This volume questions the present-day assumption holding the Italian academies to be the model for the European literary and learned society, by juxtaposing them to other types of contemporary literary and learned associations in several Western European countries.

Talk by members of executive hospital boards influences the organizational positioning of nurses. Talk is a relational leadership practice. Using a qualitative‐interpretive design we organized focus group meetings wherein members of executive hospital boards (7), nurses (14), physicians (7), and managers (6), from 15 Dutch hospitals, discussed the organizational positioning of nursing during COVID crisis. We found that members of executive hospital boards consider the positioning of nursing in crisis a task of nurses themselves and not as a collective, interdependent, (...) and/or specific board responsibility. Furthermore, members of executive hospital boards talk about the nursing profession as (1) more practical than strategic, (2) ambiguous in positioning, and (3) distinctive from the medical profession. Such talk seemingly contrasts with the notion of interdependence that highlights how actors depend on each other in interaction. Interdependence is central to collaboration in hospital crises. In this paper, therefore, we depart from the members of executive hospital boards as leader and “positioner,” and focus on talk—as a discursive leadership practice—to illuminate leadership and governance in hospitals in crisis, as social, interdependent processes. (shrink)

Psychological safety is important for the well-being and productivity of people in the workplace. Psychological safety becomes even more important and even more difficult to maintain in times of uncertainty. Previous research mainly focused on the influence of and on interpersonal relationships. This study applies an individual perspective by investigating what is needed on an individual level in order to build psychological safety. The expectation was that self-compassion induces an individual to experience higher positive affect, and this advances the development (...) of positive relations and social acceptance. Moreover, we assumed that the mediation of the relationship between self-compassion and positive relations and social acceptance by positive affect is moderated by the level of basic need satisfaction. Participants from the Netherlands and Belgium completed an online questionnaire about their level of self-compassion, basic need satisfaction, positive affect and positive relations and social acceptance. Using hierarchical regression analyses for moderated mediation analysis, results showed that self-compassion and positive affect had a significant positive effect on positive relations and social acceptance. Positive affect significantly mediated the relationship between self-compassion and positive relations and social acceptance, when basic need satisfaction was low, but not when basic need satisfaction was high. Our research showed that individuals need either their basic needs satisfied or self-compassion so they can build the high-quality relations needed to stimulate psychological safety. This finding shifts attention from the dyadic relationship to the individual and highlights important factors at the individual level which advance the development of high-quality relationships with others. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify and improve thinking on normative government laboratories: partly publically funded laboratories that work to improve the functioning of society, particularly through boosting innovation. This article focuses on a case study of TNO, a large Dutch laboratory, and an exemplary case of this type of laboratory. This article argues that TNO is perceived as a plug to fill a gap between knowledge production and use, in a belief that there is a direct and causal link between (...) laboratory knowledge production and use. As a plug to fill a gap, however, TNO, and laboratories like it, can never perform satisfactorily, making an enduring cycle of negative performance evaluations and major reorganizations inevitable. This article suggests that a network model of innovation might provide a way out of the impasse. (shrink)

Today universities are increasingly seen as motors of innovation: they not only need to provide trained manpower and publications to society, but also new products, new processes and new services that create firms, jobs, and economic growth. This function of universities is controversial, and a huge and still expanding literature has tried to understand it. The approach of this paper is integrative; it uses the existing literature to answer a number of straightforward questions about the creation of innovations with university (...) knowledge production: how does this happen, to what extent, and if it is desirable. In this way this article grounds the issue. Creating innovation with university knowledge production is relevant, justified and important but this has not been, is not and will not become the core function of universities. The existing literature, in other words, overestimates the importance of university knowledge production - in general, and for innovation in particular. (shrink)

