Background Since the enactment of the euthanasia law in the Netherlands, there has been a lively public debate on assisted dying that may influence the way patients talk about euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide with their physicians and the way physicians experience the practice of EAS. Aim To show what developments physicians see in practice and how they perceive the influence of the public debate on the practice of EAS. Methods We conducted a secondary analysis of in-depth interviews with 28 Dutch (...) physicians who had experience with a complex case of EAS. Respondents were recruited both by the network of physicians working for SCEN as well as via a national questionnaire, wherein participating physicians could indicate their willingness to be interviewed. Results Three themes came up in analysing the interviews. First, the interviewed physicians experienced a change in what patients would expect from them: from a role as an involved caregiver to being the mere performer of EAS. Second, interviewees said that requests for EAS based on non-medical reasons came up more frequently and wondered if EAS was the right solution for these requests. Last, respondents had the impression that the standards of EAS are shifting and that the boundaries of the EAS regulation were stretched. Conclusions The perceived developments could make physicians less willing to consider a request for EAS. Our results also raise questions about the role of physicians and of EAS in society. (shrink)

Humans can recollect past events in details and/or know that an object, person, or place has been encountered before. During the last two decades, there has been intense debate about how recollection and familiarity are organized in the brain. Here, we propose an integrative memory model which describes the distributed and interactive neurocognitive architecture of representations and operations underlying recollection and familiarity. In this architecture, the subjective experience of recollection and familiarity arises from the interaction between core systems and an (...) attribution system. By integrating principles from current theoretical views about memory functioning, we provide a testable framework to refine the prediction of deficient versus preserved mechanisms in memory-impaired populations. The case of Alzheimer's disease is considered as an example because it entails progressive lesions starting with limited damage to core systems before invading step-by-step most parts of the model-related network. We suggest a chronological scheme of cognitive impairments along the course of AD, where the inaugurating deficit would relate early neurodegeneration of the perirhinal/anterolateral entorhinal cortex to impaired familiarity for items that need to be discriminated as viewpoint-invariant conjunctive entities. The integrative memory model can guide future neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies aiming to understand how such a network allows humans to remember past events, to project into the future, and possibly also to share experiences. (shrink)

En el contexto político global contemporáneo, las diversas luchas sociales se están alienando entre sí hasta elpunto de que la ilusión del capitalismo como único sistema socioeconómico posible está difuminando todos los horizontesdel cambio social. En este artículo, trataremos de redefinir las causas comunes de las luchas sociales, demostrando su interseccionalidad e interdependencia. Para ello, nos ocuparemos de una serie de conceptos de la filosofía de Marx. En la introducción, examinaremos la noción de valor, afirmando que la teoría del valor (...) de Marx no es simplemente una teoría laboral del valor, sino que más bien refleja la estructura paralela de la producción y la circulación, cristalizada en la forma de valor última del dinero. Una vez obtenidas estas ideas preliminares, volveremos al fenómeno del trabajo en el capitalismo, para reinterpretar, en la primera sección del artículo, la distinción marxiana entre trabajo productivo e improductivo. A partir de ahí, se darán los primeros ejemplos concretos de la interseccionalidad de las luchas sociales contra la abstracción del capital: a saber, mostrar que las luchas de género y las raciales tienen ciertas causas comunes, enraizadas en la hegemonía gramsciana. En la segunda sección, examinaremos la distinción que Marx establece entre la subsunción formal y la real. Esta última, afirmaremos, es decisiva para entender cómo el capital estructura la cuasi-totalidad de nuestras relaciones sociales. Tras una interpretación de la película Toni Erdmann de Maren Ade, propondremos algunos medios posibles de lucha interseccional contra la subsunción real, que encontrarán su respaldo teórico en el concepto de universales subversivos. Las observaciones finales abordarán la lógica nuclear de la distribución y la acumulación del capital, un síntoma que pervive a lo largo de la historia preservado e impulsado por la omnipresencia de la ideología, y subrayarán de nuevo implícitamente la importancia de la lucha común en el descongelamiento de la emergencia de un nuevo sujeto revolucionario. (shrink)

