Ziel dieses Bandes ist es, die Aktualität der Kritischen Theorie Adornos, Horkheimers und Habermas' für die heutige Zeit auszuloten. Es geht einerseits darum, die erkenntnistheoretischen Grundlagen der Kritischen Theorie neu zu überdenken, andererseits darum, neue Varianten dieser Theorie auf Gesellschaft, Kultur und Politik anzuwenden. Vor allem Bereiche wie Wissenschaftstheorie und Medienwissenschaft haben in den letzten Jahrzehnten neue Entwicklungen durchgemacht und fordern den kritischen Geist heraus. Mit Beiträgen u.a. von Roger Behrens, Wolfgang Detel, Udo Göttlich, Hans-Herbert Kögler, Gerhard Schweppenhäuser, Heinz Steinert, (...) Christine Resch und Tanja Thomas. (shrink)

This study investigated Belgian and Dutch parental opinions on confidentiality and consent regarding medical decisions about adolescents. Through an online survey, we presented six cases (three on confidentiality, and three on consent) to 1,382 Belgian and Dutch parents. We studied patterns in parental confidentiality and consent preferences across and between cases through binomial logistic regressions and latent class analysis. Participants often grant the right to consent for a treatment to the adolescent, but the majority diverges from the adolescent’s preferences regarding (...) confidentiality. More educated participants would rather not be informed about cases regarding a sexually transmitted disease or depression than lower educated participants. Further analysis shows that participants’ preferences correspond to authoritative (47%), permissive (30%) and authoritarian (17%) parenting styles. Belgian and Dutch parents are willing to grant some degree of autonomy, but they want to be informed about specific health issues. Parental views on confidentiality and granting consent appear to mirror existing parenting styles. (shrink)

SinceDaphnis and Chloeis a work of fiction, modern criticism has paid little attention to the topographical details of Lesbos which Longus scatters through his work. Today a preoccupation with biographical or topographical realism in literature is out of fashion, and Longus's world has in any case been described, by one of his most percipient modern critics, as ‘un monde des plus irréels’. Yet just as Longus's women reveal a striking blend of fictional romance and social realism, so the background to (...) his narrative, however much adorned with items of baroque fancy, nevertheless remains solidly based on the geography and ecology of Lesbos itself. The cave of the Nymphs, with its grotto, its spring, and its clutter of statues, may derive from the pastoral property-closet; but Longus's description of Mytilene agrees with those given by Strabo and Pausanias, and many other details—the trailing vines, the wine, the flourishing orchards, the prevalence of hares for hunting—suggest familiarity with the terrain. The description in the proem of the grove of the Nymphs, thick with flowers and trees and watered by a single spring, at once calls to mind the site of the great temple at Mesa, in the Kalloni plain. Most striking of all, since often used as evidence for Longus'signoranceof Lesbos, is his vivid description of a heavy snowfall, much at odds with later travellers' accounts of the climate's perennial mildness. But in the winter of 1964, when I was living on the island, snow lay three feet deep in the chestnut forest above Aghiassos, while Methymna was icebound, with frozen taps and sub-zero temperatures, for ten days, so that all the eucalyptus trees outside the schoolhouse died. The worst winter in living memory was that of 1953/4; the mountains are frequently snowbound. Longus, like Alcaeus, who also describes such conditions, knew what he was talking about. (shrink)