Hematopoiesis unfolds within the bone marrow niche where hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) play a central role in continually replenishing blood cells. The hypoxic bone marrow environment imparts peculiar metabolic characteristics to hematopoietic processes. Here, we discuss the internal metabolism of HSCs and describe external influences exerted on HSC metabolism by the bone marrow niche environment. Importantly, we suggest that the metabolic environment and metabolic cues are intertwined with HSC cell fate, and are crucial for hematopoietic processes. Metabolic dysregulation within the (...) bone marrow niche during acute stress, inflammation, and chronic inflammatory conditions can lead to reduced HSC vitality. Additionally, we raise questions regarding metabolic stresses imposed on HSCs during implementation of stem cell protocols such as allo‐SCT and gene therapy, and the potential ramifications. Enhancing our comprehension of metabolic influences on HSCs will expand our understanding of pathophysiology in the bone marrow and improve the application of stem cell therapies. (shrink)

The question the author seeks to answer in this article is: What does God’s transcendence imply for the possibility of human thinking and talking about God? In an analysis of the concept of transcendence the author defines ‘divine transcendence’ as: God’s being other than the universe in going beyond its limits and limitations. God’s transcendence as regards human thinking is phrased as conceptual transcendence and defined as God’s otherness in going beyond the limits of human thinking. Four sorts of limits (...) of human thinking are presented. Firstly, there are limits of intelligence that limit the range of human comprehension. Secondly, three rational limits are offered, resulting from an analysis of the concept of rationality. Categorial rationality limits are used to distinguish thinking of the category of rational beings from that of non-rational beings. Limits of formal rationality demarcate thinking as rational in an evaluative sense with the help of formal criteria. Such criteria consist in correct procedures to arrive at a certain thought and in the logical criteria of consistency and coherence. Finally, material rationality limits delimit thinking which is adequate in relation to specific circumstances. For instance, a belief is materially rational insofar as it corresponds to the actual state of affairs to which it refers; in other words, when it is true. In this article it is argued that God transcends these limits of human thinking in two ways. Firstly, God transcends these limits because they do not apply to His “thinking”, or better, to His intellectual consciousness. This is called intrinsic conceptual transcendence. Secondly, God transcends the limits of human thinking because human thinking is limited to such an extent that it is hindered to think God. This is extrinsic conceptual transcendence. As regards God’s intrinsic conceptual transcendence of the four limits of human thinking, the author concludes that God’s intellectual consciousness has intelligence in the most perfect way, is categorially rational in the most perfect way, is not formally rational but intuitively rational, and is materially rational in the most perfect way. As to God’s extrinsic conceptual transcendence, it is concluded that God is only incompletely and partly within the range of human intelligence, is also incompletely and partly within the range of the categorially rational human thinking, is within the range of human formal rationality , and is only incompletely and partly within the limits of human material rationality. This whole discussion has the following three consequences for human thinking about God. Firstly, humans can partly comprehend and think God, at least sufficiently to live their lives coram Deo. Secondly, human imperfection urges to modesty and awe in thinking and talking about God. Thirdly, in that which humans can think about God, they have to try to use the same correct procedures and logical rules which they use in thinking about other parts of reality. (shrink)

What is it like to be an octopus, one of those eight-armed, infinitely flexible sea creatures with a nervous system distributed over head, eyes and arms? One interesting approach is to argue that octopuses, because of their distributed nervous systems, are likely to possess disunified consciousness (Carls-Diamante 2017). However, this supposed isomorphism between a “unified” nervous system and “unified” consciousness is problematic, since the term “unity” is taken as a “given” even though it is far from clear what it means. (...) I will argue that explaining the structure of consciousness requires a prior explanation in terms of how it is achieved by the organism through sensorimotor integration. On this account, the structure of an organism’s consciousness is explained partly by what the external world is like, and partly by how the organism’s body, senses and nervous system enable the organism to interact with the external world. (shrink)

