we need diversity, both in terms of social locations and of values, to overcome former biases and blind spots. Diversity as such, however, is insufficient. To reap its epistemic benefits, diversity also needs to be institutionalised in a way that counters various forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

This article is about the signs during the creative stage of one’s self-development. With the acceptance of the creative act as an existential phenomenon, the research considers the creative process as a genuine expression that has been actualized during one’s search for his/her existence. An artist reflects his/her existential being through his/her work to construct an original self, by facing the world and within the struggle to construct the new self that stands beyond confusion. Tarasti’s philosophical approach to “existential semiotics” (...) will be applied to the existential being of the artist Alev Ebuzziya Siesbye, and her creative act will be analyzed by means of the modalities, the semiotic square of being/doing, and the sign processes evident in the field of art. Siesbye’s existential personality and creative acts have been discussed by looking at what she has done in terms of her attitude on clay; her position in the contemporary art world and her artistic interrogations has been discussed in the existential being of the artist with the existential signs. (shrink)

This article gives an overview of the influence of the work of Michel Foucault on the philosophy of Agamben. Discussed are Foucault’s influence on the Homo Sacer cycle, on (the development) of Agamben’s notion of power (and on his closely related notion of freedom and art of life), as well as on Agamben’s philosophy of language and methodology. While most commentaries focus on Agamben’s interpretation of Foucault’s concept of biopower, his work also contains many interesting references to Foucault on freedom (...) and possibilities—and I think that it is here that Foucault’s influence on Agamben is most deeply felt. This article focuses on the shifts Agamben takes while looking for the Entwicklungsfähigkeit in the work of Foucault. (shrink)

There have been few empirical studies into what non-medical factors influence physicians and nurses when deciding about admission and discharge of ICU patients. Information about the attitudes of healthcare professionals about this process can be used to improve decision-making about resource allocation in intensive care. To provide insight into ethical problems that influence the ICU admission and discharge process, we aimed to identify and explore ethical dilemmas healthcare professionals are faced with.

At present, the debate on global justice, a debate which is at the core of global ethics, is largely being conducted by European and American scholars from different disciplines without taking into account views and concepts from other regions of the world, particularly, from the Global South. The lack of a truly intercultural, interreligious, and international exchange of ideas provokes doubts whether the concepts of global justice introduced so far are able to transcend regional and cultural horizons. The article introduces (...) concepts of justice from African scholars, whose voices have remained marginal until now, like the Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka, the Ethiopian philosopher Teodros Kiros, and the debate on ubuntu, one of the most controversial concepts in southern Africa today. These concepts focus on issues that are seldom considered in the debate on global justice, such as the importance of bodily needs as a prerequisite for human beings to act as moral beings and the importance of human rel.. (shrink)

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People with mental illnesses have higher prevalence and mortality rates with regard to common somatic diseases and causes of death, such as cardio-vascular conditions or cancer. One factor contributing to this excess morbidity and mortality is the sub-standard level of physical healthcare offered to the mentally ill. In particular, they are often subject to diagnostic overshadowing: a tendency to attribute physical symptoms to a pre-existing diagnosis of mental illness. This might be seen as an unfortunate instance of epistemic bad luck, (...) where particular features of a group of patients make a timely and correct diagnosis unlikely. While this can explain some cases of diagnostic overshadowing, I argue that in other cases, epistemic injustice is involved. Analyzing the case of diagnostic overshadowing, I distinguish two kinds of testimonial injustice. For one, there are classic cases of transactional testimonial injustice resulting from prejudices against the mentally ill. In addition, there are cases of structural testimonial injustice resulting from features of health care systems. To overcome diagnostic overshadowing, remedies on the individual as well as structural level are thus needed. (shrink)

