Attitudes toward robots influence the tendency to accept or reject robotic devices. Thus it is important to investigate whether and how attitudes toward robots can change. In this pilot study we investigate attitudinal changes in elderly citizens toward a tele-operated robot in relation to three parameters: (i) the information provided about robot functionality, (ii) the number of encounters, (iii) personality type. Fourteen elderly residents at a rehabilitation center participated. Pre-encounter attitudes toward robots, anthropomorphic thinking, and personality were assessed. Thereafter the (...) participants interacted with a tele-operated robot (Telenoid) during their lunch (c. 30 min.) for up to 3 days. Half of the participants were informed that the robot was tele-operated (IC) whilst the other half were naïve to its functioning (UC). Post-encounter assessments of attitudes toward robots and anthropomorphic thinking were undertaken to assess change. Attitudes toward robots were assessed with a new generic 35-items questionnaire (attitudes toward social robots scale: ASOR-5), offering a differentiated conceptualization of the conditions for social interaction. There was no significant difference between the IC and UC groups in attitude change toward robots though trends were observed. Personality was correlated with some tendencies for attitude changes; Extraversion correlated with positive attitude changes to intimate-personal relatedness with the robot (r = 0.619) and to psychological relatedness (r = 0.581) whilst Neuroticism correlated negatively (r = -0.582) with mental relatedness with the robot. The results tentatively suggest that neither information about functionality nor direct repeated encounters are pivotal in changing attitudes toward robots in elderly citizens. This may reflect a cognitive congruence bias where the robot is experienced in congruence with initial attitudes, or it may support action-based explanations of cognitive dissonance reductions, given that robots, unlike computers, are not yet perceived as action targets. Specific personality traits may be indicators of attitude change relating to specific domains of social interaction. Implications and future directions are discussed. (shrink)

Background Older patients in emergency care often have complex needs and may have limited ability to make their voices heard. Hence, there are ethical challenges for healthcare professionals in establishing a trustful relationship to determine the patient’s preferences and then decide and act based on these preferences. With this comes further challenges regarding how the patient’s autonomy can be protected and promoted. Aim To describe nurses’ experiences of dealing with older patients’ autonomy when cared for in emergency departments (EDs). Research (...) design This study adopted reflective lifeworld theory and a phenomenological design. Participants and research context A total of 13 open-ended interviews were performed with nurses working at two EDs in Sweden. Ethical considerations The study was reviewed by the Ethical Advisory Board in South East Sweden and conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants gave consent. Findings Nurses’ experiences of dealing with older patients’ autonomy in EDs are characterized by moving in a conflicting uphill struggle, indicating obscure thoughts on how patient autonomy can be protected in an ethically challenging context. The phenomenon is further described with its meaning constituents: ‘Being hampered by prioritization under stress’, ‘Balancing paternalism and patient autonomy’, ‘Making decisions without consent in the patient’s best interests’ and ‘Being trapped by notions of legitimate care needs’. Conclusion Stressful work conditions and lacking organizational strategies in EDs contribute to nurses maintaining unjustified paternalistic care, regardless of the patient’s ability and medical condition, and questioning who has legitimacy for participating in decisions about care. The nurses’ protection and promotion of older patients’ autonomy is dependent on the opportunity, ability and willingness to create a patient relationship where the patient’s voice and preferences are valued as important. Consequently, strategies are needed to improve patient autonomy in EDs based on the idea of ‘relational autonomy’. (shrink)

Urban spaces require increasing their attractiveness by exploring the social and spatial implications of new lifestyles. Broad civic knowledge is the basis for placemaking to shape user-centred and inclusive spaces of everyday life. Gathering information on the sense of the place is crucial to finding out and understanding the place-related identity of its users to make the place more appealing and usable. The most popular survey tool is a questionnaire constructed as a series of questions and used for collecting information (...) about a population’s attributes, attitudes or actions. Administered in person or online, questionnaire surveys may provide broad coverage of urban communities – however, they require significantly large human resources to carry out. The survey based on personal contact with the respondent may limit time allocated to its implementation, thus affecting the sample selection. Also, the researcher’s involvement in the questionnaire-filling process can be problematic if he or she reveals the topic of interest and if the sequencing of questionnaire themes influences responses. Similarly, an online questionnaire may not reach some potential respondents due to their reduced access to the internet etc. These limitations may affect the results’ reliability. Taking into account the above-mentioned aspects, the idea of this chapter is to present selected types of questionnaires (textual, visual, in-VR and survey gamification). The main aim is to discuss these questionnaires in the context of their main advantages and disadvantages resulting from the specifics of a type and a form of survey (in-depth and online) to facilitate their use in the process of data collection in placemaking research. The results show that the variety of types of questionnaires, as well as the form of the conducted survey, allow their better selection to the specificity of the community, increasing the place-related identity, thus may provide a more reliable and complete set of information possible to be used in placemaking. (shrink)