This book offers a new description of the significance of Hesiod's 'myth of the races' for ancient Greek and Roman authors, showing how the most detailed responses to this story go far beyond nostalgia for a lost 'Golden' age or hope of its return. Through a series of close readings, it argues that key authors from Plato to Juvenal rewrite the story to reconstruct 'Hesiod' more broadly as predecessor in forming their own intellectual and rhetorical projects; disciplines such as philosophy, (...) didactic poetry and satire all engage in implicit questions about 'Hesiodic' teaching. The first chapter introduces key issues; the second re-evaluates the account in Hesiod's Works and Days. A major chapter outlines Plato's use of Hesiod through close study of the Protagoras, Republic and Statesman. Subsequent chapters focus on Aratus' Phaenomena and Ovid's Metamorphoses; the final chapter, on the Octavia attributed to Seneca and Juvenal's sixth Satire, broadens ideas of Hesiod's reception in Rome. (shrink)

Discourse Representation Theory is a specific name for the work of Hans Kamp in the area of dynamic interpretation of natural language. Also, it has gradually become a generic term for proposals for dynamic interpretation of natural language in the same spirit. These proposals have in common that each new sentence is interpreted in terms of the contribution it makes to an existing piece of interpreted discourse. The interpretation conditions for sentences are given as instructions for updating the representation of (...) the discourse. (shrink)

Guarded actions are changes with preconditions acting as a guard. Guarded action models are multimodal Kripke models with the valuations replaced by guarded actions. Call guarded action logic the result of adding product updates with guarded action models to PDL (propositional dynamic logic). We show that guarded action logic reduces to PDL.

Can the straight line be analysed mathematically such that it does not fall apart into a set of discrete points, as is usually done but through which its fundamental continuity is lost? And are there objects of pure mathematics that can change through time? The mathematician and philosopher L.E.J. Brouwer argued that the two questions are closely related and that the answer to both is "yes''. To this end he introduced a new kind of object into mathematics, the choice sequence. (...) But other mathematicians and philosophers have been voicing objections to choice sequences from the start. This book aims to provide a sound philosophical basis for Brouwer's choice sequences by subjecting them to a phenomenological critique in the style of the later Husserl. "It is almost as if one could hear the two rebels arguing their case in a European café or on a terrace, and coming to a common understanding, with both men taking their hat off to the other, in admiration and gratitude. Dr. van Atten has convincingly applied Husserl's method to Brouwer's program, and has equally convincingly applied Brouwer's intuition to Husserl's program. Both programs have come out the better." Piet Hut, professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, U.S.A. (shrink)

De werkelijkheid is dat wat niet verdwijnt ook als we er niet meer in geloven. Het is niet erg om dingen niet te weten, maar het is ook niet nodig om deze werkelijkheid in twijfel te trekken wanneer dit geloof aan het wankelen wordt gebracht. Om de weg niet kwijt te raken is het van belang om zo goed en zo kwaad als we kunnen te blijven onderscheiden tussen zinnig en onzinnig, tussen verstandig en ondoordacht, tussen goed geïnformeerd en de (...) kluts kwijt. Dit boek helpt de lezer onderscheid te maken tussen propaganda en betrouwbare experts, om de werkelijkheid zo nooit uit het oog te verliezen."--Publisher information. (shrink)

Most philosophers still tend to believe that mathematics is basically about producing formal proofs. A consequence of this view is that some aspects of mathematical practice are entirely lost from view. My contention is that it is precisely in those aspects that similarities can be found between practices in the exact sciences and in mathematics. Hence, if we are looking for a (more) unified treatment of science and mathematics it is necessary to incorporate these elements into our view of what (...) mathematics is about. As a helpful tool I introduce the notion of a mathematical argument as a more liberalized version of the notion of mathematical proof. (shrink)

Rationalism offers an account of moral properties as a subset of the properties which serve to rationalize right actions, and these properties are fit to be the referents of our moral terms. That fitness can be exploited in constructing an externalist theory of reference determination for these terms. The resulting externalist theory draws support from standard responses to Moral Twin-Earth scenarios. The relevance of these responses to moral semantics has recently beenvigorously challenged by Dowell and by Schroeter and Schroeter. The (...) social character of meaning relations, which can explain the openness of questions about an analysis, may thereby also make Twin-Earth judgements beside the point. But the resources available to translators go beyond semantic competence and it is these resources that nonetheless make the Moral Twin-Earth responses relevant. (shrink)

A philosophical system that aims to explain the structure of nature from the perspective of the framework of human consciousness, and thus the foundations of mathematics and physics.

