Pharmakologisches „cognition enhancement“ zielt auf die Verbesserung der geistigen Leistungsfähigkeit mithilfe von Präparaten, die primär als Medikamente eingesetzt werden. Der Beitrag befasst sich mit der ethischen Bewertung des Gebrauchs von Stimulanzien als „enhancer“ durch Kinder und Jugendliche. Am Beispiel von Diagnose und Behandlung der Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit-Hyperaktivitätsstörung (ADHS) werden die Schwierigkeiten der Abgrenzung von Therapie und Enhancement beschrieben und daraus auf verschiedenen Ebenen ethisch relevante Fragen bezüglich Cognition enhancement entwickelt. Diese betreffen z. B. die Wirkungen von Stimulanzien auf ein sich entwickelndes System (...) und eine mögliche grundlegende Änderung der Erziehungs- und Sozialisationssituation durch pharmakologisches Enhancement, aber auch das Problem der Normierung von Verhalten und der Einschränkung der Autonomie der Betroffenen. Die vorgestellten Überlegungen geben Anlass, Cognition enhancement durch Stimulanzien im Jugendbereich vorläufig kritisch zu beurteilen. (shrink)

The exchange of ideas between nations during the Enlightenment was greatly facilitated by cultural ventures, commercial enterprise and scientific collaboration. But how were they exchanged? What were the effects of these exchanges on the idea or artefact being transferred? Focussing on contact between England, France and Ireland, a team of specialists explores the translation, appropriation and circulation of cultural products and scientific ideas during the Enlightenment. Through analysis of literary and artistic works, periodicals and official writings contributors uncover: the key (...) role played by literary translators and how they adapted, naturalized and sometimes distorted plays and novels to conform to new cultural norms; the effects of eighteenth-century anglomania, and how this was manifested in French art; how the vagaries of international politics and conflict affected both the cultural products themselves and the modes of dissemination; how religious censorship engendered new Irish Catholic and French Huguenot diasporas, with their particular intellectual pursuits and networks of exchan≥ the significance of newspapers and periodicals in disseminating new knowledge and often radical philosophical ideas. By exploring both broad areas of cultural activity and precise examples of cultural transfer, contributors to Intellectual journeys reveal the range and complexity of intellectual exchange and its role in the formation of a truly transnational Enlightenment. (shrink)

Freivalds defined an acceptable programming system independent criterion for learning programs for functions in which the final programs were required to be both correct and "nearly" minimal size, i.e., within a computable function of being purely minimal size. Kinber showed that this parsimony requirement on final programs limits learning power. However, in scientific inference, parsimony is considered highly desirable. A lim-computablefunction is (by definition) one calculable by a total procedure allowed to change its mind finitely many times about its output. (...) Investigated is the possibility of assuaging somewhat the limitation on learning power resulting from requiring parsimonious final programs by use of criteria which require the final, correct programs to be "not-so-nearly" minimal size, e.g., to be within a lim-computable function of actual minimal size. It is shown that some parsimony in the final program is thereby retained, yet learning power strictly increases. Considered, then, are lim-computable functions as above but for which notations for constructive ordinals are used to bound the number of mind changes allowed regarding the output. This is a variant of an idea introduced by Freivalds and Smith. For this ordinal notation complexity bounded version of lim-computability, the power of the resultant learning criteria form finely graded, infinitely ramifying, infinite hierarchies intermediate between the computable and the lim-computable cases. Some of these hierarchies, for the natural notations determining them, are shown to be optimally tight. (shrink)

Since the beginning ofthe 1980s, successive Belgian governments have pursued a social security policy that is a combination of cutting social expenditure on the one hand and improving the plight of lower income categories among benefit recipients on the other. This has been realised by means of a strategy of 'targeting within universalism ', i.e. improving the benefits for the poor and restricting them for the better off, but without abolishing the entitlements oft he latter category completely. The Belgian experience (...) puts inperspective the 'middle class matters' argument, which predicts that, if cuts are made in social expenditure,the middle classes will use their political resources to defend the provisions they benefit from and to diminish the benefits reserved for the poor. (shrink)

Interpretation of the classics in political theory seems to go in waves. For a while we had John Locke, the bourgeois thinker. Now we seem to be in a Locke-as-radical-democrat phase. Locke-the-bourgeois had problems of its own, but a radically democratic Locke -- not just the old Locke as liberal democrat but Locke as quasi-Leveller -- strains the interpretative imagination more than most; yet in recent years, several different kinds of argument have been advanced in support of it, both textual (...) and contextual. The most effective argument has proceeded by situating Locke in the context of radical Whig politics in the 1670s and '80s, the struggles over religious toleration and the royal succession, in particular the �Exclusion Crisis� of 1679-81. This contextual argument has been accompanied by various textual interpretations having to do with Locke's conceptions of property, consent, representation, the right of revolution and natural law. Among other things, these are supposed to show that while Locke had nothing explicit to say about the extent of the franchise, the weight of evidence suggests that he would have supported a fairly wide franchise, perhaps even something like the (almost) manhood suffrage advocated by the Levellers (at least according to some, and probably the most convincing, interpretations of their ideas). Most recently, in these pages, Martin Hughes, building on the work of James Tully and Richard Ashcraft in particular, has pushed the argument as far as it can probably go. His argument on taxation and suffrage has provided a motivation here for a wider exploration of Locke's views on representation, consent and the franchise. (shrink)

