No detailed description available for "Standpunt".

Visions of nature are defined as public views on what nature is, what values are carried by nature and what is the appropriate relationship between humans and nature. They were studied in Lubelski region, Poland. With respect to the first, respondents expressed that human influence and naturalness do not exclude each other. One result of the values survey was that respondents acknowledged nature's intrinsic value. The study into the relationship between humans and nature showed that the respondents adhered strongly to (...) a steward type of relationship, and that more ecocentric images were adhered to for a lesser, but substantial degree. (shrink)

After I had put myself the task of investigating the correctness of the results obtained by Heibges concerning the clausulae of Chariton, I decided to determine the frequency in which the different rhythmical forms appear in the authors of non-rhythmical works. For that purpose I investigated the prose works of Thucydides and Plutarch as carefully and in as specified a form as was possible. This I did with the intention to compare the percentages with those of Heibges. In this comparison, (...) however, I came to the conclusion that the figures for Thucydides and Plutarch differed considerably, and that in such a way that certain conclusions could be drawn concerning the manner in which Plutarch constructed his clausulae according to fixed rules. (shrink)

After I had put myself the task of investigating the correctness of the results obtained by Heibges concerning the clausulae of Chariton, I decided to determine the frequency in which the different rhythmical forms appear in the authors of non-rhythmical works. For that purpose I investigated the prose works of Thucydides and Plutarch as carefully and in as specified a form as was possible. This I did with the intention to compare the percentages with those of Heibges. In this comparison, (...) however, I came to the conclusion that the figures for Thucydides and Plutarch differed considerably, and that in such a way that certain conclusions could be drawn concerning the manner in which Plutarch constructed his clausulae according to fixed rules. (shrink)

IN the Byzantinische Zeitschrift xxi. 52 Paul Maas states: ‘Es ist das Verdienst von H. B. Dewing, zuerst erkannt zu haben, dasz Prokop seine Satzschliisse rhythmisch reguliert.’ That this is only partly true appears from the remark of Heisenberg in the Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, 1901, Sp. 1481, who comments on it, and that in a case of text–criticism, and likewise from a remark of Cronert in the Rheinisches Museum, 54, 1899, 593. Dewing was the first to point out the connection (...) between the rhythm of Procopius and Meyer's law and to collect specific statistical material, although his numbers are to a great extent of no practical value. Compare in this connection Maas B.Z. xix. 593 . It appears to me that the correct statement of the end–rhythm of Procopius is that given by Maas for Constantinus Manasses, B.Z. xi. 505: ‘Im Ausgang der Satzglieder musz die Zahl der zwischen den letzten beiden Hochtonen stehenden Silben eine gerade sein,’ on condition that 0 is considered as an even number. (shrink)

El desafío actual de la posverdad que amenaza el funcionamiento de la democracia surge desde los límitesde nuestro conocimiento y la interferencia de las emociones y los valores. Dos corrientes comunes, la ética del discurso, y la política agonista, son insuficientes para resolver este desafío. En la comprensión de la política de Aristóteles estos dos elementos ya estaban presentes. Él presenta a la política como un campo de saber determinado no exclusivamente por el saber, sino al mismo tiempo por los (...) límites del saber y por el cargo emotivo.El objetivo de este artículo es proponer una concepción contemporánea de un discurso político phronético,incorporando las características clave de una phronesis aristotélica. La hipótesis es que un discurso políticophronético contemporáneo no se puede fundar en el bien, ya que la pluralidad de las concepciones del bien es lo que separa la política moderna de los tiempos aristotélicos. En su lugar, y siguiendo a los debates en la ética neo-aristotélica, se debería buscar el fundamento en el desarrollo del carácter de los (futuros) participantes en dicho discurso. Por consiguiente, la educación es el punto de partida esencial para reforzar las capacidades y los hábitos de los participantes del discurso a fin de mejor manejar, en la medida de lo posible, las limitaciones de nuestro conocimiento y nuestro compromiso personal con el campo político. (shrink)

Positive monotone modal logic is the negation- and implication-free fragment of monotone modal logic, i.e., the fragment with connectives and. We axiomatise positive monotone modal logic, give monotone neighbourhood semantics based on posets, and prove soundness and completeness. The latter follows from the main result of this paper: a duality between so-called \-spaces and the algebraic semantics of positive monotone modal logic. The main technical tool is the use of coalgebra.

