Society has already seen multiple potential futures of neurotechnologies through the multifaceted lens of science fiction. We do not know which of those futures we will come to live, but the strong force in society's evolutionary process will likely continue to be the insight and oversight developed by the bioethics community, pushing and being pushed by the advances of technology, improvements in medical care, and market competitiveness.

Direct-to-consumer advertising of healthcare products refers to a variety of marketing practices based on a combination of information and promotion strategies directed at consumers through different media such as radio and television broadcasts, newspaper and magazine ads, and, more recently, through the Internet. The principal form of marketing used by the pharmaceutical industry is the distribution of free samples to physicians but DTCA is an increasing part of global promotional spending for prescription drugs. Latest estimates suggest that DTCA now represents (...) an annual $3.2 billion enterprise for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Findings from the literature show that these substantial efforts are geared toward the newer pharmaceuticals for chronic conditions with huge market potentials. The lion's share is going to the 20 most prescribed pharmaceuticals. (shrink)

Enfleshed: Ecologies of Entities and Beings brings together practitioners, thinkers, and artists from across Eurasia to collectively explore multispecies ecologies. The volume reflects anthrodecentric and embodied approaches to collaboration and knowledge production -- processes that are always interwoven with a multitude of entities and actors. In this book, the contributions flow like a river across the Eurasian continent, branching out into all directions. The contributors engage in an exploration of experimental epistemic alliances, which operate as a way to learn and (...) make new dialogic relations. The conflicts generated by ecological disaster, war, the global economy, identity politics, and the power structures of knowledge production and science here intertwine with shamanisms, rituals, magic, speculation, politics, and poetics. How do we imagine an active and implicated role of the human as one being among other beings? What might this entail, and what might this generate?"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

A brain-computer interface technology that can decode the neural signals associated with attempted but unarticulated speech could offer a future efficient means of communication for people with severe motor impairments. Recent demonstrations have validated this approach. Here we assume that it will be possible in future to decode imagined (i.e., attempted but unarticulated) speech in people with severe motor impairments, and we consider the characteristics that could maximize the social utility of a BCI for communication. As a social interaction, communication (...) involves the needs and goals of both speaker and listener, particularly in contexts that have significant potential consequences. We explore three high-consequence legal situations in which neurally-decoded speech could have implications:Testimony, where decoded speech is used as evidence;Consent and Capacity, where it may be used as a means of agency and participation such as consent to medical treatment; andHarm, where such communications may be networked or may cause harm to others. We then illustrate how design choices might impact the social and legal acceptability of these technologies. (shrink)

New agrifood technologies are often difficult to grasp for the public, which may lead to resistance or even rejection. Insight into which technology features determine public acceptability of the technology could offer guidelines for responsible technology development. This paper systematically assesses the relative importance of specific technology features for consumer response in the agrifood domain in two consecutive studies. Prominent technology features were selected from expert judgment and literature. The effects of these features on consumer evaluation were tested in a (...) consumer study. Fictitious technologies were used to avoid any uncontrollable contextual influences that existing new technologies may evoke. Results show that technologies that were seen as more natural and newer were perceived less risky, more beneficial, and were evaluated more positively. Technologies applied to food were judged to be more beneficial, but also more risky than those applied to non-food. Technologies used in the production process were perceived to be less risky and evaluated more positively than those used in the product. Technologies owned by the market leader were perceived to be more beneficial, and evaluated more positively than those that were freely available. In a next study, effects of the technology features on consumer response were tested for existing new agrifood technologies. This study replicated the results for perceived naturalness, perceived newness, and place in the production process where the technology is applied. However, in contrast to the first study, we did not find an effect of application area and technology ownership. (shrink)