BackgroundThe emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine has prompted the development of numerous ethical guidelines, while the involvement of patients in the creation of these documents lags behind. As part of the European PROFID project we explore patient perspectives on the ethical implications of AI in care for patients at increased risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD).AimExplore perspectives of patients on the ethical use of AI, particularly in clinical decision-making regarding the implantation of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD).MethodsSemi-structured, future scenario-based (...) interviews were conducted among patients who had either an ICD and/or a heart condition with increased risk of SCD in Germany (n = 9) and the Netherlands (n = 15). We used the principles of the European Commission’s Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI to structure the interviews.ResultsSix themes arose from the interviews: the ability of AI to rectify human doctors’ limitations; the objectivity of data; whether AI can serve as second opinion; AI explainability and patient trust; the importance of the ‘human touch’; and the personalization of care. Overall, our results reveal a strong desire among patients for more personalized and patient-centered care in the context of ICD implantation. Participants in our study express significant concerns about the further loss of the ‘human touch’ in healthcare when AI is introduced in clinical settings. They believe that this aspect of care is currently inadequately recognized in clinical practice. Participants attribute to doctors the responsibility of evaluating AI recommendations for clinical relevance and aligning them with patients’ individual contexts and values, in consultation with the patient.ConclusionThe ‘human touch’ patients exclusively ascribe to human medical practitioners extends beyond sympathy and kindness, and has clinical relevance in medical decision-making. Because this cannot be replaced by AI, we suggest that normative research into the ‘right to a human doctor’ is needed. Furthermore, policies on patient-centered AI integration in clinical practice should encompass the ethics of everyday practice rather than only principle-based ethics. We suggest that an empirical ethics approach grounded in ethnographic research is exceptionally well-suited to pave the way forward. (shrink)

At the height of the COVID-19 crisis in the Netherlands a shortness of intensive care beds was looming. Dutch professional medical organizations asked a group of ethicists for assistance in drafting guidelines and criteria for selection of patients for intensive care treatment in case of absolute scarcity, when medical selection criteria would no longer suffice. This article describes the Dutch context, the process of drafting the advice and reflects on the role of ethicists and lessons learned. We argue that timely (...) interaction between clinical and ethical expertise is necessary since the distinction between medical and non-medical considerations is not as clearcut as sometimes assumed. Furthermore, pragmatic considerations related to the specifics of an epidemic are of importance, for example, in relation to prioritizing health care workers. As a consequence, any protocol already present before the pandemic would need alterations to fit the current situation. The ‘fair innings’ criterion we proposed, rephrased as an argument of intergenerational solidarity, was considered reasonable by professionals as well as patient organizations. While it is desirable to draft ethical guidelines in ‘peacetime’ as a matter of pandemic preparedness, the pressure of an actual crisis facilitates decision-making, although it will also complicate a more democratic approach. (shrink)

Most models of patient-physician communication take decision-making as a central concept. However, we found that often the treatment course of metastatic cancer patients is not easy to describe in straightforward terms used in decision-making models but is instead frequently more erratic. Our aim was to analyse these processes as trajectories. We used a longitudinal case study of 13 patients with metastatic colorectal and pancreatic cancer for whom palliative chemotherapy was a treatment option, and analysed 65 semi-structured interviews. We analysed three (...) characteristics of the treatment course that contributed to the ‘erraticness’ of the course: (1) The treatment (with or without chemotherapy) contained many options; (2) these options were not stable entities to be decided upon, but changed identity over the course of treatment, and (3) contrary to the closure (option X means no option Y, Z, etc.) a decision implies, the treatment course was a continuous process in which options instead remained open. When the treatment course is characterised by these many and changeable options that do not result in closure, the shared decision-making model should take these into account. More attention needs to be paid to the erratic character of the process in which the doctor has to provide continuous information that is related to the changing situation of the patient; also, flexibility in dealing with protocols is warranted, as is vigilance about the overall direction of the process. (shrink)

The integrative memory model formalizes a new conceptualization of memory in which interactions between representations and cognitive operations within large-scale cerebral networks generate subjective memory feelings. Such interactions allow to explain the complexity of memory expressions, such as the existence of multiples sources for familiarity and recollection feelings and the fact that expectations determine how one recognizes previously encountered information.