A dominant view of guilt and shame is that they have opposing action tendencies: guilt- prone people are more likely to avoid or overcome dysfunctional patterns of behaviour, making amends for past misdoings, whereas shame-prone people are more likely to persist in dysfunctional patterns of behaviour, avoiding responsibility for past misdoings and/or lashing out in defensive aggression. Some have suggested that addiction treatment should make use of these insights, tailoring therapy according to people’s degree of guilt-proneness versus shame-proneness. In this (...) paper, we challenge this dominant view, reviewing empirical findings from others as well as our own to question (1) whether shame and guilt can be so easily disentangled in the experience of people with addiction, and (2) whether shame and guilt have the opposing action tendencies standardly attributed to them. We recommend a shift in theoretical perspective that explains our main finding that both emotions can be either destructive or constructive for recovery, depending on how these emotions are managed. We argue such management depends in turn on a person’s quality of self-blame (retributive or ‘scaffolding’), impacting upon their attitude towards their own agency as someone with fixed and unchanging dispositions (shame and guilt destructive for recovery) or as someone capable of changing themselves (shame and guilt productive for recovery). With an eye to therapeutic intervention, we then explore how this shift in attitude towards the self can be accomplished. Specifically, we discuss empathy-driven affective and narratively-driven cognitive components of a process that allow individuals to move away from the register of retributive self-blame into a register of scaffolding ‘reproach’, thereby enabling them to manage their experiences of both shame and guilt in a more generative way. (shrink)

Various studies have been made on different aspects of the Turkish and Japanese languages, but comparative studies between the two languages are still limited. The aim of this study is to describe the politeness strategy of these two languages from a cultural perspective within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics. Both Turkish and Japanese are agglutinative languages, and speakers of both languages prefer the subjective construal. So, if the typology of a language might be related to its perception, the conceptualization of (...) ‘polite’ and the perception of politeness in that language may be alike. (shrink)

Background Treatment of chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) aims to improve patients’ quality of life and the extent of treatment success is measured via patient reported outcomes (PROs). However, questionnaires used to collect PROs often include scales that are not specific to IBDs. Improving these scales requires a deeper understanding of patients’ lived experience. With this study we give first insights and develop hypotheses on how patients with IBDs experience their body and self and how they adjust their life plans (...) in the context of precision medicine (PM). The guiding question is to understand what they need to achieve a good life, while facing their disease. Methods We developed a conception of the “good life” that draws on Philippa Foot’s “naturalized” approach and distinguishes six different dimensions that are relevant for a good life. This conception guided us as we conducted 10 qualitative interviews with patients suffering from IBD who were in precision medicine clinical research settings. The interviews aimed to gain insights for answering our research question: How do body experiences affect the good life of patients with IBD? We analyzed the interviews with interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Results Five group experiential themes emerged: (i) Life options and plans, (ii) other people’s responses, (iii) strategies to deal with others’ responses, (iv) perception of the body and self, and (v) perception of life as good despite suffering. We report here on three of them (i, iv and v), which are primarily relevant for evaluating the outcomes of PM care. Whereas with “life options and plans (i),” our study predominantly confirmed previous research, with “perception of the body and self (iv),” we found that some of the patients changed their relationship to their body and themselves. They perceived the body or the disease as the “other” and their self appears divorced from their own body. Although this might be an avoidance strategy patients use to assign responsibility for their condition and its “disgusting” symptoms to the “other,” it is important to include it in patient reported outcome (PRO) assessments. Conclusions We conclude with the insight that the multi-dimensional approach based on Foot’s concept of a good life is well-suited as a basis for investigating the quality of life of people with IBD. Interviews based on this concept produced results that go beyond the understanding of health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Additionally, we offer some considerations about patients’ opportunities for achieving a good life and suggestions for further developing patient reported outcome scales. (shrink)