Zoals bekend is de verhouding tussen filosofie en politiek problematisch. De veroordeling van Socrates door de polis maakte diepe indruk op zijn leerling Plato. Mede om dit soort misstappen te voorkomen ontwierp deze een ideale staat waarin filosofen koningen moesten worden. Vanuit dit idee probeerde hij ook Dionysus, de heerser van Syracus, tot een wijsgerig verantwoorde politiek te brengen. De mislukking van dit Siciliaans avontuur heeft velen na hem ervan overtuigd dat filosofen zich beter niet in kunnen laten met politieke (...) besluitvorming. Immers, Plato’s poging om Dionysus tot een wijsgerig verantwoorde politiek te brengen strandde jammerlijk. Maar, filosofen zijn natuurlijk hardleers en de aantrekkingskracht van het rijk der mensen en dingen op hen, die zich zo thuisvoelen in het rijk der ideeën valt niet altijd te loochenen. Hoewel voor Plato de politieke arena van alledag wezenlijk ongeschikt bleek te zijn voor filosofische uiteenzettingen, heeft toch zijn leerling en collega Aristoteles zich nog korte tijd met het onderwijs aan de jonge Alexander de Grote bemoeid – hoewel Aristoteles’ ambities al bescheidener waren dan van Plato. Het verhaal wil zelfs, dat Alexander op diens veldtochten een exemplaar van het werk van Homerus met aantekeningen van Aristoteles erin bij zich droeg. Na de dood van Alexander werd de anti-Macedonische atmosfeer in Athene voor Aristoteles zodanig bedreigend dat hij de stad verliet, om te voorkomen ‘dat de polis zich ten tweede male aan de filosofie bezondigde.’ Wie wel in het lot van Sokrates heeft moeten delen, is Thomas More, de auteur van het in 1516 verschenen ‘Utopia’. More weigerde Henry VIII als hoofd van de kerk te erkennen en moest dat met zijn dood bekopen. Dit vonnis vloeide dus niet direct voort uit het boek waarmee More zo bekend zou worden. Wellicht had More geleerd van de eerdere moeizame betrekkingen tussen filosofie en politiek en had hij daarom besloten om zich over ‘Ou-topia’ of ‘Nus-quama’ te buigen: over niet-plaats of nergens. Het in dialoogvorm opgetekende reisverhaal gaf op indirecte wijze kritiek op het Engeland van zijn tijd. Waarschijnlijk nog belangrijker dan het vermijden van risico’s door het schrijven over een niet reëel bestaande samenleving was het voordeel dat More op die manier een geheel ander beeld van een samenleving kon opstellen en beschrijven – ongehinderd door contingente omstandigheden, praktische bezwaren of politieke obstakels. More sloot de dialoog in ‘Utopia’ af met een korte overweging, waarin de auteur zegt zich nauwelijks te kunnen voorstellen dat deze samenleving ergens gerealiseerd zou kunnen worden. Vele lezers hebben deze overweging echter niet gezien of serieus genomen, zodat er al snel een ernstig meningsverschil over het genre van de utopie ontstond: vormde een utopie een blauwdruk voor een ideale samenleving die zonder meer ingevoerd zou moeten worden, of moest de utopie veeleer gelezen worden als een mengvorm van kritiek en ideaal – kritiek op de bestaande samenleving en richtinggevend ideaal voor nastrevenswaardige veranderingen van de huidige samenleving? (shrink)

Moral case deliberation (MCD) is a specific form of clinical ethics, aiming to stimulate ethical reflection in daily practice in order to improve the quality of care. This article focuses on the implementation of MCD in nursing homes and the questions how and where to organize MCD. The purpose of this study was to evaluate one way of organizing MCD in two Dutch nursing homes. In both of these nursing homes the MCD groups had a heterogeneous composition and were organized (...) apart from existing institutional communication structures. As part of a naturalistic evaluation, systematic observations, interviews and focus groups were completed. The findings indicate that the heterogeneous composition and MCD meetings separate from existing structures have benefits. However, the participants also reported negative experiences. This gives rise to the question whether a mixed MCD group which meets separately is an effective way to embed MCD as an instrument for reflection on moral issues in daily practice. We conclude that there is no single answer to that question. In the end, the two implementation strategies (i.e. within existing communication structures and a mixed MCD group) can be complementary to each other. (shrink)

The concept of well-being is increasingly gaining acceptance as an object of science, and many different types of well-being measures have been developed. A debate has emerged about which measures are able to capture well-being successfully. An important underlying problem is that there is no unified conceptual framework about the nature of well-being—a hotly debated topic of philosophical discussion. I argue that while there is little agreement about the nature of well-being in philosophy, there is an important agreement on some (...) important principles relevant for its measurement. I argue that well-being science has good reasons to accommodate these principles, but currently fails to do so. (shrink)