A la luz de algunas críticas recientes, en el marco de este texto se busca impulsar un debate que tiene lugar en dos frentes: por una parte, la lógica del origen de la lógica y, por otra parte, la relación entre psicoanálisis y marxismo. Para ello se recuperan algunos textos publicados por Alain Badiou hacia finales de la década de 1960, en los que polemiza con Jacques-Alain Miller alrededor de los concepto de "sutura" y "sujeto" (Zizek), para situar tanto las (...) diversas posiciones como las coherentes reconsideraciones a lo largo de su trayectoria intelectual. En efecto, desde "El concepto de modelo" hasta su más reciente trilogía (Teoría del sujeto, El ser y el acontecimiento y Lógica de los Mundos), se propone una perspectiva que lejos de establecer jerarquías y subordinaciones busca promover conexiones a partir de las especificidades y las diferencias a través de esa vía particular que es la filosofía. De este modo resulta posible apreciar que, pese a su crítica respecto de la primacía de la lógica del significante, los conceptos propuestos por Jacques Lacan funcionaron como una notoria fuente de inspiración para Badiou, especialmente en relación con el sujeto del inconsciente. (shrink)

Persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities cannot speak about their Quality of Life, which makes it necessary to involve others. In current approaches, these ‘others’ are seen as assessors trying to describe QoL as objectively as possible, which involves a reduction of their experiences, through which they develop knowledge on the QoL of the person with PIMD. The objective of this paper is to give caregivers’ knowledge on the QoL of a person with PIMD a theoretical basis that values (...) these experiences. We will argue that caregivers should be seen as witnesses, not assessors, and their statements on QoL as testimonies, not assessments. Audiences judge the trustworthiness of these witnesses intersubjectively, which implies a relationship characterized by trust and suspicion. Trust supports the witness to tell in her own words about the QoL of the person with PIMD; it demands receptivity, indicating that both the witness and the audience are willing to reconsider their perspective on QoL. Suspicion is necessary too, which helps the witness to critically approach her own interpretations and supports her to create more trustworthy testimonies. We conclude that the concept of witnessing helps to acknowledge caregivers’ experiential knowledge of QoL of a person with PIMD, which may also apply to other persons who cannot speak about their own QoL. We hope that our study will empower caregivers to give testimonies on QoL of a person with PIMD, which is crucial when complex decisions about the life of this person have to be made. (shrink)

In recent years, to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects, institutions in the USA have begun to set up programmes to monitor ongoing medical research. These programmes provide routine, onsite oversight, and thus go beyond existing oversight such as investigating suspected misconduct or reviewing paperwork provided by investigators. However, because of a lack of guidelines and evidence, institutions have had little guidance in setting up their programmes. To help institutions make the right choices, we used interviews and document (...) analysis to study how and why 11 US institutions have set up their monitoring programmes. Although these programmes varied considerably, we were able to distinguish two general types. ‘Compliance’ programmes on the one hand were part of the institutional review board office and set up to ensure compliance with regulations. Investigators’ participation was mandatory. Monitors focused on documentation. Investigators could be disciplined, and could be obliged to take corrective actions. ‘Quality-improvement’ programmes on the other hand were part of a separate office. Investigators requested to be monitored. Monitors focused more on actual research conduct. Investigators and other parties received feedback on how to improve the research process. Although both types of programmes have their drawbacks and advantages, we argue that if institutions want to set up monitoring programmes, quality improvement is the better choice: it can help foster an atmosphere of trust between investigators and the institutional review board, and can help raise the standards for the protection of human subjects. (shrink)

