An intellectual history of the philosophers who grappled with the problem of evil, and the case for why pessimism still holds moral value for us today In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, philosophers engaged in heated debates on the question of how God could have allowed evil and suffering in a creation that is supposedly good. Dark Matters traces how the competing philosophical traditions of optimism and pessimism arose from early modern debates about the problem of evil, and makes a (...) compelling case for the rediscovery of pessimism as a source for compassion, consolation, and perhaps even hope. Bringing to life one of the most vibrant eras in the history of philosophy, Mara van der Lugt discusses legendary figures such as Leibniz, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and Schopenhauer. She also introduces readers to less familiar names, such as Bayle, King, La Mettrie, and Maupertuis. Van der Lugt describes not only how the earliest optimists and pessimists were deeply concerned with finding an answer to the question of the value of existence that does justice to the reality of human suffering, but also how they were fundamentally divided over what such an answer should look like. A breathtaking work of intellectual history by one of today's leading scholars, Dark Matters reveals how the crucial moral aim of pessimism is to find a way of speaking about suffering that offers consolation and does justice to the fragility of life. (shrink)

Few assumptions, argues Mara van der Lugt, are so stagnant, so rigid, so deeply walled in as the assumption that the decision to have children is by default a good thing; that having children is one of the most elevated aspects of human activity, and, indeed, of the human condition. This book is conceived as an open and reflective challenge to that assumption. The author argues that there are two questions in life that every person needs to answer (...) for themselves: one is the question of religion; the other is the question of begetting, a term which she chooses deliberately to restore a sense of 'strangeness and magnitude' to the idea. What does it mean to bring a new creature into the world? Or rather what does it mean to decide to perform an act of creation? What does it mean to make the decision that life is worth living on behalf of a person who cannot be consulted? To ask this question is to interrogate one's own responsibility and commitments, morally, philosophically, and personally. The question of begetting can never be purely one of preference or inclination, however we might wish it to be. This book is the author's attempt to raise some of these questions, if not fully to answer them. It is both a personal and philosophical exercise of filling out that moral background, in full awareness of the things that are at stake, and not in judgment but out of concern and compassion both for creators and created, and for those who are not yet created and those who are not (or not yet) creators. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTaking its cue from Hannah Arendt’s comment that ‘truth gets lost in the Enlightenment’ and Lessing’s parable of God’s ‘left hand’, this paper traces a historical shift in moral and religious thought: roughly from truth to sincerity. From traditional conceptions of conscience as conditional on the objective truth of its content, the paper moves on, via the Reformation and seventeenth-century Augustinian turn, to early modern debates on toleration and the ‘erring conscience’. It is argued that Pierre Bayle’s Commentaire Philosophique of (...) 1686 can be read as a crucial catalogue for understanding the substitution of truth with sincerity : so that not truth but truthfulness is considered to be essential for moral and religious justification. Moving from Bayle to Immanuel Kant, the paper then shows how many of the same questions rise in Kant’s late essay on theodicy, which is also an essay on sincerity or integrity, via the Book of Job. Through these two thinkers, various themes are connected: from conscience and sincerity to the problem of the conscientious persecutor. Finally, these themes of truth, error and integrity are linked to the modern debate on authenticity, and a framework is proposed for conceptualising these various shifts. (shrink)

In his own day, the name of Pierre Bayle was as famous as that of any philosopher in Europe. Yet despite his vast influence on the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, Bayle's name was eclipsed by those of other, more methodical thinkers of his age, eliciting the following remark from one modern scholar, J.C. Laursen: 'Why do professional philosophers spend so much time on Descartes and so little time on Pierre Bayle, when Bayle was clearly the better philosopher?'In the past (...) decades a surge of new interest in Bayle has led to the rediscovery of the depth of his philosophical thought as well as the extent of his influence-yet the scholarly debate is shadowed by deep uncertainty as to how to tackle his eclectic writings, especially the expansive historical-philosophical publication that became one of the Enlightenment's best-sellers: the Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, first published in 1696 and counting more than six million words.This volume provides an important new study of both Bayle and the Dictionnaire. (shrink)

Central to this volume are two philosophical powerhouses of the early modern period: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Pierre Bayle. Born in, respectively, 1646 and 1647, both made for an astonishing career in a variety of scholarly disciplines and reached, if not equal, then certainly comparable fame in the course of their lives. Nowadays, Bayle's reputation is eclipsed by that of Leibniz, who is the focus of yearly conferences and libraries of scholarship, while Bayle had to await the later twentieth century (...) to be rediscovered. He has since been at the center of a quickly expanding body of scholarship, which continues to be sharply divided over the vexed question how to interpret his religious stance.This imbalance... (shrink)

