Alzheimer's disease remains the most common form of dementia. Dementia symptoms vary depending on individual personality, life experience, and social and cultural influences. As dementia progresses, involvement of multi-disciplinary health care professionals is needed to manage the disease. Alzheimer research is progressing rapidly. While 5% of all Alzheimer's disease may be genetically determined, the majority is not. Susceptibility genes can reveal the risk of contracting Alzheimer's disease. Early life risk factors such as education, nutrition, and vascular disease may increase the (...) likelihood of dementia in later life. In the United States, two acetylcholinesterase inhibitors have been approved as cognitive enhancers. Possible prevention and symptomatic treatment interventions have focused on estrogen replacement therapy, antioxidants, and anti-inflammatory medications. Research advances have improved the clinical management of dementia. Ethical implications to the patient, family, and society are multiple and remain challenging. (shrink)

Belgium is generally perceived as being one of the most fervent supporters of European integration. It is supposed that this is equally true for both, the Belgian political elite and the Belgian population. Unlike in other EU member states, no large public discussion on EU integration has taken place. Therefore, it is generally supposed that Lindberg's concept of the permissive consensus applies to the Belgians. This article aims, first, at challenging empirically the existence ofa permissive consensus in Belgium. In 1997 (...) both qualitative and quantitative data on the policy position on EU issues ofabout 130 Belgian social organisations have been collected. Content analysis ofthese positions shows that the existence ofa permissive consensus seems to be dependent on a number of variables and that a general observation of a permissive consensus has to be relaxed. Second, if permissive consensus is declining, why is it, then, that no open political controversy on European integration has emerged? In answering this, thefocus is on two explanatory variables: the resources of those that would liketo mobilise are quite limited and their opinion on European politics is rather heterogeneous and undeveloped. (shrink)

The Belgian Presidency is generally seen as being a success. On many difficult questions, the Belgians succeeded in forging compromises between the member states. There is a risk however, that the apparent successes of this Presidency will lead to an over-estimation of the role which a EU-president can play. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to its limits and possibilities. It can help to relativize the Belgian presidency and to improve insights into the potential role of EU-presidents within the (...) decision-making of the European Union. (shrink)

In spite of its importance in European Union decision making, research on the functioning of the Council is scarce. Based on empirical findings this article gives some new insights in the way Council decision making is institutionalized. The first part focusses on the characteristics of Council working groups and the different positions of actors in the decision making network. Our findings confirm the definition of the Council as a highly bureaucratized institution. Interesting is that the diversity of tasks of the (...) different actors strengthens the impact of national administrations in Council decision making. The second part explores the reasons for this impact. This article adds to the functional approach, which over-emphasizes the adaptive character of the Council, the perception of the Council as an intergovernmental component in a supranational system. (shrink)

This contribution deals with the consequences of European integration for the relation between civil servants and policians. Data of Belgian senior servants who are not involved in European policy networks are compared with data of Belgian officals who are in charge of European negotiations.This comparison shows firstly that officials are more central in European policy networks than in national policy networks. Politicians have only a limited and indirect access to these European networks. Secondly, the more civil servants are involved in (...) these European policy networks, the less their political alienation. Furthermore, the organisational self-esteem do not affect the communication networks among civil servants and politicians. Finally, alienation and self-esteem do not affect the communication networks among civil servants and politicians. The exposure to politics and anciennity seem to be more important predictors. (shrink)

The former Queen of Science seems to be lacking both a specific subject and a particular method. Thus the need arises for intra- and metaphilosophical orientation – especially since the way philosophy sees itself stems from various influential schools and traditions whose mutual exchange is not as lively as one might have hoped. This volume of original essays brings together some of the protagonists of different metaphilosophical debates that have so far been led fairly independently of each other. The authors (...) discuss the question of both the possibility and the scope of philosophical knowledge under a variety of aspects, particularly: (1) a priori knowledge and the role of intuitions, (2) transcendental arguments, (3) analytic philosophy and its methods as well as (4) phenomenology and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This article presents and compares Frege’s and Husserl’s conceptions of sense, also taking into account their 1891 and 1906 correspondence. It is argued that while the similarities between their views speak in favour of a Fregean interpretation of Husserl’s notion of noematic sense, there are also important differences. With regard to the latter, it is argued that Husserl’s view yields a more general criterion of propositional difference and also provides a more detailed conception of the use of indexicals and non-descriptive (...) singular terms, and of their reference. In this context, Husserl’s conceptions of constitution and genetic constitution analysis, respectively, are invoked and interpreted in terms of the epistemic notion of processing mental files or individual “concepts”. (shrink)

