In grapheme-color synesthesia, a number or letter can evoke two different and possibly conflicting color sensations at the same time. In this study, we investigate the relationship between synesthesia and executive control functions. First, no general skill differences were obtained between synesthetes and non-synesthetes in classic executive control paradigms. Furthermore, classic executive control effects did not interact with synesthetic behavioral effects. Third, we found support for our hypothesis that inhibition of a synesthetic color takes effort and time. Finally, individual differences (...) analyses showed no relationship between the two skills; performance on a ‘normal’ Stroop task does not predict performance on a synesthetic Stroop task. Across four studies, the current results consistently show no clear relationship between executive control functions and synesthetic behavioral effects. This raises the question of which mechanisms are at play in synesthetic ‘management’ during the presence of two conflicting sensations. (shrink)

This book raises in a new way a central question of Christology: what is the divine motive for the incarnation? Throughout Christian history a majority of Western theologians have agreed that God's decision to become incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ was made necessary by "the Fall": if humans had not sinned, the incarnation would not have happened. This position is known as "infralapsarian." A minority of theologians however, including some major 19th- and 20th-century theological figures, championed a "supralapsarian" (...) Christology, arguing that God has always intended the incarnation, independent of "the Fall." Edwin Chr. van Driel offers the first scholarly monograph to map and analyze the full range of supralapsarian arguments. He gives a thick description of each argument and its theological consequences, and evaluates the theological gains and losses inherent in each approach. Van Driel shows that each of the three ways in which God is thought to relate to all that is not God -- in creation, in redemption, and in eschatological consummation -- can serve as the basis for a supralapsarian argument. He illustrates this thesis with detailed case studies of the Christologies of Schleiermacher, Dorner, and Barth. He concludes that the most fruitful supralapsarian strategy is rooted in the notion of eschatological consummation, taking interpersonal interaction with God to be the goal of the incarnation. He goes on to develop his own argument along these lines, concluding in an eschatological vision in which God is visually, audibly, and tangibly present in the midst of God's people. (shrink)

Opstellen over de Amerikaanse filosoof (1839-1914), in het bijzonder over de betekenis van zijn pragmatisme voor de semiotiek.

In this essay I argue that John Duns Scotus offers two arguments to support his well-known supralapsarian Christological position: a formal argument based on the ordering within God’s will, and a material argument based on the ordering of God’s love. While the latter is constructively more fruitful, its most natural reading, according to which God becomes incarnate so as to be loved not just by Godself but also by another, is also inconsistent with Scotus’s own account of the metaphysics of (...) the incarnation. An alternative reading, according to which God hypostatically unites with the human soul of Christ because God falls in love with it, is equally untenable. I offer therefore an alternative reading that, while not consistent with the letter of Scotus’s argument, I believe nonetheless to be consistent with its spirit. On this reading, the love expressed in the incarnation is directed at creation. In deciding to become incarnate, God decides to give Godself to that what is not God; the embodiment of this decision is Christ. The incarnation is not an expression of divine self-love, or love for one particular soul, but an expression of love for others. (shrink)

Rationale In Belgium, several policies regulating reimbursement of acid suppressant drugs and evidence-based recommendations for clinical practice were issued in a short period of time, creating a unique opportunity to observe their effect on prescribing. Aims and objectives To describe the evolution of prescriptions for acid suppressants and explore the interaction of policies and practice recommendations with prescribing patterns. Method Monthly claims-based data for proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and H-2-antihistamines by general practitioners, internists and "astroenterologists were obtained from the Belgian (...) national health insurance database (1997-2005). The evolution of reimbursed defined daily doses and expenses after introduction of reimbursement regulations and dissemination of practice recommendations was explored. Results Recommendations had no impact on prescribing. All changes can be related to concomitant policies. Lifting reimbursement restrictions for cheaper products did not control growth or save costs in the Iona term. Only restricting reimbursement of all PPIs managed to curb the growth. We observed an unintended increase of non-omeprazole PPIs by gastroenterologists. Conclusions Reimbursement policies influence prescribing, but their effect can be unintended. A dialogue between policymakers and guideline developers, and evidence-based policies that are linked to clinical guidelines, could be an effective way to pursue both cost-containment and quality of care. (shrink)

While there is an increasing focus on the use of online networks among autistic users, how autistic adults communicate in social networking sites remains underexplored. The article puts forward an argument for combining systematic observation of digital practices with analysis of evaluative language in order to provide a situated account of ‘autistic sociality’ in social media. Drawing on practice-based theories of social media affordances and discourse analysis research on online self-presentation and affiliation we show how autistic Twitter users rely on (...) association, content persistence and editability in order to signal social engagement through different forms of interaction and alignment. We discuss how the proposed framework can provide a new perspective on communicative practices of autistic social media users and advance development of inclusive digital networking platforms. (shrink)