Cigarette smoking and other addictive behaviors are among the main preventable risk factors for several severe and potentially fatal diseases. It has been argued that addictive behavior is controlled by an automatic-implicit cognitive system and by a reflective-explicit cognitive system, that operate in parallel to jointly drive human behavior. The present study addresses the formation of implicit attitudes towards smoking in both smokers and non-smokers, using a Go/NoGo association task, and behavioral and electroencephalographic measures. The GNAT assesses, via quantifying participants’ (...) reaction times, the strength of association between a target category and either pole of an evaluative dimension. EEG analysis is performed to determine the temporal course of the event-related potential components underlying Go/NoGo decisions and implicit attitude formation. Both smokers and non-smokers showed prolonged reaction times to smoking-related pictures when the pictures were coupled with positive evaluative words. This indicates negative implicit attitudes towards smoking in both groups alike at the time point of the behavioral response. However, only the non-smokers, not the smokers, were found to show a delay of the N200 component in the incongruent condition. This is interpreted as reflecting ambivalent or even positive implicit attitudes towards smoking in the smoker group at the time point of the N200. Our study thus provides evidence for the hypothesis that implicit attitudes are subject to changes within several hundred milliseconds after stimulus presentation, and can be altered in the course of their formation. (shrink)

We invite systematic consideration of the metaphors of cycles and circulation as a long-term theme in the history of the life and environmental sciences and medicine. Ubiquitous in ancient religious and philosophical traditions, especially in representing the seasons and the motions of celestial bodies, circles once symbolized perfection. Over the centuries cyclic images in western medicine, natural philosophy, natural history and eventually biology gained independence from cosmology and theology and came to depend less on strictly circular forms. As potent ‘canonical (...) icons’, cycles also interacted with representations of linear and irreversible change, including arrows, arcs, scales, series and trees, as in theories of the Earth and of evolution. In modern times life cycles and reproductive cycles have often been held to characterize life, in some cases especially female life, while human efforts selectively to foster and disrupt these cycles have harnessed their productivity in medicine and agriculture. But strong cyclic metaphors have continued to link physiology and climatology, medicine and economics, and biology and manufacturing, notably through the relations between land, food and population. From the grand nineteenth-century transformations of matter to systems ecology, the circulation of molecules through organic and inorganic compartments has posed the problem of maintaining identity in the face of flux and highlights the seductive ability of cyclic schemes to imply closure where no original state was in fact restored. More concerted attention to cycles and circulation will enrich analyses of the power of metaphors to naturalize understandings of life and their shaping by practical interests and political imaginations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering by Mara van der LugtStefano BrogiMara van der Lugt. Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021. Pp. xi + 450. Hardback, $37.00.Mara van der Lugt's book (awarded Honorable Mention for the JHP Book Prize in 2022) has the merit of bringing attention to some crucial yet often overlooked topics (...) by providing a contribution that cannot fail to elicit broad interest. Her book does not simply discuss the theodicy and anti-theodicy of the modern age; against this background, she also brings out the often-ignored tradition of philosophical pessimism. What interests van der Lugt, however, is not "future-oriented" pessimism, which is opposed to "progressivist" theories of history, but an ontological or "value-oriented" pessimism that stresses "the terrible side of [End Page 163] life" in order to answer a series of crucial questions in a way very different from Leibniz's or Pope's approaches: Are there more evils than goods in our lives? Is life worth living for all of us, for any of us? Why do some people choose death despite their blessings? Why do some people choose life despite their sufferings? Do animals suffer as we do? Are we responsible for our own happiness? Is it better never to have been? According to van der Lugt, "The various ways in which these questions have been answered throughout the centuries have created the competing philosophical traditions known as optimism and pessimism. This book traces the intersection of the debate on the problem of evil with the debate on pessimism from the late seventeenth century onwards, seeking throughout to evaluate pessimism on its own terms" (20).A reassessment of this kind of pessimism serves an explicitly theoretical and moral purpose: van der Lugt herself states that her book is not exclusively a contribution to the history of philosophy, but "partly ethical or evaluative" (18). Indeed, pessimism and optimism "go hand in hand": they stem from a moral need and aim to respond to the evil present in the world by opening up glimmers of "hope, compassion, and consolation" (12, emphasis in original). Pessimism, in particular, is not intended to be "a philosophy of despair"; rather, it draws its strength from an "ethical commitment." Stemming from the latter is a tradition that "may be reinterpreted as a moral source" (22) and which "has not only its own epistemological and methodological concerns and presuppositions but, crucially, its own sets of virtues and moral aims" (13).The theoretical/moral purpose of Dark Matters is evident through its unfolding, even though eight of its nine chapters are roughly devoted to providing an accurate historical-philosophical reconstruction. Here, in brief, are the titles of the chapters that make up the over four hundred pages of this volume, which provide a good idea of the main authors discussed: (1) "The Complaint: Bayle and Malebranche on Physical Evil"; (2) "The Optics of Optimism: Leibniz and King Respond to Bayle"; (3) "Of Hope and Consolation: Voltaire and the Deists"; (4) "When Stoicism Meets Pessimism: La Mettrie and Maupertuis"; (5) "The Dispositional Problem of Evil: David Hume"; (6) "The Art of Suffering: Jean-Jacques Rousseau"; (7) "The Failure of Theodicy: Immanuel Kant"; (8) "The Flute-Playing Pessimist: Arthur Schopenhauer"; and (9) "Dark Matters: Pessimism as a Moral Source." To some extent, the rich itinerary provided by van der Lugt may be compared to those studies that have long undermined the idea of a monolithic and compact Enlightenment, characterized by unlimited faith in reason and its potential for liberation, and—more specifically—by a fundamental optimism with regard to human nature and the possibility of reformulating social and political structures in such a way as to enable each person to pursue happiness. However, the historical reconstruction provided here is based on an attempt to bring out the recurrent theoretical core of a philosophical perspective that first emerges with Pierre Bayle and runs through the modern and contemporary age, resurfacing in an evident way in the present-day antinatalism of David Benatar (often cited in the footnotes).According to van der Lugt, it is with Bayle (and not... (shrink)