According to standard philosophical and clinical understandings, pain is an essentially mental phenomenon (typically, a kind of conscious experience). In a challenge to this standard conception, a recent burst of empirical work in experimental philosophy, such as that by Justin Sytsma and Kevin Reuter, purports to show that people ordinarily conceive of pain as an essentially bodily phenomenon—specifically, a quality of bodily disturbance. In response to this bodily view, other recent experimental studies have provided evidence that the ordinary (‘folk’) concept (...) of pain is more complex than previously assumed: rather than tracking only bodily or only mental aspects of pain, the ordinary concept of pain can actually track either of these aspects. The polyeidic (or ‘many ideas’) analysis of the folk concept of pain, as proposed by Emma Borg et al., captures this complexity. Whereas previous empirical support for the polyeidic view has focused on the context-sensitivity of the folk concept of pain, here we discuss individual differences in people’s ‘pain priors’—namely, their standing tendencies to think of pain in relatively mind-centric or body-centric ways. We describe a preliminary empirical study and present a small number of findings, which will be explored further in future work. The results we discuss are part of a larger programme of work which seeks to integrate philosophical pain research into clinical practice. For example, we hypothesise that variations in how patients with chronic pain are thinking about pain could help predict their responses to treatment. (shrink)

This article discusses ethnoveterinary medical pluralism in Western Kenya. Qualitative methods of data collection such as key informant interviews, open-ended in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), narratives, and participant and direct observations were applied. The study shows that farmers in Nyang’oma seek both curative and preventive medical services for their animals from the broad range of health care providers available to them within a pluralistic medical system. Kleinman’s model of medical pluralism, which describes the professional, folk, and popular sectors, informs (...) this discussion because of its relevance and appropriateness to the study. It is, however, important to note the overlap in the three sectors and to point out that livestock farmers engage in multiple “consultations” based on a combination of their own characteristics and the cost, availability and specialization of health care providers. The study concludes by recognizing the complexity of ethnoveterinary medical pluralism and calls for the integration of a pluralistic perspective into the planning and implementation of animal health care interventions and services. (shrink)

In Argumentation Theory: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective (2018), Professor van Eemeren suggests that it might be worthwhile for pragma-dialectics and informal logic to join forces, given that there is a “considerable amount of common ground” between the two. In this paper, we explore that common ground by considering both the ways logic is understood and incorporated in the pragma-dialectical model and the ways informal logic has developed since its inception in the 1970s. In the process of our investigation, we present a (...) view of the landscape of argumentation in which the subject matter of informal logic is situated relative to theories of argumentation. (shrink)

Clinical mental health researchers may understandably struggle with how to incorporate biological assessments in clinical research. The options are numerous and are described in a vast and complex body of literature. Here we provide guidelines to assist mental health researchers seeking to include biological measures in their studies. Apart from a focus on behavioral outcomes as measured via interviews or questionnaires, we advocate for a focus on biological pathways in clinical trials and epidemiological studies that may help clarify pathophysiology and (...) mechanisms of action, delineate biological subgroups of participants, mediate treatment effects, and inform personalized treatment strategies. With this paper we aim to bridge the gap between clinical and biological mental health research by (1) discussing the clinical relevance, measurement reliability, and feasibility of relevant peripheral biomarkers; (2) addressing five types of biological tissues, namely blood, saliva, urine, stool and hair; and (3) providing information on how to control sources of measurement variability. (shrink)

_I lyset af Trumps valgsejr i 2024 har vi valgt at gøre en række af artiklerne fra #85: Folk, folkestyre og populisme frit tilgængelige tidligere, end vi plejer. Resten af nummeret bliver tilgængeligt i marts 2025._.