This study argues for three main theses: (1) Immanuel Kant’s ethics is a social ethics; (2) the basic premises of his social ethics point to a socialist ethics; and (3) this socialist ethics constitutes a suitable platform for criticizing and improving Karl Marx’s view of morality. -/- Some crucial aspects of Kant’s social ethics are that we must promote the “realm of ends” as a moral society of co-legislators who assist each other in the pursuit of their individual ends, which (...) requires in turn that we seek the realization of the republican state and peace between the nations. Thus, hope for progress, as supported by the enthusiasm engendered among the spectators of the French Revolution, becomes pivotal to Kant’s ethics as well as other moral feelings such as moral indignation and solidarity with the victims of oppression. -/- Kant views the moral society in the final instance as an “inner” unification of good wills. In a decisive elaboration of Kant, the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen argues that all our social institutions, and notably economic enterprises, must instantiate the “realm of ends,” leading him to support cooperative socialism in Wilhelmine Germany. In his own words, Kant “is the true and real originator of German socialism” (1896). -/- There are important evaluative similarities between Kantian socialist ethics and Marx, such as a condemnation of capitalism as a system of servitude and an understanding of the ideal society as a cooperative society, but only Marx contends that the ideal society does not set a moral task and that there is a dialectic operative in human history that inevitably leads to communist society. This dogmatic Hegelian understanding of history must be replaced by Kantian regulative understanding of progress in support of revolutionary praxis as moral praxis. -/- We need a “Kantianization” of Marx, as Cohen and other neo-Kantian socialists also proclaimed in the three decades leading up to World War I. This study concludes with “A Historical Note on Kantian Ethical Socialism,” addressing, among others, Cohen, Karl Vorländer, Eduard Bernstein, and Kurt Eisner and the Munich Revolution of 1918. Their voices were largely silenced by the rise of fascism, and this study hopes to show that their voices still need to be heard. -/- Awarded the 1985 Johnsonian Prize in Philosophy. (shrink)

Rational agents are important objects of study in several research communities, including economics, philosophy, cognitive science, and most recently computer science and artificial intelligence. Crudely, a rational agent is an entity that is capable of acting on its environment, and which chooses to act in such a way as to further its own best interests. There has recently been much interest in the use of mathematical logic for developing formal theories of such agents. Such theories view agents as practical reasoning (...) systems, deciding moment by moment which action to perform next, given the beliefs they have about the world and their desires with respect to how they would like the world to be. In this article, we survey the state of the art in developing logical theories of rational agency. Following a discussion on the dimensions along which such theories can vary, we briefly survey the logical tools available in order to construct such theories. We then review and critically assess three of the best known theories of rational agency: Cohen and Levesque's intention logic, Rao and Georgeff's BDI logics, and the KARO framework of Meyer et al. We then discuss the various roles that such logics can play in helping us to engineer rational agents, and conclude with a discussion of open problems. (shrink)

This article describes compassion as perceived within the relationship between nurses and older persons with a chronic disease. The aim of the study is to understand the benefit of compassion for nursing practice within the context of long-term care. The design of the study involves a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with nurses and patients in three different care-settings. Results show the nature of compassion in seven dimensions: attentiveness, listening, confronting, involvement, helping, presence and understanding. Analysis of the data also (...) shows in what way opinions of participants relate to issues raised in a previous literature study, for example the difference between pity and compassion. The conclusion states that compassion is a valuable process which motivates patients as well as nurses to cooperate in achieving relevant outcomes of care. The discussion involves some methodological issues. For one thing, further confirmation of the dimensions found is recommended. (shrink)