Der Mensch hat in den verschiedenen Bereichen des Alltagslebens, der Institutionen, der Wissenschaften und der Philosophie hochst verschiedene Verhaltnisse zu Tieren ausgebildet. Fur praktisch alle besteht eine Asymmetrie zwischen Mensch und Tier. Als Gegenstand des Wirtschaftens, der Wissenschaften und der Kunste unterliegen die Tiere menschlicher Verantwortung. Umgekehrt konnen sie weder Wissenschaften hervorbringen noch im wortlichen Sinne Verantwortung fur den Menschen ubernehmen. Hier bleiben unter anderem zeitgenossische Deutungen naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien zu bedenken. Der vorliegende Band reflektiert aus Sichtweise von neun wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen (...) die verschiedenen Mensch-Tier-Verhaltnisse. Er dokumentiert eine Vortragsreihe von Mitgliedern der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft an der Goethe Universitat Frankfurt am Main im Winter 2012-2013. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.4 (2006) 675-696 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]History of Religion Becomes Ethnology: Some Evidence from Peiresc's AfricaPeter N. Miller Bard Graduate CenterAbstractThe relationship between history of religion and ethnology on the one hand, and antiquarianism and them both, on the other, lie at the core of this essay. These lines of inquiry come together in the work of Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637), (...) the intellectually adventurous Provençal late humanist. Peiresc's correspondence with a renegade in Tunis, an adventurer in Ethiopia, and a missionary once based in Guinea provided him with remarkably direct information about the customs and practices—the moeurs—of contemporary sub-Saharan Africans. The content of these letters has not found its place in histories of anthropology or histories of antiquarianism.I.Bound up amidst Peiresc's copies of his letters to the Paduan antiquary Lorenzo Pignoria from the winter of 1615–16 is a text of four sides entitled, in large letters, "Delli Popoli della China" and continuing, in smaller ones, "written by P. Ioannes Pietro Maffei History of the Indies, Fr. Antonio di Saint Roman, in the History of the East Indies, Fr. Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza Augustino, in the books on China, and others." 1 The reading notes [End Page 675] that follow are interesting for one reason: though labelled "Delli Popoli della China" they are almost entirely about religion in China. At this stage of Peiresc's thinking at least, history of religion seems interchangeable with ethnography.In his letter to Pignoria of 4 January 1616, Peiresc acknowledges having time to page through ("di transcorrere un poco") Maffei, Gonzales, and Saint Roman where he found some information about figures they had discussed, and also about artificial grottoes used for domestic refrigeration, "which I did not note when I read it the first time." He asked if Pignoria wouldn't mind inquiring as to whether there was a more precise impression of a particular Chinese plaque or medallion—Pignoria had sent him one but Peiresc pronounced it "not as exact as I would like." 2Peiresc begins with the gods that were worshipped (these included deceased parents and friends, as well as the occasional living person) and auguries. This then leads to mention of the clothing and hair styles of those priests making offerings to the gods. Some of this information was derived from that octagonal medallion. Peiresc also noted down the presence of a vase, as if for libation, and other instruments for offerings.These authors, he continued, observed that the Chinese revered the God of Heaven above all the others. Peiresc recorded that Gonzalez mentioned that he was indicated by use of the first letter of the alphabet, that this character looked a bit like "AF," that it was called "Guant," that he was honored with a solemn festival every near year, at the new moon in March, with vocal and instrumental music during which his priests applied themselves for an entire day to a board groaning with meat, poultry, fish, and fruits (no wonder the earlier reference to the gluttony of the priests). For the greater veneration of the King he was called the "Son of Heaven."Mention of the King led to discussion of the monthly festivals in the provinces when priests bore a portrait of the King, on gold, through the streets with great reverence. But then, citing from Maffei, Peiresc proceeded to jot down observations made about Chinese seaside towns and the domestic interior. This, in turn, led to some observations about dining—and, therefore, feasting—practices.Finally, Peiresc returned to the aforementioned medallion, whose details now seemed to him to represent just such an honorific feast. But he was especially interested in the practice of indicating the name of God with a single Chinese character, or cipher. This reminded him, he wrote, that the [End Page 676] Basilidian gnostics, as recorded in Epiphanius, represented the god of heaven with the seven Greek vowels AEHIOUY. He... (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that ageing can be construed as disease. First, the concept of disease is discussed, where the distinction is made between two lines of thought, an objectivist and a subjectivist one. After determining the disease conception to be used throughout the argument, it is proposed that senescence could be seen as disease. Three common counterarguments are discussed, none of which appears strong enough to effectively counter the advocated view. In the third section, two potential implications (...) of the view advocated here will be briefly touched upon. These are the quest for a cure or treatment for ageing and the general attitude towards the elderly. It is concluded that, utilizing an objective disease concept, ageing could be seen as a disease. None of the considered counterarguments packs enough of a punch to discard this. The implications are complex and intertwined, but need not be negative. (shrink)

We live in a world in which scientific expertise and its epistemic authority become more important. On the other hand, the financial interests in research, which could potentially corrupt science, are increasing. Due to these two tendencies, a concern for the integrity of scientific research becomes increasingly vital. This concern is, however, hollow if we do not have a clear account of research integrity. Therefore, it is important that we explicate this concept. Following Rudolf Carnap’s characterization of the task of (...) explication, this means that we should develop a concept that is (1) similar to our common sense notion of research integrity, (2) exact, (3) fruitful, and (4) as simple as possible. Since existing concepts do not meet these four requirements, we develop a new concept in this article. We describe a concept of epistemic integrity that is based on the property of deceptiveness, and argue that this concept does meet Carnap’s four requirements of explication. To illustrate and support our claims we use several examples from scientific practice, mainly from biomedical research. (shrink)