On the ethics of extending human life: healthy people have a right to carry on livingHumanity has long demonstrated a paradoxical ambivalence concerning the extension of a healthy human lifespan. Modest health extension has been universally sought, whereas extreme health extension has been regarded as a snare and delusion—a dream beyond all others at first blush, but actually something we are better off without. The prevailing pace of biotechnological progress is bringing ever closer the day when humanity will be able (...) to act on the latter view by rejecting a clear and present opportunity for much longer healthy lives. Indeed, some biogerontologists contend that that day has already arrived, to the extent that our hesitation in embarking on a vigorous “war on ageing” is already delaying the point at which a cure for ageing will be developed. Here I consider whether our present caution concerning the wisdom of truly curing ageing is likely to survive the increased scrutiny that it will receive in coming years as a result of these technical advances. I conclude that it will not, because of its irreconcilability with values that are more deeply held by the large majority of humanity than any values that argue against the quest for a cure. I further conclude that all the major current reasons given for not curing ageing are mere crutches to help us cope with the immutability of ageing that we have been brought up to accept. Our failure to set aside such irrationality is already shortening potential longevity—quite probably of those already alive today—to a staggering degree. Once we realise this, our determination to consign human ageing to history will be second …. (shrink)

In the Netherlands, consent from relatives is obligatory for post mortal donation. This study explored the perspectives of relatives regarding the request for consent for donation in cases without donor registration. A content analysis of narratives of 24 bereaved relatives of unregistered, eligible, brain-dead donors was performed. Relatives of unregistered, brain-dead patients usually refuse consent for donation, even if they harbour pro-donation attitudes themselves, or knew that the deceased favoured organ donation. Half of those who refused consent for donation mentioned (...) afterwards that it could have been an option. The decision not to consent to donation is attributed to contextual factors, such as feeling overwhelmed by the notification of death immediately followed by the request; not being accustomed to speaking about death; inadequate support from other relatives or healthcare professionals, and lengthy procedures. Healthcare professionals could provide better support to relatives prior to donation requests, address their informational needs and adapt their message to individual circumstances. It is anticipated that the number of consenting families could be enlarged by examining the experience of decoupling and offering the possibility of consent for donation after circulatory death if families refuse consent for donation after brain-death. (shrink)

A social scientific survey on visions of human/nature relationships in western Europe shows that the public clearly distinguishes not only between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, but also between two nonanthropocentric types of thought, which may be called “partnership with nature” and “participation in nature.” In addition, the respondents distinguish a form of human/nature relationship that is allied to traditional stewardship but has a more ecocentric content, labeled here as “guardianship of nature.” Further analysis shows that the general public does not subscribe (...) to an ethic of “mastery over nature.” Instead, practically all respondents embrace the image of guardianship, while the more radical relationships of partnership and participation also received significant levels of adherence. The results imply that ethicists should no longer assume that the ethics of the public are merely anthropocentric. Finally, they call into question the idea of a single form of ecocentrism and favor a hermeneutic virtue ethics approach to the study of the interface between ethics and action. (shrink)

Examples are presented of Aristotle’s use of non-idealized mathematics. Distinctions Husserl makes in Crisis help to delineate the features of this empiricalmathematics, which include the non-persistence of mathematical aspects of things and the selective application of mathematical traits and proper accidents. In antiquity, non-abstracted mathematics was involved with practical sciences that treat motion. The suggestion is made that these sciences were incorporated by Aristotle into natural philosophy without first being abstracted as pure mathematics—a state of affairs not envisioned by Husserl, (...) for whom science recast natural ontology by means of the idealization of pure mathematics. The relation of empirical mathematics to life-world ontology is considered. (shrink)