The remarkable movement known as Solidarity recently celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in Poland. This essay provides a theoretical appreciation of the values and principles that guided and undergirded the movement, which greatly contributed to the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. This systematic overview of the ethic of the Solidarity movement fills a lacuna in the field of ethics because ethicists who are interested in the concept of solidarity have largely overlooked the Polish experience of the 1980s. This (...) essay attempts to describe the key ingredients of the Polish ethic of solidarity by analyzing both Polish treatises on the subject and accounts of events on the ground. It elaborates conceptual categories and describes characteristic features of the movement in order to provide a phenomenological account of the nature of solidarity embodied in Poland during this era. These categories and characteristics include unity among differences, the foundation of hope at the movement's roots, self-sacrifice and heroism, promoting the equality and dignity of all, the centrality of participation, the affirmation of "bread and freedom," an option for the poor, and the insistence on life in truth. Although this essay does not attempt to demonstrate the relevance of this "thick" ethic of solidarity to capitalist, democratic societies today, by way of conclusion it raises questions pertaining to the contemporary significance of the Polish ethic of solidarity. (shrink)

Increasingly, commissioners and providers of services for people with intellectual disabilities are turning to assistive technology and telecare as a potential solution to the problem of the increased demand for services, brought about by an expanding population of people with intellectual disabilities in the context of relatively static or diminishing resources. While there are numerous potential benefits of assistive technology and telecare, both for service providers and service users, there are also a number of ethical issues. The aim of this (...) paper is to raise these issues and to set them within the ethical framework proposed by Beauchamp and Childress. There is a need for a wider debate as a first step in the development of strategies to address the issues raised in the paper. (shrink)

Representing the thinking of philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, coaches, and sports writers, these essays bring together a wide range of approaches to ...

Sehen, Horen, Riechen, Schmecken, Tasten: Die Autorin fragt nach Entstehung, Begrundung und Folgen dieser tradierten Ordnung der Sinne. Sie fragt auch nach den abweichenden Varianten, die von der antiken Idee des Korpers als ganzheitliches Sensorium uber die hoheren Sinne des Mittelalters bis zu den sinnlichen Vermogen der Aufklarung, wie Einbildungskraft und Dichtungsvermogen, reichen. Im 18. Jahrhundert verstarkte sich zusammen mit der anthropologischen Aufwertung der Sinnlichkeit der Impuls zur Uberschreitung der Funfzahl der Sinne und zur Umordnung der uberkommenen Hierarchie. An Textbeispielen (...) von Platon, Ovid und Goethe untersucht die Autorin uberdies Zusammenhange, aber auch Widerspruche, die zwischen der europaischen Liebeskultur und der Bewertung von Auge und Ohr als hohere, von Geschmack, Geruch und Tasten als niedere Sinne bestehen. (shrink)

This paper addresses theoretical challenges, still relevant today, that arose in the first decades of the twentieth century related to the concept of the organism. During this period, new insights into the plasticity and robustness of organisms as well as their complex interactions fueled calls, especially in the UK and in the German-speaking world, for grounding biological theory on the concept of the organism. This new organism-centered biology understood organisms as the most important explanatory and methodological unit in biological investigations. (...) At least three theoretical strands can be distinguished in this movement: Organicism, dialectical materialism, and holistic biology. This paper shows that a major challenge of OCB was to describe the individual organism as a causally autonomous and discrete unit with consistent boundaries and, at the same time, as inextricably interwoven with its environment. In other words, OCB had to conciliate individualistic with anti-individualistic perspectives. This challenge was addressed by developing a concept of life that included functionalist and metabolic elements, as well as biochemical and physical ones. It allowed for specifying organisms as life forms that actively delimit themselves from the environment. Finally, this paper shows that the recent return to the concept of the organism, especially in the so-called “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” is challenged by similar anti-individualistic tendencies. However, in contrast to its early-twentieth-century forerunner, today’s organism-centered approaches have not yet offered a solution to this problem. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction, as applied both to properties and to relations. In contrast to other accounts, the approach taken here locates the source of a property’s intrinsicality or extrinsicality in the manner in which that property is ‘logically constituted’, and thus – plausibly – in its nature or essence, rather than in e.g. its modal profile. Another respect in which the present proposal differs from many extant analyses lies in the fact that it does (...) not seek to analyse the ‘global’ distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties on the basis of the ‘local’ distinction between having a property intrinsically and having it extrinsically. Instead, the latter distinction is explicated on the basis of the former. (shrink)

In recent years, biologists and philosophers of science have argued that evolutionary theory should incorporate more seriously the idea of ‘reciprocal causation.’ This notion refers to feedback loops whereby organisms change their experiences of the environment or alter the physical properties of their surroundings. In these loops, in particular niche constructing activities are central, since they may alter selection pressures acting on organisms, and thus affect their evolutionary trajectories. This paper discusses long-standing problems that emerge when studying such reciprocal causal (...) processes between organisms and environments. By comparing past approaches to reciprocal causation from the early twentieth century with contemporary ones in niche construction theory, we identify two central reoccurring problems: All of these approaches have not been able to provide a conceptual framework that allows maintaining meaningful boundaries between organisms and environments, instead of merging the two, and integrating experiential and physical kinds of reciprocal causation. By building on case studies of niche construction research, we provide a model that is able to solve these two problems. It allows distinguishing between mutually interacting organisms and environments in complex scenarios, as well as integrating various forms of experiential and physical niche construction. (shrink)