A well-known problem in the health sciences is the distorted research agenda: the agenda features too little research that is tailored to the health problems of the poor, and it features too little research that supports the development of other solutions to health problems than medicines . This article analyzes these two sub-problems in more detail, and assesses several strategies to deal with them, resulting in some specific recommendations that indicate what governments should do to make the research agenda in (...) the health sciences less distorted. (shrink)

A well-known problem in the health sciences is the distorted research agenda: the agenda features too little research that is tailored to the health problems of the poor, and it features too little research that supports the development of other solutions to health problems than medicines (e.g., change of lifestyle). This article analyzes these two sub-problems in more detail, and assesses several strategies to deal with them, resulting in some specific recommendations that indicate what governments should do to make the (...) research agenda in the health sciences less distorted. (shrink)

The Belgian political system is of ten qualified as a particracy, this is a variation of the classical parliamentary democracy, in which political parties dominate the political decision-making process more than the other subsystems, such as parliament, the government, the public administration, the judiciary power, the broadcasting institutions, the written press etc. This preponderancy is achieved by the partypolitisation of the positions in and the functio ning of these subsystems.Partyleaders exert nowadays a major influence on the constellation of a new (...) government and the designation of its ministers. Through the governmental program and special extraparliamentary pacts they map out more and more government's future policies. The ministerial cabinets execute the control over the public administration on behalf of the parties of the majority and aften take over some of its peculiar functions. The recruitment of public servants and their promotion depend highly upon the institutionalized patronage of the governmental parties.The power to select the candidates for the general elections has shifted away from the rank-and-file member to the local and national partyleaders.Partydiscipline is one of the major causes of the shift of the government making function, the legislative and controlling functions of parliament to the party headquaters.The recruitment and the promotions of magistrates was already before World War II largely politicized.Although the structural integration between the newspapers and parties has decreased since 1945, the political parties have strengthened their control over the designation of the diree:tors and administrators of the Belgian broadcasting institutions. (shrink)

At the general elections, the Belgian voter can either vote for an entire party or vote for a candidate on that list. The general, elections of november 8th, 1981 featured a notable fall of the percentage of preferential votes by 4,46 %, although this proportion was steadily rising since 1958, by an average of 3,67 % each election year.Although the use of preferential votes is varying from one constituency to another, and from one party to another, the order of constituencies (...) and parties, ranked by their proportion of preferential votes, did not change profoundly.The remarkable drop of the overall proportion of preferential votes is probably due to the shift from preferential votes to list-votes by the bulk of voters who fled from the christian-democratic parties to the liberals, the flemish-nationalists and the ecologists. (shrink)

The lists of candidates, proposed by the parties for the Belgian general elections, is quite determinative. Due to electoral code arrangements, and, notwithstanding the growing proportion of preference votes, only thosecandidates who are placed within the «necessary sequence» of the lists get actually elected. Consequently, the Belgian voter does not appointthe mandataries, hut only the number of mandates due to the several parties.The statutes of the three major Belgian parties, provide large participative opportunities for their members, through the so-called general (...) member polls. In this kind ofprimary system, all party members are franchised to elect the candidates for their party-lists.The elections of the past twenty years show a growing tendency to deviate from these statutary guaranteed participation. In 1958, 89 % of all representatives were placed on their party-lists by general member polls; in 1978, only 10 %. Thus, the conclusive phase of the composition of the partylists has become, since 1958, increasingly a matter where only the national or federal party executives and councils decide upon. (shrink)

In the official statistics, the total number of nonvoters in the post-war parliamentary elections in Belgium, is considerably over-estimated. This is caused by the method of updating the lists of voters, so that many people who appear as nonvoters, are regular voters who died after the moment of updating, but were not droppedfrom the lists. In this article, we endeavoured to calculate the number of deceased voters, who still appear on the lists, using the monthly death-rates of the total Belgian (...) population, abstracting the deceased persons under age and the deceased foreigners. The more realistic rates of nonvoting, calculated this way, are quite lower than the official rates.Yet, because of the introduction of a new method of updating, the problem discussed above, hardly exists any langer since the general election of 1977. (shrink)

This book aims to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable interest influences in science. Jan De Winter criticizes existing views on the integrity of science and the roles of financial, political, and other interests in science, and develops an alternative view to shed new light on cases from medical science, aerospace science, climate science, and biology.