Background In the ethical and clinical literature, cases of parents who want treatment for their child to be withdrawn against the views of the medical team have not received much attention. Yet resolution of such conflicts demands much effort of both the medical team and parents. Objective To discuss who can best protect a child9s interests, which often becomes a central issue, putting considerable pressure on mutual trust and partnership. Methods We describe the case of a 3-year-old boy with acquired (...) brain damage due to autoimmune-mediated encephalitis whose parents wanted to stop treatment. By comparing this case with relevant literature, we systematically explored the pros and cons of sharing end-of-life decisions with parents in cases where treatment is considered futile by parents and not (yet) by physicians. Conclusions Sharing end-of-life decisions with parents is a more important duty for physicians than protecting parents from guilt or doubt. Moreover, a request from parents on behalf of their child to discontinue treatment is, and should be, hard to over-rule in cases with significant prognostic uncertainty and/or in cases with divergent opinions within the medical team. (shrink)

People in Java traditionally internalise the value of ‘nrima’. It is a verb, from the noun ‘ trima’ in Javanese language (box 1). The closest word to ‘nrima’ in English is acceptance, although the meaning in local wisdom is deeper. Historically, the concept is known as ‘ nrima ing pandhum’, which means a wholehearted, sincere and grateful acceptance of life events (usually unfortunate) that are given to us. This nrima attitude will result in resilience, perseverance and adaptability in facing adversity. (...) Nowadays, it is commonly shortened to ‘ nrimo’ or ‘nrima’. Nrima in daily life of Javanese is practised as accepting an event wholeheartedly, with a grateful feeling of an event or something that is (usually) unfortunate. Nrima involves accepting without protest and without being destructive, but not apathetic (continuing to try to overcome).1 2 Nrima can involve active reflection, reasoning and an attitude to turn something one initially thought was unacceptable into acceptance. However, nowadays nrima is often misinterpreted as deliberate, fatalistic and passive acceptance of a hardship, including health and disease.3 This misinterpretation of nrima has ethical relevance in the patient–doctor relationship. Box 1 ### Description about the context and Javanese language About the context and Javanese language. (shrink)

Developments in medical big data analytics may bring societal benefits but are also challenging privacy and other ethical values. At the same time, an overly restrictive data protection regime can form a serious threat to valuable observational studies. Discussions about whether data privacy or data solidarity should be the foundational value of research policies, have remained unresolved. We add to this debate with an empirically informed ethical analysis. First, experiences with the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) within (...) a European research consortium demonstrate a gap between the aims of the regulation and its effects in practice. Namely, strictly formalised data protection requirements may cause routinisation among researchers instead of substantive ethical reflection, and may crowd out trust between actors in the health data research ecosystem; while harmonisation across Europe and data sharing between countries is hampered by different interpretations of the law, which partly stem from different views about ethical values. Then, building on these observations, we use theory to argue that the concept of trust provides an escape from the privacy-solidarity debate. Lastly, the paper details three aspects of trust that can help to create a responsible research environment and to mitigate the encountered challenges: trust as multi-agent concept; trust as a rational and democratic value; and trust as method for priority setting. Mutual cooperation in research—among researchers and with data subjects—is grounded in trust, which should be more explicitly recognised in the governance of health data research. (shrink)

Kontingenz als der Bereich des Unbestimmten, Ambivalenten und Möglichen wirft Fragen auf, die für Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften gleichermaßen relevant sind. Dennoch besteht ein gewisses Ungleichgewicht zwischen den Disziplinen. Kontingenz wird in der Politikwissenschaft weitaus weniger berücksichtigt als in Soziologie und Geschichtswissenschaft. Die interdisziplinär angelegte Aufsatzsammlung führt daher soziologische und geschichtswissenschaftliche mit dezidiert politikwissenschaftlichen Perspektiven zusammen. Ausgewiesene Wissenschaftler und Wissenschaftlerinnen befassen sich mit den Herausforderungen der kontingenzsensiblen Forschung für die Politikwissenschaft. Sie beziehen sich dabei auf ausgewählte empirische Beispiele, wie die normativen (...) Grundlagen politischen Handelns, die Probleme moderner Demokratie, und die politische Dynamik der europäischen Integration. (shrink)