Millions of human biological samples are stored worldwide for medical research or treatment purposes. These biospecimens are of enormous potential value to law enforcement as DNA profiles can be obtained from these samples. However, forensic use of such biospecimens raises a number of ethical questions. This article aims to explore ethical issues of using human bodily material in medical biobanks for crime investigation and prosecution purposes. Concerns about confidentiality, trust, autonomy and justice will be discussed. We explore how to balance (...) these concerns against the importance of crime solving. Relevant case examples of forensic use of medical biobanks show that requests by law enforcement to access biobanks are handled in disparate ways. We identify some core ethical issues and conclude that further research on these issues is needed to provide ethical guidance. (shrink)

In recent years the cognitive science community has witnessed the rise of a new, dynamical approach to cognition. This approach entails a framework in which cognition and behavior are taken to result from complex dynamical interactions between brain, body, and environment. The advent of the dynamical approach is grounded in a dissatisfaction with the classical computational view of cognition. A particularly strong claim has been that cognitive systems do not rely on internal representations and computations. Focusing on this claim, we (...) take as a starting point a question recently raised by Cliff and Noble: " if evolution did produce a design that used internal representations, how would we recognize it?" (Knowledge-based vision and simple visual machines, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 352 , 1165-1175, 1997). We will argue that cognitive science lacks a proper operationalization of the notion of representation, and therefore is unable to fruitfully discuss whether a particular system has representations or not. A basic method to detect representations in a physical system, grounded in isomorphism, turns out to be quite unconstrained. We will look at a practical example of this problem by examining the debate on whether or not van Gelder's (What might cognition be, if not computation? Journal of Philosophy, 92 , 345-381, 1995) controversial example of the Watt Governor is representational. We will conclude that cognitive science, as of yet, has no empirically applicable means to answer Cliff and Noble's question unequivocally. This makes the recent representationalism vs. anti-representationalism debate a debate for the sake of appearance. (shrink)

International treaties, conventions and declarations have been developed in an attempt to establish a world in which people s basic rights and needs are provided for. An increasing number of states have ratified and incorporated them into their national legislations. But are such norms and values truly universal? And with states no longer being the only actors that shape global developments, what can be said about the role of social contracts between state and society for shaping the agenda of international (...) cooperation? And how do these social contracts develop in heterogeneous societies? If people themselves are the main drivers behind development, what does this imply for foreign aid?These and other questions are addressed in "Global Values in a Changing World," the 2010-2011 lecture series organized by the Netherlands Chapter of the Society for International Development. This volume combines views and recommendations by international experts, academics, and activists, and analyzes the connection between internationally agreed norms, standards, goals, and common goods, and the way they can be realized in a world that is both globalized and localized.". (shrink)

Examples are presented of Aristotle’s use of non-idealized mathematics. Distinctions Husserl makes in Crisis help to delineate the features of this empiricalmathematics, which include the non-persistence of mathematical aspects of things and the selective application of mathematical traits and proper accidents. In antiquity, non-abstracted mathematics was involved with practical sciences that treat motion. The suggestion is made that these sciences were incorporated by Aristotle into natural philosophy without first being abstracted as pure mathematics—a state of affairs not envisioned by Husserl, (...) for whom science recast natural ontology by means of the idealization of pure mathematics. The relation of empirical mathematics to life-world ontology is considered. (shrink)

Building on Ben-Avi and Winter’s (2007) work, this paper provides a general “intensionalization” procedure that turns an extensional semantics for a language into an intensionalized one that is capable of accommodating “truly intensional” lexical items without changing the compositional semantic rules. We prove some formal properties of this procedure and clarify its relation to the procedure implicit in Montague’s (1973) PTQ.