The importance of the Low Countries as a centre for the study of foreign languages is well-known. The mutual relationship between the Dutch grammatical tradition and the Western European context has, however, been largely neglected. In this collection of papers on the history of linguistics in the Low Countries the editors have made an effort to present the Dutch tradition in connection with that of the neighbouring countries. Three articles by Claes, Dibbets and Klifman deal with the earliest stages of (...) the development of a grammar for the Dutch vernacular. Several important European figures worked in the Low Countries; their contribution to linguistics is discussed in articles on Vossius (Rademaker), Spinoza (Klijnsmit), and one of the most original phoneticians of European linguistics, Montanus (Hulsker). Vivian Salmon's article is a survey on the relations between English and Dutch linguistics in the field of foreign language teaching. In the 19th century Dutch linguistics had a special relationship with German general and historical linguistics; four articles deal with this period (Jongeneelen, van Driel, le Loux-Schuringa, Noordegraaf). Finally, there are three articles by Kaldewij, Hagen and van Els/Knops on the development of three branches of linguistics in the 20th century: structuralism, dialectology and applied linguistics. This volume should be of interest for all specialists in the history of linguistics in Europe, who are interested in the interdependence of the various traditions. (shrink)

In this article , I first engage in some conceptual clarification of what the words "imagine," "imagining," and "imagination" can mean. Each has a constructive sense, an attitudinal sense, and an imagistic sense. Keeping the senses straight in the course of cognitive theorizing is important for both psychology and philosophy. I then discuss the roles that perceptual memories, beliefs, and genre truth attitudes play in constructive imagination, or the capacity to generate novel representations that go well beyond what's prompted by (...) one's immediate environment. (shrink)

The prospective robots in healthcare intended to be included within the conclave of the nurse-patient relationship—what I refer to as care robots—require rigorous ethical reflection to ensure their design and introduction do not impede the promotion of values and the dignity of patients at such a vulnerable and sensitive time in their lives. The ethical evaluation of care robots requires insight into the values at stake in the healthcare tradition. What’s more, given the stage of their development and lack of (...) standards provided by the International Organization for Standardization to guide their development, ethics ought to be included into the design process of such robots. The manner in which this may be accomplished, as presented here, uses the blueprint of the Value-sensitive design approach as a means for creating a framework tailored to care contexts. Using care values as the foundational values to be integrated into a technology and using the elements in care, from the care ethics perspective, as the normative criteria, the resulting approach may be referred to as care centered value-sensitive design. The framework proposed here allows for the ethical evaluation of care robots both retrospectively and prospectively. By evaluating care robots in this way, we may ultimately ask what kind of care we, as a society, want to provide in the future. (shrink)

In Europe and throughout the world, competence in English is spreading at a speed never achieved by any language in human history. This growing dominance of English is frequently perceived as being grossly unjust. This book is the first systematic treatment of the of the normative aspects of language policy and how this relates to justice.

Carneades is a recently proposed formalism for structured argumentation with varying proof standards, inspired by legal reasoning, but more generally applicable. Its distinctive feature is that each statement can be given its own proof standard, which is claimed to allow a more natural account of reasoning under burden of proof than existing formalisms for structured argumentation, in which proof standards are defined globally. In this article, the two formalisms are formally related by translating Carneades into the ASPIC+ framework for structured (...) argumentation. Since ASPIC+ is defined to generate Dung-style abstract argumentation frameworks, this in effect translates Carneades graphs into abstract argumentation frameworks. For this translation, we prove a formal correspondence and show that certain rationality postulates hold. It is furthermore proved that Carneades always induces a unique Dung extension, which is the same in all of Dung's semantics, allowing us to generalise Carneades to cycle-containing structures. (shrink)

State legitimacy is often said to have two aspects: an internal and an external one. Internally, a legitimate state has the right to rule over its subjects. Externally, it has a right that outsiders not interfere with its domestic governance. But what is the relation between these two aspects? In this paper, I defend a conception of legitimacy according to which these two aspects are related in an importantly asymmetrical manner. In particular, a legitimate state’s external right to rule affords (...) it protections that include and go beyond what its internal right to rule enables it to do. This asymmetrical view, I argue, is preferable to its two main rivals: the view that a state’s internal and external legitimacy are separate issues, and the view that internal and external legitimacy are mirroring. (shrink)

This article discusses how sequential sampling models can be integrated in a cognitive architecture. The new theory Retrieval by Accumulating Evidence in an Architecture (RACE/A) combines the level of detail typically provided by sequential sampling models with the level of task complexity typically provided by cognitive architectures. We will use RACE/A to model data from two variants of a picture–word interference task in a psychological refractory period design. These models will demonstrate how RACE/A enables interactions between sequential sampling and long-term (...) declarative learning, and between sequential sampling and task control. In a traditional sequential sampling model, the onset of the process within the task is unclear, as is the number of sampling processes. RACE/A provides a theoretical basis for estimating the onset of sequential sampling processes during task execution and allows for easy modeling of multiple sequential sampling processes within a task. (shrink)