This article explores the philosophy of Alain Badiou from the vantage point of the concepts of the localization, delocalization, and relocalization of the void as thematized through literary arts, religion, emancipatory politics, and the subject of psychoanalysis. In short, these moments around the void characterize the processes through which truth is processed and seen through their full realization by a philosophical engagement across the various conditions in which these truths occur. The localization of a void is the naming of an (...) indiscernible element that is incommensurable to the rubric of constructible knowledge, sense and meaning which could saturate the space of truth. Thus, the naming that localizes the void acts as a subtraction of the invariant in the variance of situation such that across various points in space and time, we are still able to subtract the universal as the invariant not just as the fidelity to the localized truth but also as the resurrection of truth upon its relocalization at a different place and a different time. At its core, this article is concerned with truth, why truth is persistent, and why we have to struggle to articulate the truth that we are trying to be faithful to again and again with each instance that truth risks being covered-over and obscured. (shrink)

The new emphasis that Rachlin gives to social learning is welcome, because its role in the emergence of altruism and communication is often underestimated. However, Rachlin's account is underspecified and therefore not satisfactory. I argue that recent computational models of the evolution of language show an alternative approach and present an appealing perspective on the evolution and acquisition of a complex, altruistic behavior like syntactic language.

Preparing words in speech production is normally a fast and accurate process. We generate them two or three per second in fluent conversation; and overtly naming a clear picture of an object can easily be initiated within 600 msec after picture onset. The underlying process, however, is exceedingly complex. The theory reviewed in this target article analyzes this process as staged and feedforward. After a first stage of conceptual preparation, word generation proceeds through lexical selection, morphological and phonological encoding, phonetic (...) encoding, and articulation itself. In addition, the speaker exerts some degree of output control, by monitoring of self-produced internal and overt speech. The core of the theory, ranging from lexical selection to the initiation of phonetic encoding, is captured in a computational model, called WEAVER++. Both the theory and the computational model have been developed in interaction with reaction time experiments, particularly in picture naming or related word production paradigms, with the aim of accounting for the real-time processing in normal word production. A comprehensive review of theory, model, and experiments is presented. The model can handle some of the main observations in the domain of speech errors (the major empirical domain for most other theories of lexical access), and the theory opens new ways of approaching the cerebral organization of speech production by way of high-temporal-resolution imaging. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century, German writers, philosophers, theologians, and historians turned to Gnosticism to make sense of the modern condition. While some saw this ancient Christian heresy as a way to rethink modernity, most German intellectuals questioned Gnosticism's return in a contemporary setting. In No Spiritual Investment in the World, Willem Styfhals explores the Gnostic worldview's enigmatic place in these discourses on modernity, presenting a comprehensive intellectual history of Gnosticism's role in postwar German thought. Establishing the German-Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes (...) at the nexus of the debate, Styfhals traces how such figures as Hans Blumenberg, Hans Jonas, Eric Voegelin, Odo Marquard, and Gershom Scholem contended with Gnosticism and its tenets on evil and divine absence as metaphorical detours to address issues of cultural crisis, nihilism, and the legitimacy of the modern world. These concerns, he argues, centered on the difficulty of spiritual engagement in a world from which the divine has withdrawn. Reading Gnosticism against the backdrop of postwar German debates about secularization, political theology, and post-secularism, No Spiritual Investment in the World sheds new light on the historical contours of postwar German philosophy. (shrink)

This book considers the consequences of the natural sciences for our view of the world. Willem Drees argues that higher, more complex levels of reality, such as religion and morality, are to be viewed as natural phenomena and have their own concepts and explanations, even though all elements of reality are constituted by the same kinds of matter. Religion and morality are to be understood as rooted in our evolutionary past and our neurophysiological constitution. The book takes a more radical (...) naturalist position than most on religion and science. But religion is not dismissed: religious traditions remain important as bodies of wisdom and vision, and the naturalist view of the world does not exclude a sense of wonder and awe, since at the limits of science questions about the existence of natural reality persist. (shrink)