In this article, we integrated the data of four inquiries, concerning various activities and features, computing the relations between all these quantitative variables by partialcorrelation and multiple regression techniques.Remarkably, the most determing factor of the amount of preference votes of a candidate seems to be his various activities in parliament.His clientelist activities and his personal electoral campaign influence also, but in a lesser way, the cast of these votes. Parliamentary seniority correlates positively with the number of cumulated offices, which in (...) turncorrelates with the extent of his electoral campaign. The attendance of a representative during the committee meetings and during the plenary voting sessions seems not at all to be influenced by this cumulations of various offices, and only slightly by bis clientelist occupations. This general pattern of parliamentary behavior differs considerably between parties. Finally, the effect of each particular branch ofextraparliamentary offices on the other activities of each member was examined. (shrink)

The grip of political parties of central government actors in Belgium was most striking in the 1970s and 1980s. In this period Belgium, like Italy, constitutes a very strong case of partitocracy. Yet, white the Italian partitocrazia collapsed brusquely in the early 1990s, the Belgian particratie underwent a number of gradual modifications, which prevented the complete collapse of the partitocratic system and to some degree restored the governability of the country.This article presents for each sector of central government first the (...) main features as they were under full partitocratic rule during the 1970s and 1980s. Second, it indicates which corrections were introduced, that reduced the the grip of political parties on central government actors, structures and processes. Finally, it discusses the problem of the public debt and policy inertia. (shrink)

In spite op compulsory voting, the number of non-voters increased at the last general elections in Belgium to 7.3 per cent. This evolution can largely be explained by demographic factors. The number of blank or invalid voters reaches nearly the same level. Concerning this form of political non-participation, we noticed considerable differences occur between the types of elections due to factors such as the importance and the proximity of the proper institution, the social distance between candidate and citizen and the (...) main issue of the elections.The analysis of both phenomena over time at the level of the individual voters based on surveys shows that electoral absenteeism is rather accidental, white blanc and invalid voting is more permanent. From the analysis of absenteeism and blanc and invalid voting emerge on the one hand socio-economic factors which jeopardize electoral participation in a direct or indirect way, and on the other hand, attitudes and behaviour reflecting political indifference, alienation and hostility. (shrink)

Through the use of rhetoric linking private economic transactions and international labor and human rights standards, the movement has successfully challenged corporate practices that were previously considered unremarkable.

Introducing and implementing corporate sustainability poses many challenges to business organizations. In this longitudinal, inductive study, we focus on how such challenges are handled in a Dutch bank that is developing its sustainability policies. We examine why there is such a high degree of tension and conflict within the organization and identify how the development of these policies is affected by the interplay between subcultures and institutional logics. We show how different subcultures affect the enactment of logics by infusing the (...) rational and mindful behavior coming from logics with (sub)cultural values, beliefs, and assumptions. In turn, conflicting logics amplify subcultural characteristics between groups by shaping different behavior and practices. Together, this leads to a magnification of subcultural differences while, at the same time, logics are increasingly being perceived as incompatible. (shrink)

This article reveals that explanatory practice in software engineering is in accordance with pragmatic explanatory pluralism, which states that explanations should at least partially be evaluated by their practical use. More specifically, I offer a defense of the idea that several explanation-types are legitimate in software engineering, and that the appropriateness of an explanation-type depends on (a) the engineer’s interests, and (b) the format of the explanation-seeking question he asks, with this format depending on his interests. This idea is defended (...) by considering examples that are representative for explanatory practice in software engineering. Different kinds of technological explanation are spelled out, and the dependence of their appropriateness on interests and question-formats is extensively illustrated. (shrink)

This paper describes the common techniques used in the constitution of candidates-lists for parliamentary elections. A common feature of these techniques is the consultation of party members. But the way in which this is done differs among the parties. AGALEV, the ecologist party, offers every member the possibility to have his say about every candidate. The socialist party uses this system in two constituencies ; in the other constituencies a special congress decides. The christiandemocrats, the liberals and the Flemish nationalists (...) constitute their lists by indirect vote : the leadership performs a first selection and the members then either approve or disapprove of this choice.Our research indicates that there are no essential differences between these two techniques from the point of view of membership participation.In both the ecologist and the socialist party the majority of members does not participate in the candidates-elections. Therefore, as with the indirect vote, candidates-lists are constituted by an active, militant and elitist group of members. Whatever the technique used the infl,uence of the rank-and-file-member is small. (shrink)