This article considers the childrens writer Alison Uttley, and, particularly, her engagements with debates regarding science and philosophy. Uttley is a well-known childrens author, most famous for writing the Little Grey Rabbit series, but very little critical attention has been paid to her. She is also an important alumna of the University of Manchester, the second woman to graduate in Physics. In particular, the article looks at her novel A Traveller in Time through the lens of her thinking on time, (...) ethics, history and science. The article draws on manuscripts in the collection of the John Rylands Library to argue that Uttley‘s version of history and time-travel was deeply indebted to her scientific education and her friendship with the Australian philosopher Samuel Alexander. (shrink)

This study investigates the likelihood of director turnover following opportunistic insider selling. Given that opportunistic insider selling may be costly to a firm due to potential legal risk and firm legitimacy concerns, we hypothesize that directors engaging in this type of transactions have a higher likelihood of subsequently leaving the board. Using archival data of 11,409 directors in 2280 US firms from 2005 to 2014, univariate comparisons show that directors engaging in opportunistic insider selling are about 8% more likely to (...) exit their firms’ board compared to directors not engaging in this behavior. Furthermore, multivariate results show that the likelihood of director departure following opportunistic insider selling is higher for some directors but not all. Specifically, directors who are especially valuable to the board or costly to replace do not seem to experience elevated levels of turnover. Interestingly, this difference in director turnover is only observed in smaller firms. We find that in larger firms, the likelihood of director turnover following opportunistic insider selling does not depend on director characteristics. As such, results seem to suggest that boards do not homogeneously self-regulate in this context as some directors seem to be shielded from turnover following unethical behavior. (shrink)

Modern commentators have doubts about the authenticity and cogency of the early propositions of Archimedes’ On Equilibrium of Planes Book 1. Ernst Mach famously said that the proof of Prop. 6, the so-called law of the lever, assumes what is to be proven. Comparing the initial text in Heiberg’s modern edition (1881, 1913) to the first propositions in Eutocius’ commentary on EP 1, J. L. Berggren ([1976]. ‘Spurious Theorems in Archimedes’ Equilibrium of Planes: Book I’, Archive for History of Exact (...) Sciences 16.2 (1976), 87–103.) claimed that the propositions up through Proposition 3 of the standard modern edition are schoolbook additions written by an ancient author inferior to Archimedes. The present paper argues for the logical connectedness of Postulates 1–5 to Props. 1–6, by means of a detailed examination of the course of the argument and a re-examination of Eutocius’ remarks. The paper reinterprets the role of the empirical in the early propositions and offers a reading of the contribution of Archimedes’ mechanics to the method of EP 1. (shrink)

The poetical corpus of 11th-c. Christopher Mitylenaios, such as it is found in manuscript No. Z α XXIX (13th c.) of the Biblioteca della Badia Greca in Grottaferrata, consists of 145 poems and 2856 verses. Of these carmina 123 are written in jambic trimeters, 18 in dactylic hexameters, three in elegiac distichs, and one in an Anacreontic metre. In the first part of the article outer metric is discussed; among other things one learns that the Anacreontic poem 75 forms metrically (...) a case of its own as it consists of eight strophes of four verses each, whereby the even strophes are followed by two so-called koukoullia, that the dactylic hexameters use 28 out of 32 possible schemes, thus contrasting with the Callimachean and Nonnian types, and that in the dodecasyllables the so-called Binnenschluss after the 5th foot is overwhelmingly present while in no less than 16 hexameters the poet uses a caesura after the 3rd foot. In the second part (inner metric) the numerous transgressions of metrical laws are investigated, as well as verse end and accentuation, and prosody; this last item concerns long and short vowels, diphthongs and dichrona, correptio Attica and hiatus. The text ends with a twofold appendix about caesurae. (shrink)

It has often been noted that liberal democracies are facing a serious political crisis. A common reaction to this situation is to call for more comprehensive or more effective liberal democratic education. This volume discusses some of the most important challenges to and critiques of the paradigm of liberal democratic education. In doing so, it offers novel insights into how liberal democratic education can be amended, extended or qualified to address the special challenges of the current political moment.