In Rethinking Applied Ethics Today, this paper would like to advance the concept of Ethics Consulting as a means of applying Applied Ethics in the practice of Bioethics. Applied Ethics is frequently described as a discipline of Philosophy that concerns itself with the application of moral theories such as deontology andutilitarianism to real world dilemmas. These applications however often remain restricted to the academic world and rarely reach the actual practice of those in urgent need of ethical guidance. Ethics Consulting (...) is an emerging concept in the field of Applied Ethics, but has already shown great potential in extending the gains of academic thought to everyday deliberations on ethical dilemmas. Connected to the Coherence and Common-Morality Theories in Bioethics, the focusof Ethics Consulting has since the mid-1980’s shifted from issues of content to those of process - from what the ethicist knows to what the ethicist does or enable. This shift not only remodelled the ethicist’s role to that of a facilitator in an inherently social process of moral inquiry, but also added the responsibility of keeping moral reflective spaces open where sound and shared processes of ethical deliberation can take place. Applying these developments in the Namibian context has already proved to be of great value to patients and Medical Aid Funds and also holds great potential in addressing the ethical demands placed on medical practitioners and clinics. (shrink)

Zuidema et al. illustrate how empirical AGL studies can benefit from computational models and techniques. Computational models can help clarifying theories, and thus in delineating research questions, but also in facilitating experimental design, stimulus generation, and data analysis. The authors show, with a series of examples, how computational modeling can be integrated with empirical AGL approaches, and how model selection techniques can indicate the most likely model to explain experimental outcomes.

Throughout more than two millennia philosophers adhered massively to ideal standards of scientific rationality going back ultimately to Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora. These standards got progressively shaped by and adapted to new scientific needs and tendencies. Nevertheless, a core of conditions capturing the fundamentals of what a proper science should look like remained remarkably constant all along. Call this cluster of conditions the Classical Model of Science. In this paper we will do two things. First of all, we will propose a (...) general and systematized account of the Classical Model of Science. Secondly, we will offer an analysis of the philosophical significance of this model at different historical junctures by giving an overview of the connections it has had with a number of important topics. The latter include the analytic-synthetic distinction, the axiomatic method, the hierarchical order of sciences and the status of logic as a science. Our claim is that particularly fruitful insights are gained by seeing themes such as these against the background of the Classical Model of Science. In an appendix we deal with the historiographical background of this model by considering the systematizations of Aristotle’s theory of science offered by Heinrich Scholz, and in his footsteps by Evert W. Beth. (shrink)

BackgroundTriggered by a series of controversies and diversifying expectations of editorial practices, several innovative peer review procedures and supporting technologies have been proposed. However, adoption of these new initiatives seems slow. This raises questions about the wider conditions for peer review change and about the considerations that inform decisions to innovate. We set out to study the structure of commercial publishers’ editorial process, to reveal how the benefits of peer review innovations are understood, and to describe the considerations that inform (...) the implementation of innovations.MethodsWe carried out field visits to the editorial office of two large academic publishers housing the editorial staff of several hundreds of journals, to study their editorial process, and interviewed editors not affiliated with large publishers. Field notes were transcribed and analysed using coding software.ResultsAt the publishers we analysed, the decision-making structure seems to show both clear patterns of hierarchy and layering of the different editorial practices. While information about new initiatives circulates widely, their implementation depends on assessment of stakeholder’s wishes, impact on reputation, efficiency and implementation costs, with final decisions left to managers at the top of the internal hierarchy. Main tensions arise between commercial and substantial arguments. The editorial process is closely connected to commercial practices of creating business value, and the very specific terms in which business value is understood, such as reputation considerations and the urge to increase efficiency. Journals independent of large commercial publishers tend to have less hierarchically structured processes, report more flexibility to implement innovations, and to a greater extent decouple commercial and editorial perspectives.ConclusionOur study demonstrates that peer review innovations are partly to be understood in light of commercial considerations related to reputation, efficiency and implementations costs. These arguments extend beyond previously studied topics in publishing economics, including publishers’ choice for business or publication models and reach into the very heart of the editorial and peer review process. (shrink)