Insight problem solving is thought to underpin creative thought as it incorporates both divergent (generating multiple ideas and solutions) and convergent (arriving at the optimal solution) thinking approaches. The current literature on schizotypy and creativity is mixed and requires clarification. An alternate approach was employed by designing an exploratory web-based study using only correlates of schizotypal traits (paranoia, dissociation, cognitive failures, fantasy proneness, and unusual sleep experiences) and examining which (if any) predicted optimal performance on an insight problem-solving task. One (...) hundred and twenty-one participants were recruited online from the general population and completed the number reduction task. The discovery of the hidden rule (HR) was used as a measure of insight. Multivariate logistic regression analyses highlighted persecutory ideation to best predict the discovery of the HR (OR = 1.05; 95% CI 1.01–1.10, p = 0.017), with a one-point increase in persecutory ideas corresponding to the participant being 5% more likely to discover the HR. This result suggests that persecutory ideation, above other schizotypy correlates, may be involved in insight problem solving. (shrink)

I argue that Hannah Arendt's analysis of the development of modern society illuminates one aspect of prevailing educational discourse. We can understand the ‘learning society’ as both an effect and an instrument of the logic of ‘bare biological life’ or zoé that Arendt claims is the ultimate point of reference for modern society. In such a society we seem to live permanently under the threat of social exclusion, being permanently put in the position of learners or problem-solvers, without the right (...) of appeal. To imagine the possibility of such an appeal requires us to recover our sense of the experience of childhood. (shrink)

International institutions such as UNESCO are deliberating on a new standard setting instrument for neurotechnologies. This will likely lead to the adoption of a soft law document which will be the first global document specifically tailored to neurotechnologies, setting the tone for further international or domestic regulations. While some stakeholders have been consulted, these developments have so far evaded the broader attention of the neuroscience, neurotech, and neuroethics communities. To initiate a broader debate, this target article puts to discussion twenty-five (...) considerations and desiderata for recognition by a future instrument. They are formulated at different levels of abstraction, from the big picture to technical details, seek to widen the perspective of preparatory reports and transcend the narrow debate about “neurorights” which overshadows many richer and more relevant aspects. These desiderata are not an exhaustive enumeration but a starting point for discussions about what deserves and what requires protection by an international instrument. (shrink)

This paper is my commentary on Raymond Tallis’ book Freedom: An Impossible Reality (2021). Tallis argues that the laws described by science are dependent on human agency which extracts them from nature. Consequently, human agency cannot be explained as an effect of natural laws. I agree with Tallis’ main argument and I appreciate that he helps us understand the systematic importance of a human-scale breadth of view regarding any theoretical investigation. In the main part of the paper, I critically comment (...) on Tallis’ interpretation of several more loosely associated topics from a phenomenological perspective. Firstly, I reconsider Tallis’ account of intentionality as a factor that opens a distance between the cognizer and the world. Whereas Tallis emphasizes that agency requisitions aspects of the world to achieve its goals, I point out that agency does not determine the meaning of things unidirectionally and independently of all context. A self-controlled agency is provisionally reached through a process of ‘deindexicalization’ of our passive intentional capacities, that is, by creating and maintaining new, different worldly contexts. Subsequently, I analyze Tallis’ description of our intentional relation to spatiotemporally distant possibilities. In my view, Tallis underestimates the extent to which our intentional relation to possibilities is pre-reflexive and pre-predicative and hence independent of propositional attitudes. Finally, I consider Tallis’ interpretation of nature and show that it is deeply influenced by the sciences of nature. In contrast, I argue that agency can be properly described only if we understand it as an intervention in a lifeworld already imbued with sense, not merely a physical or material nature. (shrink)

There is concern that the use of neuroenhancements to alter character traits undermines consumer's authenticity. But the meaning, scope and value of authenticity remain vague. However, the majority of contemporary autonomy accounts ground individual autonomy on a notion of authenticity. So if neuroenhancements diminish an agent's authenticity, they may undermine his autonomy. This paper clarifies the relation between autonomy, authenticity and possible threats by neuroenhancements. We present six neuroenhancement scenarios and analyse how autonomy accounts evaluate them. Some cases are considered (...) differently by criminal courts; we demonstrate where academic autonomy theories and legal reasoning diverge and ascertain whether courts should reconsider their concept of autonomy. We argue that authenticity is not an appropriate condition for autonomy and that new enhancement technologies pose no unique threats to personal autonomy. (shrink)

Proceedings of a symposium held Nov. 26-28, 2009 at Georg-August-Universit'at.

Students of Thomas Aquinas have so far lacked a comprehensive study of his doctrine of the transcendentals. This volume fills this lacuna, showing the fundamental character of the notions of being, one, true and good for his thought. The book inquires into the beginnings of the doctrine in the thirteenth century and explains the relation of the transcendental way of thought to Aquinas's conception of metaphysics. It analyzes 'Being', 'One', 'True', 'Good' and 'Beautiful' individually and discusses their importance for the (...) philosophical knowledge of God. Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas is intended as a contribution to the question 'What is philosophy in the Middle Ages?' It argues that the doctrine of the transcendentals is essential for understanding medieval philosophy. (shrink)