This paper traces the significance of first principles in Greek philosophy to cognitive developments in colonial Greek Italy in the late fifth century BC. Conviction concerning principles comes from the power to make something true by action. Pairing and opposition, the forerunners of metonymy, are shown to structure disparate cultural phenomena—the making of figured numbers, the sundial, and the production, with the aid of device, of fear or panic in the spectators of Greek tragedy. From these starting points, the function (...) of the gnômôn in knowledge is explored. (shrink)

Over 30 million people worldwide have taken a commercial at-home DNA test, because they were interested in their genetic ancestry, disease predisposition or inherited traits. Yet, these consumer DNA data are also increasingly used for a very different purpose: to identify suspects in criminal investigations. By matching a suspect’s DNA with DNA from a suspect’s distant relatives who have taken a commercial at-home DNA test, law enforcement can zero in on a perpetrator. Such forensic use of consumer DNA data has (...) been performed in over 200 criminal investigations. However, this practice of so-called investigative genetic genealogy raises ethical concerns. In this paper, we aim to broaden the bioethical analysis on IGG by showing the limitations of an individual-based model. We discuss two concerns central in the debate: privacy and informed consent. However, we argue that IGG raises pressing ethical concerns that extend beyond these individual-focused issues. The very nature of the genetic information entails that relatives may also be affected by the individual customer’s choices. In this respect, we explore to what extent the ethical approach in the biomedical genetic context on consent and consequences for relatives can be helpful for the debate on IGG. We argue that an individual-based model has significant limitations in an IGG context. The ethical debate is further complicated by the international, transgenerational and commercial nature of IGG. We conclude that IGG should not only be approached as an individual but also—and perhaps primarily—as a collective issue. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

BackgroundThis article is part of a study to gain insight into the decision-making process by looking at the views of the relatives of potential brain dead donors. Alongside a literature review, focus interviews were held with healthcare professionals about their role in the request and decision-making process when post-mortal donation is at stake. This article describes the perspectives of the relatives.MethodsA content-analysis of 22 semi-structured in-depth interviews with relatives involved in an organ donation decision.ResultsThree themes were identified: ‘conditions’, ‘ethical considerations’ (...) and ‘look back’. Conditions were: ‘sense of urgency’, ‘incompetence to decide’ and ‘agreement between relatives’. Ethical considerations result in a dilemma for non-donor families: aiding people or protecting the deceased’s body, especially when they do not know his/her preference. Donor families respect the deceased’s last will, generally confirmed in the National Donor Register. Looking back, the majority of non-donor families resolved their dilemma by justifying their decision with external arguments. Some non-donor families would like to be supported during decision-making.DiscussionThe discrepancy between general willingness to donate and the actual refusal of a donation request can be explained by multiple factors, with a cumulative effect. Firstly, half of the participants stated that they felt that they were not competent to decide in such a crisis and they seem to struggle with utilitarian considerations against their wish to protect the body. Secondly, non-donor families refused telling that they did not know the deceased’s wishes or contesting posthumous autonomy of the eligible. Thirdly, the findings emphasise the importance of Donor Registration, because it seems to prevent dilemmas in decision-making, at least for donor families.ConclusionDiscrepancies between willingness to consent to donate and refusal at the bedside can be attributed to an unresolved dilemma: aiding people or protect the body of the deceased. Non-donor families felt incompetent to decide. They refused consent for donation, since their deceased had not given any directive. When ethical considerations do not lead to an unambiguous answer, situational factors were pivotal. Relatives of unregistered eligible donors are more prone to unstable decisions. To overcome ambivalence, coaching during decision-making is worth investigation. (shrink)

Many studies claim to measure decision-making under risk by employing the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) scale, a self-report measure, or the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), a behavioural task. However, these tasks do not measure decision-making under risk but decision-making under uncertainty, a related but distinct concept. The present commentary discusses both the theoretical and empirical basis of the distinction between uncertainty and risk from the viewpoint of several scientific disciplines and reports how many studies wrongfully employ the DOSPERT scale and (...) BART as risk-taking measures. Importantly, we call for proper distinguishing between (tasks measuring) decision-making under uncertainty and decision-making under risk in psychology and related fields. We believe this is vital as research has shown that people’s attitudes, behaviour, and brain activity differ between both concepts, indicating that confusing the concepts may lead researchers to erroneous conclusions. (shrink)