Public funding institutions are able to influence what aspects researchers take into account when they consider the future impacts of their research. On the basis of a description of the evaluation systems that public research funding institutes in the Netherlands (STW and SenterNovem) use to estimate the quality of engineering science, this article shows that researchers are now predominantly required to reflect on the intellectual merit of their research and on the usability and marketability of the technology it contributes to. (...) In addition, SenterNovem also mandates reflection on sustainability. Here it is argued that these requirements do not suffice. Funding institutions should also do more to enhance reflection during the research process on the “soft impacts” of technologies, which refer to the alterations that technologies may bring about in the quality of human life. To do this it is suggested that it is helpful to engage a specifically trained ethicist to monitor the research process and create a feedback loop from the ethicist to the funding institution. (shrink)

The label ‘Translational Research’ (TR) has become ever more popular in the biomedical domain in recent years. It is usually presented as an attempt to bridge a supposed gap between knowledge produced at the lab bench and its use at the clinical bedside. This is claimed to help society harvest the benefits of its investments in scientific research. The rhetorical as well as moral force of the label TR obscure, however, that it is actually used in very different ways. In (...) this paper, we analyse the scientific discourse on TR, with the aim to disentangle and critically evaluate the different meanings of the label. We start with a brief reconstruction of the history of the concept. Subsequently, we unravel how the label is actually used in a sample of scientific publications on TR and examine the presuppositions implied by different views of TR. We argue that it is useful to distinguish different views of TR on the basis of three dimensions, related to (1) the construction of the ‘translational gap’; (2) the model of the translational process; and (3) the cause of the perceived translational gap. We conclude that the motive to make society benefit from its investments in biomedical science may be laudable, but that it is doubtful whether the dominant views of TR will contribute to this end. (shrink)

Due to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the anthrax letters of a few weeks later, the concept of dual use has spread widely in the life sciences during the past decade. This article is aimed at a clarification of the dual use concept and its scope of application for the life sciences. Such a clarification would greatly facilitate the work of policymakers seeking to ensure security while avoiding undesirable interventions of government in the conduct of science. The article starts (...) with an overview of the main developments in life sciences in relation to dual use. This is illustrated by discussions on synthetic biology and dual use. The findings lead to a reconsideration of the dual use concept. An area in need of further attention is to what extent threats and intentions should have impact on the definition of dual use. Possible threats are analyzed against the background of the phenomenon of securitization of health care and life sciences: considering these sectors of society in security terms. Some caveats that should be taken into account in a dual use policy are described. An acceptable, adequate and applicable definition of the dual use concept could help researchers, universities, companies and policy makers. Such a definition should build upon, but go beyond, the view developed in the influential Fink-report, which concentrates on the so-called ‘experiments of concern’, e.g. experiments that enhance the virulence of pathogens (National Research Council of the National Academies 2004) It will be argued that—in addition to these more technical aspects—a definition of dual use should include the aspect of threats and intentions. (shrink)

Making better choices about future technologies that are being researched or developed is an important motivator behind lay ethics interventions. However, in practice, they do not always succeed to serve that goal. Especially authors who have noted that lay ethicists sometimes take recourse to well-known themes which stem from old, even ‘archetypical’ stories, have been criticized for making too little room for agency and decision-making in their approach. This paper aims to contribute to a reflection on how lay ethics can (...) acquire more practical relevance. It will use resources in narrative ethics to suggest that in order to be relevant for action, facilitators of lay ethics interventions need to invite participants to engage in a narrative quest. As part of a quest, lay ethicists should be asked to reflect on a specific question or choice, use diverse input which is informative about the heterogeneity of viewpoints that are defended in society and argue for their standpoints. (shrink)

An unresolved issue in the occupational health literature that is of both theoretical and practical importance is whether interpersonal conflicts, aggression and bullying at work are distinct or overlapping phenomena for exposed workers. In this study, we addressed this question empirically by employing a Latent Class (LC) analysis using cross-industry data from 6,175 Belgian workers. We found that a two-factor solution with a conflict-aggression factor and a bullying factor had the best fit. Employees with low exposure to workplace conflicts-aggression and (...) bullying perceived the phenomena as mostly overlapping. Reversely, employees who were exposed more frequently to the phenomena perceived them as more distinct - especially so for workplace bullying. Conflicts-aggression and bullying seem to be perceived as separate phenomena given their distinctive relationships with criterion variables in the domain of well-being and strain. These findings entail that a simple unifying approach or a single label for the three phenomena is not appropriate, at least from a measurement point of view and from the different perspectives of those exposed. Our results have important implications for the theoretical understanding of the concepts of interpersonal conflicts, aggression and bullying, and for practitioners who have to assist those involved with how to handle these problems and who have to develop legal as well as internal policies for the prevention and management of these issues at the workplace. (shrink)