Legality, interdisciplinarity and the study of practice -- Re-thinkinking interdisciplinarity by re-reading hume -- Tainted love : the struggle over legality in international relations and international law -- The power of legality, legitimacy and the (im)possibility of interdisciplinary research -- Moving while standing still : law, politics and hard cases -- International law, Kelsen and the aberrant revolution : excavating the politics and practices of revolutionary legality in Rhodesia and beyond -- Juris dicere : custom as a matrix, custom as (...) a norm, and the role of judges and (their) ideology in custom making -- Multiple legalities and international criminal tribunals : juridical versus political legality -- Palestine's quest for statehood and the practice of the United Nations -- Regulatory legality : extraterritorial rule across domestic and international arenas -- Legality and lawfare in regime implementation -- Whose legality? Rule of law missions and the case of Kosovo -- Perspectives on the perils, promise, politics - and practice of interdisciplinarity. (shrink)

Parent and preschool teacher ratings of the 10 noun categories of MacArthur-Bates Communication Development Inventory were used to study expressive language in 2–4-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder across the home and preschool context. There was no significant difference in the total number of words the children said in the two contexts, but the children said significantly more words in the noun categories “Furniture and rooms” and “People” at home. Only one third of the words the children said were said (...) both at home and in the preschool, while the other two thirds were said only at home or only in preschool. This suggests that what words the children use across contexts differ substantially and that their vocabulary is larger than it seems when measured only in one context. This novel study highlights the importance of assessing the language in children with ASD in multiple contexts in order to better measure their vocabulary and to design appropriate language interventions. (shrink)

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People. by Josiah Ober Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. by Mogens Herman Hansen The Classical Athenian Democracy. by David Stockton The Greek Discovery of Politics. by Chistian Meier Athens from Cleisthenes to Pericles. by Charles W. Fornara; Loren J. Samons II Freedom: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture. by Orlando Patterson.

The aim of this paper is to outline an integrative account of experiential and narrative dimensions of the self based on Husserl’s genetic phenomenology. I argue that we should discard “strong narrativism” which holds that our experiential life has a narrative structure and, accordingly, that experiential and narrative dimensions of the self coincide. We should also refrain from equating the experiential self with the minimal self, as the former does not simply constitute a formally individuated subject as the latter but (...) a properly individualized one with personal characteristics and habituality. Husserl’s genetic phenomenology offers both a description of the individualized self as experiential, i.e. as pre-reflective and embodied, and as narrative, i.e. as an autonomous linguistic agent. Through Husserl’s concepts of sedimentation and secondary passivity, we can explain the dialectical relationship between experiential and narrative dimensions of the self. (shrink)

A bold and visionary book that reveals the false and catastrophically damaging images at the root of the oppression of women and the rape of Earth's resources, ...

Background To produce and understand words, humans access the mental lexicon. From a functional perspective, the long-term memory component of the mental lexicon is comprised of three levels: the concept level, the lemma level, and the phonological level. At each level, different kinds of word information are stored. Semantic as well as phonological cues can help to facilitate word access during a naming task, especially when neural dysfunctions are present. The processing corresponding to word access occurs in specific parts of (...) working memory. Neural models for simulating speech processing help to uncover the complex relationships that exist between neural dysfunctions and corresponding behavioral patterns. Methods The Neural Engineering Framework (NEF) and the Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA) are used to develop a quantitative neural model of the mental lexicon and its access during speech processing. By simulating a picture-naming task (WWT 6-10), the influence of cues is investigated by introducing neural dysfunctions within the neural model at different levels of the mental lexicon. Results First, the neural model is able to simulate the test behavior for normal children that exhibit no lexical dysfunction. Second, the model shows worse results in test performance as larger degrees of dysfunction are introduced. Third, if the severity of dysfunction is not too high, phonological and semantic cues are observed to lead to an increase in the number of correctly named words. Phonological cues are observed to be more effective than semantic cues. Conclusion Our simulation results are in line with human experimental data. Specifically, phonological cues seem not only to activate phonologically similar items within the phonological level. Moreover, phonological cues support higher-level processing during access of the mental lexicon. Thus, the neural model introduced in this paper offers a promising approach to modeling the mental lexicon, and to incorporating the mental lexicon into a complex model of language processing. (shrink)

A large number of Swedish public authorities produce ‘platform of values’ texts that present core values. This article presents a study of how such texts and practices, including the core values they revolve around, are legitimized. Using Van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework, three different data sets are analysed: 47 ‘platform of values’ texts, a focus group discussion with seven senior HR officers, and a quantitative questionnaire study answered by civil servants at three public authorities. The analysis shows how the existence of (...) ‘platform of values’ texts and practices is legitimized through rationalizations, above all by describing the texts as concrete means for reaching specific ends and, with regard to the choice of core values, through a custom-conformity type of authority. Thus, this article addresses discursive transformations of contemporary organizations with a particular focus on available discursive space for critical thinking in the wake of New Public Management and related developments. (shrink)