This paper studies how salespeople make ethical decisions. For this purpose a structural model has been developed which configures how the organization's environment, the organizations's climate, and personality traits affect ethical decision making. Internal communication and the choice of a control system especially affect ethical decision making. Internal communication also affects the attraction of salespeople with unethical personality traits (Machiavellism), while the control system affects the ethical climate. Ethical climate and salespeople's personality traits also affect the ethical decision making. In (...) fact the study shows that ethical decision making can be influenced by management. (shrink)

What are the humanities for? The question has perhaps never seemed more urgent. While student numbers have grown in higher education, universities and colleges increasingly have encouraged students to opt for courses in STEM or take programs in applied subjects like business and management. When tertiary learning has taken such a notably utilitarian turn, the humanities are judged to have lost their centrality. Willem B. Drees has no wish nostalgically to prioritize the humanities so as to retrieve some lost high (...) culture. But he does urge us to adopt a clearer conception of the humanities as more than just practical vehicles for profit or education. He argues that these disciplines, while serving society, are also intrinsic to our humanity. His bold ideas about how to think with greater humanistic coherence mark this topical book out as unmissable reading for all those involved in academe, especially those in higher educational policy or leadership positions. (shrink)

In the book of Romans, also called ‘Paul’s Letter/Epistle to the Romans’, it is clear that Paul created a very close lexical semantic relation between the concepts πίστις/πιστεύω [faith, believe], δίκαιος/δικαιοσύνη [righteous, righteousness] and σωτηρία/σῴζω [salvation, save]. Although it is said that the theme of righteousness (by or through faith) is the focal point of Paul’s theology, especially in Romans, this term is very closely linked to the two concepts, faith and salvation, in this letter. The aim of this article (...) is to investigate that relation, specifically in the two passages of Romans 1:16–17 and 10:6a, 8b–10, in an attempt to come to an understanding of what Paul had in mind when he used these three terms together in these passages. (shrink)

Universities are occupied by management, a regime obsessed with ‘accountability’ through measurement, increased competition, efficiency, ‘excellence’, and misconceived economic salvation. Given the occupation’s absurd side-effects, we ask ourselves how management has succeeded in taking over our precious universities. An alternative vision for the academic future consists of a public university, more akin to a socially engaged knowledge commons than to a corporation. We suggest some provocative measures to bring about such a university. However, as management seems impervious to cogent arguments, (...) such changes can only happen if academics take action. Hence, we explore several strategies for a renewed university politics. (shrink)

Levelt, reviewing the AGL field from a psycholinguistic perspective, identifies various gaps and makes a number of concrete suggestions for improving several currently used experimental designs. He raises the question whether artificial (and natural) grammar learning is about detecting ‘rules’, as is commonly assumed, or rather the detection of a set of ‘constraints’. He cautions the community to not ignore ‘semantics’, and recommends to consider less artificial tasks, that may be needed for learning more complex rules by human or nonhuman (...) animals. (shrink)

Experientialist accounts of wellbeing are those accounts of wellbeing that subscribe to the experience requirement. Typically, these accounts are hedonistic. In this article I present the claim that hedonism is not the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing. The value of experience should not be understood as being limited to pleasure, and as such, the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing is pluralistic, not hedonistic. In support of this claim, I argue first that pleasure should not be understood as a (...) broad term to describe valuable experiences generally. I then analyze responses to the main argument against a monistic view on the value of experience: the philosophy of swine objection. I argue that such responses deviate from the central hedonistic view that only pleasure and pain matter for wellbeing. I then argue that the argument can be avoided on a pluralistic account, and formulate a plausible candidate for an account of pluralistic experientialism, in which, besides pleasure, non-hedonic aspects of experience like novelty, compassion, and aesthetic value also contribute to wellbeing. (shrink)