Philosophical theories about reduction and integration in science are at variance with what is happenign in science. A realistic approach to science show that possibilities for reduction and integration are limited. The classical ideal of a unified science has since long been rejected in philosophy. But the current emphasis on interdisciplinary integration in philosophy and in science shows that it survives in a different guise. It is necessary to redress the balance, specifically in biology. Methodological analysis shows that many of (...) the grand interdisciplinary theories involving biology actually represent pseudo-integration covered up by inappropriate, overgeneral concepts. Integrationism is not bad, but it must be kept within reasonable bounds. If the present analysis is appropriate, there will have to be fundamental changes in research strategy both in science and in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Enculturation is known to shape the perception of meter in music but this is not explicitly accounted for by current cognitive models of meter perception. We hypothesize that meter perception is a strategy for increasing the predictability of rhythmic patterns and that the way in which it is shaped by the cultural environment can be understood in terms of probabilistic predictive coding. Based on this hypothesis, we present a probabilistic model of meter perception that uses statistical properties of the relation (...) between rhythm and meter to infer meter from quantized rhythms. We show that our model can successfully predict annotated time signatures from quantized rhythmic patterns derived from folk melodies. Furthermore, we show that by inferring meter, our model can better predict the onsets of future events than a similar probabilistic model that does not infer meter. Finally, we demonstrate how our model can be used in a proof-of-concept simulation of enculturation. From this simulation, we derive a class of rhythms that are likely to be interpreted differently by enculturated listeners with different histories of exposure to rhythms. (shrink)

Recently the English scholar Heather McKay defended the thesis that before the third century CE the synagogue had never been a place of sabbath worship. In this article the author reviews all the material presented by her, adds some new evidence, and comes to the conclusion that the evidence points to a situation in which already before 70 CE the synagogue served as a place of sabbath worship.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Methodological analysis shows that the concepts of fitness and adaptation are more complex than the literature suggests. Various arguments against ‘adaptationism’ are inadequate since they are couched in terms of unduly simplistic notions.

The question we raise in this paper is, whether patient involvement might be a beneficial way to help determine and achieve the aims of translational research and, if so, how to proceed. TR is said to ensure a more effective movement of basic scientific findings to relevant and useful clinical applications. In view of the fact that patients are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of such translation and also have relevant knowledge based on their experience, listening to their voice (...) early on in the innovation process might very well increase the effectiveness of the translation. After explaining how the concept of TR emerged and what it entails, this paper shows through a literature review which arguments have been put forward to promote patient involvement in health care research in a more general sense. We examine whether, and if so how, these arguments are relevant for the discourse on TR and we identify pitfalls and dilemmas. Ultimately, we conclude that it may be worthwhile to experiment with patient involvement in TR but that the design of such involvement requires careful consideration. (shrink)

Many researchers studying subjective wellbeing (SWB) understand SWB as a concept that is close to Bentham’s notion of happiness. This conception of happiness is philosophically controversial, because it treats pleasure as a homogenous experience. I analyze an important deviation from Bentham in John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism and its relevance for SWB research: qualitative differences in pleasurable experiences. I argue that in cases where lives involving qualitatively different experiences are compared, Mill’s qualitative perspective is incompatible with an important assumption in the (...) SWB literature: that happiness can be meaningfully rated by people on a scale. I illustrate the problem by means of the question of whether becoming a parent makes people happier. I analyze whether the problem can be avoided on alternative views of happiness, but argue that on all plausible accounts of happiness, the problem persists. I conclude that the problem it poses for self-reported happiness is genuine and should be acknowledged by SWB researchers. I end by discussing the ways in which this conclusion can help the study of happiness move forward. (shrink)