This article examines the relation between the critical theory of Moishe Postone and the philosophy of Theodor Adorno. While the former is clearly influenced by the latter, these influences mostly stay implicit. When explicit, he does not so easily put his own thought in line with Adorno’s and is highly critical of him. I will investigate the ways in which ideas from Adorno made their way into Postone’s work, but also where the latter diverts from them. As will be shown, (...) Postone’s critical theory runs into a problem when one examines the immanent ground of his critical norm, freedom. Adorno, on the contrary, does succeed in employing the same norm in his own immanent critique. I will conclude that the problem Postone encounters can be avoided by being more of an ‘Adornian’, and that his theory allows this. (shrink)

While Gabriel Watts and Ainsley Newson argue that diagnostic laboratories do not have a general duty to routinely reinterpret genomic variant classifications, they do formulate several restricted duties to actively reinterpret specific types of classifications.1 They place these duties with laboratories, acknowledging that they are setting aside any responsibilities that might arise for clinicians. Here, we will discuss the implications of this obligation for clinicians and the moral tension it may confront them with. We focus in particular on the consequences (...) of the proposed moral obligation to actively reinterpret variant classifications that carry a higher risk of being false positives. Such reclassification is likely to result in ‘downgrades’: previously pathogenic variants (pathogenic/likely pathogenic, P/LP) reclassified to benign (likely benign/benign, LB/B) or uncertain variants (variant of uncertain significance, VUS). Any laboratory policy to actively reinterpret (specific sets of) classifications will confront the clinician with the question whether the person tested should be recontacted on a reinterpretation of previously reported results. As others have pointed out, recontacting in general comes with challenges, since patients may not want to be recontacted or have forgotten about their genetic test.2 3 Recontacting in case of a downgrade, however, is particularly impactful. Previous studies on the psychosocial impact of reclassification on patients …. (shrink)

This supplement serves a double purpose. It presents, on the one hand, a selection of papers devoted to the title question “How much philosophy in the philosophy of science?”. On the other hand, it signalizes the newly established cooperation between the German Society for the Philosophy of Science and the Journal for General Philosophy of Science .The GWP was founded in Hannover in 2011 and had its inaugural conference in March 2013 [for a report on the “GWP.2013” by H. Lyre (...) see EPSA Newsletter 2 2013]. The society was launched for several reasons. Albeit the German community of philosophers of science is quite large , it is at the same time a rather distributed and dispersed community. This has to do with the university landscape in Germany, which is dispersed rather t .. (shrink)

Gilbert et al. argue that the concerns about the influence of Deep Brain Stimulation on – as they lump together – personality, identity, agency, autonomy, authenticity and the self are due to an ethics hype. They argue that there is only a small empirical base for an extended ethics debate. We will critically examine their claims and argue that Gilbert and colleagues do not show that the identity debate in DBS is a bubble, they in fact give very little evidence (...) for that. Rather they show the challenges of doing research in a field that is stretched out over multiple disciplines. In that sense their paper is an important starting point for a discussion on methodology and offers valuable lessons for a future research agenda. (shrink)

Addiction appears to be a deeply moralized concept. To understand the entwinement of addiction and morality, we briefly discuss the disease model and its alternatives in order to address the following questions: Is the disease model the only path towards a ‘de-moralized’ discourse of addiction? While it is tempting to think that medical language surrounding addiction provides liberation from the moralized language, evidence suggests that this is not necessarily the case. On the other hand non-disease models of addiction may seem (...) to resuscitate problematic forms of the moralization of addiction, including, invoking blame, shame, and the wholesale rejection of addicts as people who have deep character flaws, while ignoring the complex biological and social context of addiction. This is also not necessarily the case. We argue that a deficit in reasons responsiveness as basis for attribution of moral responsibility can be realized by multiple different causes, disease being one, but it also seems likely that alternative accounts of addiction as developed by Flanagan, Lewis, and Levy, may also involve mechanisms, psychological, social, and neurobiological that can diminish reasons responsiveness. It thus seems to us that nondisease models of addiction do not necessarily involve moralization. Hence, a non-stigmatizing approach to recovery can be realized in ways that are consistent with both the disease model and alternative models of addiction. (shrink)