Background It is a common ethical challenge for ambulance clinicians to care for patients with impaired decision-making capacities while assessing and determining the degree of decision-making ability and considering ethical values. Ambulance clinicians’ ethical competence seems to be increasingly important in coping with such varied ethical dilemmas. Ethics rounds is a model designed to promote the development of ethical competence among clinicians. While standard in other contexts, to the best of our knowledge, it has not been applied within the ambulance (...) service context. Thus, the aim of this study was to describe ambulance clinicians’ experiences of participating in ethics rounds. Methods This was a qualitative descriptive study, evaluating an intervention. Data were collected through sixteen interviews with ambulance clinicians who had participated in an intervention involving ethics rounds. The analysis was performed by use of content analysis. Results Two themes describe the participants’ experiences: (1) Reflecting freely within a given framework, and (2) Being surprised by new insights. The following categories form the basis of the themes; 1a) Gentle guidance by the facilitator, 1b) A comprehensible structure, 2a) New awareness in the face of ethical problems, and 2b) Shared learning through dialogue. Conclusion Incorporating structured ethics rounds seems to create a continuous development in ethical competence that may improve the quality of care in the ambulance service. Structured guidance and facilitated group reflections offer ambulance clinicians opportunities for both personal and professional development. An important prerequisite for the development of ethical competence is a well-educated facilitator. Consequently, this type of ethics rounds may be considered a useful pedagogical model for the development of ethical competence in the ambulance service. (shrink)

Traces the development of the samurai, both in the way they regarded themselves and their role in society.

This article argues that the influence of heteronormativity on the conceptualization of women and technology in feminist constructivist technology studies creates serious problems for the analysis. This research aims to understand the coproduction of gender and technology in society, but does not approach the two elements in a symmetrical fashion. Hence, ethnographic studies can only exemplify how the gender of technology producers is reflected in the technology created. Masculine gender identity is stabilized as a cause for the masculinity of a (...) technology that is shaped by social relationships. The criticism is fleshed out in a close examination of case study accounts of ethnographies among producers and users of technology. It is argued that a habitual reproduction of heteronormativity, present in the surrounding culture and in the technological communities studied, has prevented the adoption of approaches to the subject conducive to the objective of this feminist research. Acknowledging that destabilizing gender can undermine the critical thrust of feminist critique, the paper turns towards queer theory for ideas about how to produce criticism that does not rely on the stability of identity. The article closes with suggesting how a queer feminist approach could contribute to different readings of life with technology. (shrink)

This paper presents an introduction to Arne Grøn’s existential hermeneutics as a philosophical method, while also attempting to indicate how Grøn’s work contributes to and engages in a number of crucial topics in modern continental philosophy. The first section of the paper shows how Grøn draws on Paul Ricoeur and Michael Theunissen to rethink the concept of existence through a reading of Kierkegaard that uncouples this concept from the self-evident status it attained in twenty-century existentialism. The second section of the (...) paper argues that Grøn proposes an existential ethics that takes the Kierkegaardian notion that humans are inherently normative beings and uses this as a basis for a critique of ethics, as well as for establishing an ethics of vision inspired by Kierkegaard. The third section of the paper presents a reading of Grøn’s notion of religion as an inextricable part of human existence. (shrink)