I grew up with a cat and so I know that cats are the most intelligent, graceful, and insightful beings in the Universe. (This is already an example of how we humans can achieve a small measure of wisdom if we live with cats.) My whole family has always been into cats, and since I don't have a cat of my own now, I will tell you about some of theirs. My sister Gina's cat Tuti was remarkable by any measure.

Imaginative representations are crucial to the generation of action--both pretense and plain action. But well-known theories of imagination on offer in the literature [1] fail to describe how perceptually-formatted imaginings (mental images) and motor imaginings function in the generation of action and [2] fail to recognize the important fact that spatially rich imagining can be integrated into one's perceptual manifold. In this paper, I present a theory of imagining that shows how spatially rich imagining functions in the generation of action. (...) I also describe the imaginative structures behind two under-explored forms of action: semi-pretense and pretense layering. In addition, I suggest that my theory of imagining meshes better than the competitors with current work in cognitive and affective neuroscience. (shrink)

Current dynamic epistemic logics for analyzing effects of informational events often become cumbersome and opaque when common knowledge is added for groups of agents. Still, postconditions involving common knowledge are essential to successful multi-agent communication. We propose new systems that extend the epistemic base language with a new notion of ‘relativized common knowledge’, in such a way that the resulting full dynamic logic of information flow allows for a compositional analysis of all epistemic postconditions via perspicuous ‘reduction axioms’. We also (...) show how such systems can deal with factual alteration, rather than just information change, making them cover a much wider range of realistic events. After a warm-up stage of analyzing logics for public announcements, our main technical results are expressivity and completeness theorems for a much richer logic that we call LCC. This is a dynamic epistemic logic whose static base is propositional dynamic logic (PDL), interpreted epistemically. This system is capable of expressing all model-shifting operations with finite action models, while providing a compositional analysis for a wide range of informational events. This makes LCC a serious candidate for a standard in dynamic epistemic logic, as we illustrate by analyzing some complex communication scenarios, including sending successive emails with both ‘cc’ and ‘bcc’ lines, and other private announcements to subgroups. Our proofs involve standard modal techniques, combined with a new application of Kleene’s theorem on finite automata, as well as new Ehrenfeucht games of model comparison. (shrink)

This volume tackles Gödel's two-stage project of first using Husserl's transcendental phenomenology to reconstruct and develop Leibniz' monadology, and then founding classical mathematics on the metaphysics thus obtained. The author analyses the historical and systematic aspects of that project, and then evaluates it, with an emphasis on the second stage.

When scientist investigate why things happen, they aim at giving an explanation. But what does a scientific explanation look like? In the first chapter (Theories of Scientific Explanation) of this book, the milestones in the debate on how to characterize scientific explanations are exposed. The second chapter (How to Study Scientific Explanation?) scrutinizes the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation, Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon and shows what went wrong. Next, it is the responsibility of current philosophers (...) of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the pragmatic approach to scientific explanation and clarify briefly what this approach consists in. The third chapter (A Toolbox for Describing and Evaluating Explanatory Practices) elaborates the pragmatic approach by presenting a toolbox for analysing scientific explanation. In the last chapter (Examples of Descriptions and Evaluations of Explanatory Practices) the approach is illustrated with real-life examples of scientists aiming at explaining. (shrink)

How can we best reconstruct the origin of a notion, its development, and possible spread to multiple fields? We present a pilot study on the spread of the notion of conceptual scheme. Though the notion is philosophically important, its origin, development, and spread are unclear. Several purely qualitative and competing historical hypotheses have been offered, which rely on disconnected disciplinary traditions, and have never been tested all at once in a single comprehensive investigation fitting the scope of its subject matter. (...) As a step toward such an investigation, we trace the use of the bigram “conceptual scheme” in about 42,000 US journal articles in social sciences from 1888-1959 by using a novel method combining a quantitative procedure aided by basic computational techniques with qualitative elements informed by Betti and van den Berg (2014)’s ‘model approach to the history of ideas’. (shrink)