This study focuses on the spatialization and institutionalization of social networks of Russian women who migrated to Turkey via marriage in the last 30 years. Specifically, it investigates how and why their social networks have been changing at the local and transnational levels. We conducted in-depth interviews with 56 women between 2014−2021. Our extensive analysis indicates that despite their newly established status via marriages, the Russian women have weak ties with the locals regardless of the migration period, preferring mostly to (...) engage with other Russian women in Turkey. Even if the different migrant associations established by Russian migrants in Turkey do not actually aim this, they create an effect that increases the social distance with the host society and serves to strengthen the connection between the migrants. Also, unlike pioneer migrants, newer marriage migrants have established strong transnational ties with others living overseas, regardless of their gender or ethnic identity. Further, this study reveals that the migrant women's subjectivity, their spouses’ benefit-oriented negotiation styles, and the state's diaspora policy all shape the women's social networks at different levels. (shrink)

Decisions related to animal welfare standards depend on farmer’s multiple goals and values and are constrained by a wide range of external and internal forces. The aim of this paper is twofold, i.e., to develop a theoretical framework for farmers’ AW decisions that incorporates farmers’ goals, use and non-use values and to present an approach to empirically implement the theoretical framework. The farmer as a head of the farm household makes choices regarding production to maximize the utility of the household. (...) The overall utility of the farmer is determined by his multiple objectives. For the analysis of multi-objective problems, the multiple criteria decision - making paradigm provides an appropriate theoretical framework. However, theories from the field of social-psychology are needed to facilitate the identification of all relevant aspects in the decision making. The practical use of the conceptual framework is demonstrated using a simple numerical application of a multi-objective programming model. Two workshops were devoted to examining the scientific consistency and the practical usefulness of the approach. Implementing this approach will increase knowledge of the main factors and barriers that determine farmers’ decisions with regard to AW standards. This knowledge is relevant during the development of new AW concepts that aims to supply products that comply with above-legal AW standards for middle-market segments. (shrink)

In the fourth section of Goethe’s Zahme Xenien we find the quatrain from which I have taken the theme of such an old and new controversy, which, as I hope, concerns both Germanic studies and the other humanities: “What was it that kept you from us so apart?” I always read Plutarch again and again. “And what was the lesson he did impart?” “They were all human beings—so much is plain.”1 In the very years when Goethe wrote these lines, that (...) is in the 1820s, Hegel repeatedly gave his lectures on the philosophy of history. Right at the beginning he formulated the opposite view which I should like briefly to characterize as “cultural relativism.”Every age has such peculiar circumstances, such individual conditions that it must be interpreted, and can only be interpreted, by reference to itself…. Nothing is shallower in this respect than the frequent appeal to Greek and Roman example which so often occurred among the French at the time of their Revolution. Nothing could be more different than the nature of these peoples and the nature of our own times.2 What is at issue here is not, of course, Hegel’s assertion that ages and peoples differ from each other. We all know that, and Goethe, the attentive reader and traveler, also knew, for instance, that the Roman carnival differed in its character from the celebrations of the Feast of Saint Rochus at Bingen, both of which he had described so lovingly. What makes the cultural historian into a cultural relativist is only the conclusion which we saw Hegel draw, that cultures and styles of life are not only different but wholly incommensurable, in other words that it is absurd to compare the peoples of a region or an age with human beings of other zones because there is no common denominator that would justify us in doing so. 1. ‘Was hat dich nun von uns entfernt?’ Hab immer den Plutarch gelesen. ‘Was has du den dabei gelernt?’ Sind eben alles Menschen gewesen.’ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sämtlich Werke. Jubiläums-ausgabe in 40 Bänden 4:73; with commentary.2. See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorselungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke, 20 vols. , 12:17. E. H. Gombrich was director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition at the University of London from 1959 to 1976. His many influential works include The Story of Art, Art and Illusion, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, The Sense of Order, Ideals and Idols, The Image and the Eye, Tributes, Aby Warburg, and New Light on Old Masters. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “The Museum: Past, Present and Future” , “Standards of Truth: The Arrested Image and the Moving Eye” , and “Representation and Misrepresentation”. (shrink)

For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. Romans 7.19-20.

L'ed. delle Obligationes si basa su quattro mss.: Praha, Knihovni Metropolitni Kapituly, M.CXLV ; Oxford, New College, E 289 ; Praha, Státní Knihóvna CSR, VIII E 11 ; Salamanca, Biblioteca de la Universidad, 2358 . Nell'introduzione l'A. prende in esame la tradizione manoscritta delle opere di Giovanni Tarteys, fornendo anche una breve notizia biografica di questo magister artium attivo ad Oxford tra la fine del Trecento e gli inizi del Quattrocento. Segue un'analisi comparata del De Obligationibus di Giovanni con le (...) trattazioni analoghe di altri maestri, tra i quali Rodolfo Strode, Gualterio Burley, Paolo da Venezia e Giovanni Wyclif. Discussi infine i criteri di edizione. (shrink)