Objectives: There are indications that institutional review board members do not find it easy to assess the risks and benefits in medical experiments, although this is their principal duty. This study examined how IRB members assessed the risk/benefit ratio of a specific phase II breast cancer clinical trial.Participants and methods: The trial was evaluated by means of a questionnaire administered to 43 members of IRBs at six academic hospitals and specialised cancer centres in the Netherlands. The questionnaire addressed: identification and (...) estimation of inconvenience, toxicity, psychosocial distress, and benefits of trial participation to patients; identification and estimation of benefits to future patients and medical science; assessment of the trial’s RBR; and assessment of its ethical acceptability.Results: Most IRB members expected trial participation to involve fairly or very serious inconvenience, fairly severe to sometimes life-threatening toxicity, and serious psychological and social consequences. Conversely, the perceived likelihood of benefits to patients was modest. Most regarded the study as important, and the balance between risks and benefits to be favourable, and believed that the protocol should be approved. The IRB members’ final judgement on the trial’s ethical acceptability was significantly correlated with their RBR assessment of the protocol.Conclusions: Because most patients who participate in clinical trials hope this will prolong their lives, it is suggested that patient information should better describe the anticipated benefits—for example, the likelihood of prolonging life. This would allow patients to make decisions regarding participation based on realistic expectations. (shrink)

The present article puts forward a behavioral disinhibition hypothesis stating that, often, at least some levels of behavioral disinhibition are needed to overcome people’s inhibition to intervene in dilemmatic situations in which they have to choose between different actions with good reasons for each of the actions involved. Results reported indeed show that people to whom disinhibited behaviors were salient or people with stronger predispositions toward behavioral disinhibition were more likely to intervene in trolley and footbridge dilemmas.

To what extent can politics be part of education? Recent incidents indicate how educational activities aimed at raising political awareness are perceived by some as forms of ‘indoctrination’. This article explores, firstly, how philosophical perspectives might help us understand the notion of indoctrination in education. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and Michael Hand, two notions of ‘indoctrination’ are discussed and subsequently problematized in light of classroom practices. Expanding our perspective to the larger historical context of reflections on education (...) and democracy, we then show how the dilemma of indoctrination should be understood as part of a tradition in pedagogical thinking that emphasizes the complex dynamics of socialization and critical thinking in education. Finally, we argue that from a pedagogical perspective, the issue is not whether or not certain educational activities might be forms of indoctrination, but to what extent these activities provide students an opportunity for both socialization and critical inquiry. (shrink)

The self-notion is an essential constituent of any self-belief or self-knowledge. But what is the self-notion? In this paper, I tie together several themes from the philosophy of John Perry to explain how he answers this question. The self-notion is not just any notion that happens to be about the person in whose mind that notion appears, because it's possible to have ways of thinking about oneself that one doesn't realize are about oneself. Characterizing the self-notion properly (and hence self-belief (...) and self-knowledge) requires understanding the role of that notion in tracking agent-relative information and motivating normally self-effecting ways of acting. [Note: the file here is an uncorrected proof. Please see the final book, now called _Identity, Language, and Mind_, for citation purposes.]. (shrink)

There are two distinct views on how to formulate an objective consequentialist account of the deontic status of actions, actualism and possibilism. On an actualist account, what matters to the deontic status of actions is only the value of the outcome an action would have, if performed. By contrast, a possibilist account also takes into account the value of the outcomes that an action could have. These two views come apart in their deontic verdicts when an agent is imperfect in (...) an avoidable way, viz., when agent brings about less good than she could. In this paper, I offer an argument against actualism that draws on the connection between moral obligation and practical reasons. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Enriching Extensional Logic with Intensional Notions Changing Views of Modal Logic A Précis of Basic Modal Logic The Major Applications Fine‐Structure of Expressive Power System Combination: Action and Information Back to the Heartland Conclusion.

The Heidelberg Catechism was one of many catechisms that originated during the 16th-centuryReformation. It is also known that the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism made use of existingcatechisms. The content of 16th-century catechisms consisted mainly of the Decalogue, theApostolicum and the Lord’s Prayer. The Heidelberg Catechism starts with the famousintroduction, dealing with man’s only comfort, and in three sections with knowledge of our sinand misery, knowledge of our deliverance, and knowledge of how we should be grateful forour deliverance. This contribution (...) points out that the threefold structure of the HeidelbergCatechism is not unique, but appeared in different ways in different catechisms of prominent16th-century reformers. It is also argued that the Heidelberg Catechism should be read againstLutheran and Calvinistic backgrounds. Finally, it is shown that the Heidelberg Catechismarticulated the basic Christian faith in such a beautiful and poignant manner that it stood thetest of time as a catechism and confession. (shrink)

We take a fresh look at voting theory, in particular at the notion of manipulation, by employing the geometry of the Saari triangle. This yields a geometric proof of the Gibbard/Satterthwaite theorem, and new insight into what it means to manipulate the vote. Next, we propose two possible strengthenings of the notion of manipulability (or weakenings of the notion of non-manipulability), and analyze how these affect the impossibility proof for non-manipulable voting rules.