This paper claims that the standard characterization of the motivational role of belief should be supplemented. Beliefs do not only, jointly with desires, cause and rationalize actions that will satisfy the desires, if the beliefs are true; beliefs are also the practical ground of other cognitive attitudes, like imagining, which means beliefs determine whether and when one acts with those other attitudes as the cognitive inputs into choices and practical reasoning. In addition to arguing for this thesis, I take issue (...) with Velleman's argument that belief and imagining cannot be distinguished on the basis of motivational role. (shrink)

Why did Einstein tirelessly study unified field theory for more than 30 years? In this book, the author argues that Einstein believed he could find a unified theory of all of nature's forces by repeating the methods he used when he formulated general relativity. The book discusses Einstein's route to the general theory of relativity, focusing on the philosophical lessons that he learnt. It then addresses his quest for a unified theory for electromagnetism and gravity, discussing in detail his efforts (...) with Kaluza-Klein and, surprisingly, the theory of spinors. From these perspectives, Einstein's critical stance towards the quantum theory comes to stand in a new light. This book will be of interest to physicists, historians and philosophers of science. (shrink)

The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Løgstrup is second in reputation in his homeland only to Søren Kierkegaard. He is best known outside Europe for his _The Ethical Demand_, first published in Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in 1997. _Beyond the Ethical Demand_ contains excerpts, translated into English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays Løgstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first essay, he engages the critical response to _The Ethical (...) Demand,_ clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics “demands” that we are concerned for the other by introducing the crucial concept of “sovereign expressions of life.” Like Levinas, Løgstrup saw in the phenomenon of “the other” the ground for his ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of “the sovereign expressions of life,” spontaneous phenomena such as trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding. The last two essays connect his ethics with political life. Interest in Løgstrup in the English-speaking academic community continues to grow, and these important original sources will be essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of his ethics and phenomenology. “K. E. Løgstrup’s work undoubtedly made in his time an original contribution to the field of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. This translation makes extracts from his later publications on moral philosophy accessible to an English-speaking audience. I am again impressed by the depth of his ideas, which are certainly not outdated and still relevant for contemporary debates in moral philosophy.” —_Bert Musschenga, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam _ “Making a large part of Knud Løgstrup’s legacy accessible to the English-speaking public is an event of enormous cultural, philosophical and political importance—and we are all in debt to his disciple, Kies van Kooten Niekerk, and the University Press of Notre Dame, for making it happen. Løgstrup, alongside few other giants of 20th Century ethical thought, like Emmanuel Levinas or Hans Jonas, anticipated and articulated all the major challenges and urgent tasks with which the coming century is likely to confront the moral self. Our ethical discourse was all the poorer so far for being barred access to his findings and proposition. This will no longer be the case.” —_Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus, University of Leeds_ “The publication of an English translation of Knut Eljert Løgstrup's later works in ethics provides a wider readership with the opportunity to better understand his important contribution to ethics in the second half of the last century. With his notion of the _Sovereign Expressions of Life_ Løgstrup articulates his rejection of moral atomism that has become influential in recent times. The introduction and annotation by Kees van Kooten Niekerk are very helpful to see how Løgstrup's thought developed beyond _The Ethical Demand.” —__Hans S. Reinders, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam_. (shrink)

The paper reacts against the strict separation between dialectical and rhetorical approaches to argumentation and argues that argumentative discourse can be analyzed and evaluated more adequately if the two are systematically combined. Such an integrated approach makes it possible to show how the opportunities available in each of the dialectical stages of a critical discussion have been used strategically to further the rhetorical aims of the speaker or writer. The approach is illustrated with the help of an analysis of an (...) `advertorial' published by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. (shrink)