Developing social skills is essential to succeed in social relations. Two important social constructs in middle childhood, prosocial behavior and reactive aggression, are often regarded as separate behaviors with opposing developmental outcomes. However, there is increasing evidence for the co-occurrence of prosociality and aggression, as both might indicate responsivity to the social environment. Here, we tested whether a bi-dimensional taxonomy of prosociality and reactive aggression could predict internalizing and externalizing problems over time. We re-analyzed data of two well-validated experimental tasks (...) for prosociality and reactive aggression in a developmental population sample. Results revealed no associations between prosociality and reactive aggression, confirming the independence of those constructs. Interestingly, although prosociality and reactive aggression independently did not predict problem behavior, the interaction of both was negatively predictive of changes in externalizing problems over time. Specifically, only children who scored low on both prosociality and reactive aggression showed an increase in externalizing problems 1 year later, whereas levels of externalizing problems did not change for children who scored high on both types of behavior. Thus, our results suggest that at an individual level, reactive aggression in middle childhood might not always be maladaptive when combined with prosocial behavior, thereby confirming the importance of studying social competence across multiple dimensions. (shrink)

Scholars in history and philosophy know the extraordinary difficulty of producing original research that is simultaneously creative, well-documented, and methodologically rigorous. But this is exactly what Mara van der Lugt manages in her recent book, a comprehensive treatment of Pierre Bayle's magnum opus. Reading Bayle is not for the faint of heart; he is a complex thinker with a controversial legacy. Van der Lugt exhibits appropriate caution, and though other interpreters have professed similar caution, van der (...) class='Hi'>Lugt's methodological commitments necessitate it. Her approach imitates Bayle's own by suspending judgment on his intentions as author; attending meticulously... (shrink)

Mara van der Lugt’s Dark Matters is elegant in its composition and beautifully written. It offers a brilliant attempt to give both early modern optimism and pessimism their due as philosophical sta...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has already caused large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and will continue to do so for manyyears after hostilities have ceased mainly because of the emissions linked to the rebuilding of destroyed or damaged housing, public buildings, infrastructure, factories, and the like. My aim in this paper is to discuss how in a time of climate emergency such emissions of war should impact the political morality of states initiating, continuing, and (...) ending war (through a just and enduring peace) as understood by just war theory (JWT). My point of departure is a study by Lennard de Klerk and six co-authors detailing the emissions of the first year of the Russo-Ukrainian war. (shrink)