Interpersonal respect can be differentiated into two kinds: horizontal respect, i.e. treating someone with dignity; and vertical respect, i.e. genuinely honoring someone’s merits. With the present research, we draw on motivation theory to explore their interplay in leadership relations. Specifically, we argue for a moderated mediation hypothesis in that leaders’ horizontal respect for their subordinates fundamentally speaks to subordinates’ self-determination and that the message of respectful leadership is enhanced by the vertical respect subordinates have for their leaders. As a result, (...) subordinates are more satisfied with their jobs, which should also show in a decreased willingness to leave. The proposed model was supported in two survey studies and an experimental scenario study —thus suggesting that perceived leader behavior needs to be complemented by leader standing. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper challenges three assumptions common in the literature on expertise: that expertise is linearly derived from scientific knowledge; that experts always align with the established institutional order; and that expertise is a property acquired by individuals. We criticize these ideas by juxtaposing three distinct expert practices involved with flood risk management in England. Virtual engineering is associated with commercial consultancy and relies on standardized software packages to assess local flood inundation. Mathematical experimentation refers to academic scientists creating new digital (...) renderings of the physical dynamics of flooding. Participatory modeling denotes research projects that aim to transform the relationships between experts and local communities. Focusing on different modes of modeling we contribute an analysis of how particular models articulate with specific politics of knowledge as experts form relationships with flood risk management actors. Our empirical study also shows how models can contribute to re-distribution of expertise in local flood risk management. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell’s account of aesthetic judgment has two components. The first is a feeling: the judge has to see, hear, ‘dig’ something in the object being judged, there has to be an ‘emotion’ that the judge feels and expresses. The second is the ‘discipline of accounting for [the judgment]’, a readiness to argue for one’s aesthetic judgment in the face of disagreement. The discipline of accounting for one’s aesthetic judgments involves what Nick Riggle has called a norm of convergence: the (...) judge aims to get one’s audience to taste see or hear what the judge tastes or sees or hears in the object being judged. Because of the unmistakable difficulty in reaching agreement in aesthetic judgment, Riggle has denied that aesthetic judgment requires a convergence norm and has proposed instead that it requires ‘a kind of harmony of individuality’ (which Riggle calls ‘vibing’). We argue that Cavell offers a version of the convergence norm that is distinct from those that Riggle criticizes, namely Kant’s demand for agreement and Andy Egan’s presupposition of similarity in dispositions in ‘non-defective’ aesthetic conversations. Cavell’s version of the convergence norm is ‘the hope of agreement’. One can hope that one’s audience will agree with one’s aesthetic judgments even when one isn’t in a position to demand agreement or to presuppose similarity in the dispositions that would make agreement more likely. Cavell’s distinct convergence norm avoids Riggle’s criticisms and contributes to a richer account of what’s going on when we disagree about aesthetic matters. (shrink)

The increasing strategic importance of environmental, social and ethical issues as well as related performance measures has spurred interest in corporate sustainability performance measurement and management systems. This paper focuses on the balanced scorecard, a performance measurement and management system aiming at balancing financial and non-financial as well as short and long-term measures. Modifications to the original BSC which explicitly consider environmental, social or ethical issues are often referred to as sustainability balanced scorecards. There is much scholarly discussion about SBSC (...) architecture and how it can be designed to relate performance dimensions, strategic objectives and the logical links among these elements. To synthesise the widely scattered research findings and publications on the SBSC, we conducted a thematic analysis based on a systematic literature review containing 69 relevant articles spanning a period of two decades. We found that sustainability-oriented modifications of the BSC architecture are motivated by instrumental, social/political or normative theoretical perspectives. Moreover, these modifications can be mapped with a typology of generic SBSC architectures. The first dimension of the typology describes the hierarchy between performance perspectives and strategic objectives and how it is related to the organisational value system. The second dimension describes how sustainability-related strategic objectives are integrated into SBSC performance perspectives and how this is related to corporate sustainability strategy. This study contributes to the development of the emerging SBSC literature and practice and, more generally, to research on corporate sustainability performance measurement and management. We conclude with a research agenda and implications for management. (shrink)

Neuroscientific research in relation to antisocial behavior has strongly grown in the last decades. This has resulted in a better understanding of biological factors associated with antisocial behavior. Furthermore several neuroscientific instruments and interventions have been developed that have a relatively low threshold for use in the criminal justice system to contribute to prevention or reduction of antisocial and criminal behavior. When considering implementation in the criminal justice system, ethical aspects of the use of neuroscientific instruments and interventions need to (...) be taken into account. With respect to ethics in relation to neurocriminology much of the literature focuses on identifying and debating risks and value conflicts. This is important and necessary, but the positive contribution of neuroscientific applications may therefore get less attention in the ethical literature. Yet, ethicists can help criminal justice researchers and practitioners to identify ways in which neuroscience could add positively to important values in (young) offender rehabilitation. It is argued that this role of ethicists in interdisciplinary teams deserves more emphasis. As an illustration, this contribution focuses on how neuroscientific knowledge, instruments and interventions may contribute to autonomy of (young) offenders. (shrink)