L’utilitarisme de Bentham transforme profondément la doctrine antérieure de la liberté de parole en la mettant au service de la recherche de la vérité et en réfléchissant à la portée du contrôle exercé par le gouvernement. Il préserve la distinction entre les affirmations portant sur des opinions et celles portant sur des faits et accorde aux premières une moindre protection. Comme l’avait fait son père James Mill, John Stuart Mill conserve cette distinction dans ses écrits de jeunesse mais ces analyses (...) souffrent de faiblesses logiques et de naïveté politique. Dans De la liberté, John Stuart Mill cherche à dépasser ces difficultés et propose une nouvelle défense de la liberté d’expression en tant que liberté de délibération. Contrairement à la plupart des interprétations, cet article démontre que cette nouvelle approche ne remet pas en cause la distinction fondamentale entre l’expression des opinions (qui sont protégées de façon absolue) et les affirmations portant sur des faits, qui ne sont protégées que de façon contingente, ce qui laisse ouverte la possibilité de restreindre l’expression d’affirmations fausses portant sur des faits. (shrink)

Summary Colour and space are pervasive topics in both perception and art. This article investigates the role of colour and pattern in relation to space and time in the art works by two artists: Frank Stella, a well-known Post-War American abstract painter, and Pieter Vermeersch, an emerging Belgian abstract painter, representing a contemporary trend to break the barriers between artistic disciplines. While Stella adheres to the Modernist logic of non-illusionistic, non-spatial, non-referential art as object, perceived instantaneously, Vermeersch explores ways to (...) enhance the viewers’ spatial and temporal experiences through complex art installations with multiple objects and architectural elements interacting with each other and with the spaces in which they are embedded. We discuss these major themes in some representative art works, and in the way they are perceived and appreciated by contemporary viewers, investigated in four empirical studies: two laboratory experiments using well-controlled stimuli derived from at works, and two museum studies employing a variety of methods, including mobile eye-tracking and questionnaires. (shrink)

We explore the possibility and some potential payoffs of using the theory of accessible categories in the study of categories of logics. We illustrate this by two case studies focusing on the category of finitary structural logics and its subcategory of algebraizable logics.

The beanbag genetics controversy can be traced from the dispute between Fisher and Wright, through Mayr''s influential promotion of the issue, to the contemporary units of selection debate. It centers on the claim that genic models of natural selection break down in the face of epistatic interactions among genes during phenotypic development. This claim is explored from both a conceptual and a quantitative point of view, and is shown to be defective on both counts.Firstly, an analysis of the controversy''s theoretical (...) origins demonstrates that this claim derives from a misinterpretation of the conceptual foundations of Fisher''s genetical theory of natural selection, and confounds his fundamentally different concepts of the average excess and average effect of a gene. Secondly, an extension of the genic approach is proposed which models the dynamics of selection among epistatically interacting complexes of many genes. Paradoxically, this preliminary, but fundamentally genic model provides quantitative support for some controversial qualitative claims regarding the evolutionary consequences of strong gene interactions made by opponents of genic selectionism, including Mayr''s theory of peripartric speciation. These findings foster hope that the proposed approach may eventually nudge the beanbag controversy out of its conceptual trenches into a more empirically oriented dialogue. (shrink)

From 2009 to 2013 the workplace innovation project “My Enterprise 2.0” was carried out in the region of Utrecht in the Netherlands in order to strengthen the workplace innovation capability of small and medium-sized enterprises. Participating enterprises completed a questionnaire regarding the “workplace innovativeness” of their company. A workplace innovation intervention was then implemented by some of the companies, while other companies chose not to take part. At the end of the project, a second questionnaire indicated that those companies that (...) implemented interventions had a significantly higher score with regard to overall workplace innovativeness. The companies without such interventions reported a small decrease. While the companies in the region had higher workplace innovativeness scores relative to a national reference group both before and after the project, the increase in the “workplace innovativeness” of the regional SMEs that experienced interventions suggests that the project proved beneficial to their continued “workplace innovativeness.” Moreover, these companies also reported positive effects on company performance, achieving company goals and improving labor productivity. (shrink)

The Vlaams Blok has been among the more successful of Europe’s far-right parties. But there is still a good deal of statistical analysis which might be done to help identify the factors in their success.This study looks at the best available data from electoral returns in the nine districts of Antwerp, which has been the locus of the Vlaams Blok’s support.A statistical comparison is made between various social and economic factors, and the level of support for Vlaams Blok in an (...) attempt to identify significant correlations. (shrink)

The «law of weak parliaments» states that parliaments with small competences only attract weak candidates, which in turn weakens the parliament even more.Research concerning the Belgian delegates to the European Parliament from 1952 to 1979, confirmed this law, but also qualified it by showing that the downward trend can be crosscut when the parliament gains importance as an institutional platform for a social movement, in this case for the European integration.