Medical reproductive technologies have generated two new types of patients: ‘couples’ in infertility treatment and ‘fetuses’ in prenatal medicine. Using concepts from science and technology studies, specifically Latour’s (1993) notions of hybridity, mediation and purification, this article argues that these new patients are constructed in the very process of technological intervention in women’s bodies, while at the same time their constitutive role is erased from the medico-scientific accounts of these practices. Focusing on two discursive patterns found in the scientific discourses (...) on IVF as a treatment for male infertility, and fetal surgery for various congenital problems, the article shows how conceiving of couples and fetuses as patients allows many of the actual interventions on women to be ‘deleted’ from the accounts, while simultaneously presenting these interventions as being primarily about the treatment of men and children. The article exemplifies how a (feminist) constructivist analysis of the co-constitutive relation between technology and bodies (‘nature’) can avoid essentalism while retaining a critical perspective. (shrink)

Patient participation in healthcare is highly promoted for democratic reasons. Older patients make up a large part of the hospital population but their voices are less easily heard by most patient participation instruments. The client council can be seen as an important medium to represent the interests of this increasing group of patients. Every Dutch healthcare institution is obliged to have a client council and its rights are legally established. This paper reports on a case study of a client council (...) in a hospital and shows how equality as the core democratic value manifests itself in practice and marginalizes the voices of older patients. Based on the work of Joan Tronto we show that sameness is the driving force behind the functioning of the client council which leads the council to operate as part of the hospital system. Consequently, important aspects of the hospital practice remain out of sight. To be of greater value for all patients we argue that successful patient participation requires not only equal opportunities but also ‘the condition of equal voice’. (shrink)

In the Netherlands, euthanasia and assisted suicide are formally forbidden by criminal law, but, under certain strictly formulated conditions, physicians are excused for administering these to patients on the basis of necessity. These conditions are bound up with a long process of criteria development. Therefore, physicians still live in uncertainty. Future court decisions may change the criteria. Apart from that, physicians can always be prosecuted. The position of nurses, however, is perfectly clear; they are never allowed to administer euthanasia or (...) assisted suicide. Nevertheless, they should be involved in the decision-making process because they are an important source of information and have consultation skills. The openness of the discussion about these issues in the Netherlands may prevent an escalation of medical or nursing responsibility and falling victim to the ‘slippery slope’. (shrink)

In this paper it will be argued that Brentano's later writings about this topic can be understood better if one describes it as a result partly of his immanent development and partly of Brentano's reactions to his contemporaries.

South Africa's transition to democracy coincided and interlinked with massive global shifts, including the fall of communism and the rise of western capitalist triumphalism. Late capitalism operates through paradoxical global-local dynamics, both universalising identities and expanding local particularities. The erstwhile hegemonic identity of apartheid, 'the Afrikaner', was a product of Afrikaner nationalism. Like other identities, it was spatially organised, with Afrikaner nationalism projecting its imagined community onto a national territory. The study traces the neo-nationalist spatial permutations of 'the Afrikaner', following (...) Massey's understanding of space as political, produced through interrelations ranging from the global to micro intimacies, potentially a sphere for heterogeneous co-existence, and continuously created. Research is presented that shows a neo-nationalist revival of ethnic privileges in a defensive version of Hall's 'return to the local'. Although Afrikaner nationalism's territorial claims to a nation state were defeated, neo-nationalist remnants reclaim a purchase on white Afrikaans identities, albeit in shrunken territories. This phenomenon is, here, called Afrikaner enclave nationalism. Drawing on a global revamping of race as a category of social subjugation, a strategy is deployed that is here called 'inward migration'. These dynamics produce a privatised micro-apartheid in sites ranging from homes, to commercial and religious enterprises, to suburbs. Virtual white spaces in the form of Afrikaans media products serve as extensions of these whitened locales. The lynchpin holding it all together is the heteronormative, middle-class family, with consumption the primary mode of the generation of its white comfort zones. (shrink)

This volume presents contributions to quantifier theory and its applications and gives a good impression of the depth and diversity of recent work in the field. The book starts with a long introduction aimed at making the individual papers accessible to a wide audience of logicians and linguists.

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelbände zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants veröffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verhältnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ansätzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Veröffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdrückliche Desiderate der Forschung erfüllen. Die Publikationen repräsentieren damit den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.