Existing research on the formation of employee ethical climate perceptions focuses mainly on organization characteristics as antecedents, and although other constructs have been considered, these constructs have typically been studied in isolation. Thus, our understanding of the context in which ethical climate perceptions develop is incomplete. To address this limitation, we build upon the work of Rupp to develop and test a multi-experience model of ethical climate which links aspects of the corporate social responsibility, ethics, justice, and trust literatures and (...) helps to explain how employees’ ethical climate perceptions form. We argue that in forming ethical climate perceptions, employees consider the actions or characteristics of a complex web of actors. Specifically, we propose that employees look outward at how communities are impacted by their organization’s actions, upward to make inferences about the ethicality of leaders in their organizations, and inward at their own propensity to trust others as they form their perceptions. Using a multiple-wave field study conducted at a privately held US corporation, we find substantial evidence in support of our model. (shrink)

Is the term ‘racist’ being applied so widely that it is losing its moral force? Theorists and pundits from across the political spectrum think that it is. They call such a change of meaning “conceptual inflation” and argue that we should try to stop it by restricting the use of ‘racist’ or replacing ‘racist’ with new expressions. But what evidence do we have that ‘racist’ is inflated? Economists do not track currency inflation with mere vibes; they use measurements such as (...) the consumer price index. For example, using CPI, it is observable that there has been considerable US dollar inflation over the last three decades or so: $1.00 in 1989 has the purchasing power of $2.54 in 2024. If ‘racist’ has undergone a similar transformation, as critics of conceptual inflation contend, how could that be measured? Before plunging into the normative debate about whether conceptual inflation is good or bad, we should gather systematic empirical evidence about whether the purported conceptual inflation of ‘racist’ is in fact happening. That is what we do in this paper: we use an apparent time study, a technique drawn from sociolinguistics, to measure whether ‘racist’ is undergoing conceptual inflation. An apparent time study looks at the linguistic behavior of people of different ages as a way of measuring linguistic variation over time. We distinguish two processes that constitute conceptual inflation: extension expansion and intensity bleaching. Across three studies, we found some equivocal evidence that ‘racist’ has undergone extension expansion—its reference class may have slightly expanded—but no evidence that it has undergone intensity bleaching—its moral force remains the same. By comparing ‘racist’ with other terms that have plausibly undergone meaning change, like ‘queer’, we argue that claims about the conceptual inflation of ‘racist’, as they are standardly understood, are overblown. (shrink)

When experimental participants are given the chance to reflect and revise their initial judgments in a dynamic conversational context, do their responses to philosophical scenarios differ from responses to those same scenarios presented in a traditional static survey? In three experiments comparing responses given in conversational contexts with responses to traditional static surveys, we find no consistent evidence that responses differ in these different formats. This aligns with recent findings that various manipulations of reflectiveness have no effect on participants’ judgments (...) about philosophical scenarios. Although we did not find a consistent quantitative effect of format (conversation vs. static survey), conversational experiments still provide qualitative insights into debates about how participants are understanding (or misunderstanding) the scenarios they read in experimental studies, whether they are replacing difficult questions with questions that are more easily answered, and how participants are imagining the scenarios they read in ways that differ from what is explicitly stated by experimenters. We argue that conversational experiments—"Socratic questionnaires"—help show what is going on “under the hood” of traditional survey designs in the experimental investigation of philosophical questions. (shrink)

First concerns about the use of nanosilver were raised almost a decade ago, but assessing the risks has been extremely challenging scientifically, and regulation to protect environmental and human health remains controversial. In order to understand the known risks and issues associated with the use of nanosilver, we carried out a DPSIR analysis and analysed drivers, pressures, state, impacts and potential policy responses. We found that most concerns relate to the potential development of multi-resistant bacteria and the environmental impacts of (...) nanosilver. From the DPSIR analysis, we found that new legislation for nanomaterials in general and nanosilver-specific changes in the current European chemical, biocide and medical legislation were the optimal policy responses, along with limiting the overall use of nanosilver. In order to qualify the identified potential policy responses, we carried out a stakeholder analysis, in order to explore possibilities for reaching consensus amongst stakeholders. Through the stakeholder analysis, the interests, views, power and influence of the identified stakeholders were mapped. Overall, the policy options identified in the DPSIR analysis were deemed not to be implementable, as industry and NGOs seem to have fundamentally conflicting views and interests. The use of the combination of DPSIR and stakeholder analysis proved valuable for use in cases of complexity, as they compensate for each other’s limitations and open up for a discussion what can be done to reduce risks. (shrink)