In three experiments, picture quality between test items was manipulated to examine whether subjects’ expectations about the fluency normally associated with these different stimuli might influence the effects of fluency on preference or familiarity-based recognition responses. The results showed that fluency due to pre-exposure influenced responses less when objects were presented with high picture quality, suggesting that attributions of fluency to preference and familiarity are adjusted according to expectations about the different test pictures. However, this expectations influence depended on subjects’ (...) awareness of these different quality levels. Indeed, imperceptible differences seemed not to induce expectations about the test item fluency. In this context, fluency due to both picture quality and pre-exposure influenced direct responses. Conversely, obvious, and noticed, differences in test picture quality did no affect responses, suggesting that expectations moderated attributions of fluency only when fluency normally associated with these different stimuli was perceptible but difficult to assess. (shrink)

Dr. Willem Meijer [van W. G. van der Tak]--Lijst der in druk verschenen geschriften van dr. W. Meijer. [Door E. E. Eckstein]--Benedicti de Spinoza philosophiæ brevis commentatio.--Extracten uit de jaarverslagen van den secretaris der vereeniging Het Spinozahuis over het tijdvak 1897-1922.--Lijst der in de verslagen van de vereeniging Het Spinozahuis besproken boeken en tijdschriftartikels.

A review of Lycan's Book "Consciousness".

Throughout the twentieth century, German writers, philosophers, theologians, and historians turned to Gnosticism to make sense of the modern condition. While some saw this ancient Christian heresy as a way to rethink modernity, most German intellectuals questioned Gnosticism's return in a contemporary setting. In No Spiritual Investment in the World, Willem Styfhals explores the Gnostic worldview's enigmatic place in these discourses on modernity, presenting a comprehensive intellectual history of Gnosticism's role in postwar German thought. Establishing the German-Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes (...) at the nexus of the debate, Styfhals traces how such figures as Hans Blumenberg, Hans Jonas, Eric Voegelin, Odo Marquard, and Gershom Scholem contended with Gnosticism and its tenets on evil and divine absence as metaphorical detours to address issues of cultural crisis, nihilism, and the legitimacy of the modern world. These concerns, he argues, centered on the difficulty of spiritual engagement in a world from which the divine has withdrawn. Reading Gnosticism against the backdrop of postwar German debates about secularization, political theology, and post-secularism, No Spiritual Investment in the World sheds new light on the historical contours of postwar German philosophy. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars has been called "the most profound and systematic epistemological thinker of the twentieth century". He was in many respects ahead of his time, and many of his innovations have become widely acknowledged, for example, his attack on the "myth of the given", his functionalist treatment of intentional states, his proposal that psychological concepts are like theoretical concepts, and his suggestion that attributions of knowledge locate the knower "in the logical space of reasons". However, while many philosophers have begun (...) to acknowledge Sellars's inspiration in their work, their interpretation of his thought has not always been the most accurate. His writings are difficult. Individually, his essays are complex and sometimes rely on doctrines and arguments he put forward elsewhere. Each of his articles is deepened and strengthened by seeing it in its systematic context, but he never wrote a unified exposition of his system, which therefore has to be pieced together from numerous disparate sources. Willem deVries addresses these difficulties specifically and provides a careful reading and remarkable overview of Sellars's systematic philosophy that will become the standard point of reference for all philosophers seeking to understand Sellars's hugely significant body of work. (shrink)

The commentaries provide a multitude of perspectives on the theory of lexical access presented in our target article. We respond, on the one hand, to criticisms that concern the embeddings of our model in the larger theoretical frameworks of human performance and of a speaker's multiword sentence and discourse generation. These embeddings, we argue, are either already there or naturally forgeable. On the other hand, we reply to a host of theory-internal issues concerning the abstract properties of our feedforward spreading (...) activation model, which functions without the usual cascading, feedback, and inhibitory connections. These issues also concern the concrete stratification in terms of lexical concepts, syntactic lemmas, and morphophonology. Our response stresses the parsimony of our modeling in the light of its substantial empirical coverage. We elaborate its usefulness for neuroimaging and aphasiology and suggest further cross-linguistic extensions of the model. (shrink)