Abstract‘Social inclusion’ is the leading ideal in services and care for people with intellectual disabilities in most countries in the Global North. ‘Social inclusion’ can refer simply to full equal rights, but more often it is taken to mean something like ‘community participation’. This narrow version of social inclusion has become so ingrained that it virtually goes unchallenged. The presumption appears to be that there is a clear moral consensus that this narrow understanding of social inclusion is good. However, that (...) moral consensus is not clear in the case of people with profound intellectual and/or multiple disabilities (PIMD), who are not able to express their needs and preferences verbally. Moreover, social inclusion has proven to be difficult to conceptualize and implement for people with PIMD. Therefore, it becomes imperative to ask about the ethical rationale of the narrow understanding of social inclusion. For what reasons do we think social inclusion is good? And do those reasons also apply for people with PIMD? This article addresses these questions by providing an ethical analysis of the ideal of social inclusion for people with PIMD. It discusses four ethical arguments for social inclusion and probes their relevance for people with PIMD. The article argues that none of these arguments fully convince of the value of the narrow understanding of social inclusion for people with PIMD. It ends with advocating for an ethical space for imagining a good life for people with PIMD otherwise. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman’s attempt to analyse the expressiveness of artworks in semantic terms has been widely criticised. In this paper I try to show how the use of an adapted version of his concept of exemplification, as proposed by Mark Textor, can help to alleviate the worst problems with his theory of expression. More particularly I argue that the recognition of an intention, which is central to Textor’s account of exemplification, is also fundamental to our understanding of expressiveness in art. Moreover (...) I propose that the recognition of this intention depends on our interpretation of the artwork – an insight Goodman tried to capture with his assertion that our attributions of expressive properties to artworks function metaphorically. The realisation of the context-dependence of our expressive judgements about art and, hence, of the central role interpretation plays in these judgements, I contend, counts in favour of theories of expression like Goodman’s that focus on semantic concerns. (shrink)

To understand pre-Fregean theories of judgment and proposition, such as those found in Locke and the Port-Royal logic, it is important to distinguish between propositions in the modern sense and propositions in the pre-Fregean sense. By making this distinction it becomes clear that these pre-Fregean theories cannot be meant to solve the propositional attitude problem. Notwithstanding this fact, Locke and Arnauld are able to make a distinction between asserted and unasserted propositions (in their sense). The way Locke makes this distinction (...) turns out to be very different from the way it is made by Arnauld. (shrink)

Ernest Mandel theorised the capitalist world economy as an articulated system of capitalist, semi-capitalist and precapitalist relations of production, linked to each other by capitalist relations of exchange and domination by the capitalist world market. This seems to be an interesting starting point for an historically well-founded theory, building on and going beyond Marx's work, of the worldwide expansion of the capitalist mode of production from its origins to the present. In his attempt to formulate his theory, Mandel did not (...) succeed in resolving all difficulties, however. His main works – Marxist Economic Theory and Late Capitalism – show a number of dangling loose ends. The central question is whether these loose ends are merely technical difficulties or whether they reveal fatal flaws in the theory as a whole. In order to come a step closer to answering this question, a conference was organised in Amsterdam, November 2003. This introduction formulates the five, closely interrelated issues that were highlighted at this conference. (shrink)

Masters Thesis -- Stellenbosch University, 2019.

Human cognition is unique in the way in which it relies on combinatorial (or compositional) structures. Language provides ample evidence for the existence of combinatorial structures, but they can also be found in visual cognition. To understand the neural basis of human cognition, it is therefore essential to understand how combinatorial structures can be instantiated in neural terms. In his recent book on the foundations of language, Jackendoff described four fundamental problems for a neural instantiation of combinatorial structures: the massiveness (...) of the binding problem, the problem of 2, the problem of variables, and the transformation of combinatorial structures from working memory to long-term memory. This paper aims to show that these problems can be solved by means of neural “blackboard” architectures. For this purpose, a neural blackboard architecture for sentence structure is presented. In this architecture, neural structures that encode for words are temporarily bound in a manner that preserves the structure of the sentence. It is shown that the architecture solves the four problems presented by Jackendoff. The ability of the architecture to instantiate sentence structures is illustrated with examples of sentence complexity observed in human language performance. Similarities exist between the architecture for sentence structure and blackboard architectures for combinatorial structures in visual cognition, derived from the structure of the visual cortex. These architectures are briefly discussed, together with an example of a combinatorial structure in which the blackboard architectures for language and vision are combined. In this way, the architecture for language is grounded in perception. Perspectives and potential developments of the architectures are discussed. Key Words: binding; blackboard architectures; combinatorial structure; compositionality; language; dynamic system; neurocognition; sentence complexity; sentence structure; working memory; variables; vision. (shrink)

This paper is on the update semantics for might of Veltman. Threeconsequence relations are introduced and studied in an abstract setting.Next we present sequent-style systems for each of the consequence relations.We show the logics to be complete and decidable. The paper ends with asyntactic cut elimination result.

The contention in this paper is that the theological-political disputes Spinoza was concerned with 350 years ago are similar to the conspiratorial disputes we experience today. The world in Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus, a political intervention in his time, serves as a “mirror image”, that is to say, it deals with the same problem we face today albeit in a different mode. Understanding our contemporary condition under the auspices of a Spinozist perspective, problems in countermeasures to the conspiratorial disputes come to (...) light. Scholarly work and practice focus on the epistemological dimension of conspiracy theories, tying in the extent to which they are problematic to the degree in which they deal in untruth. However, the lesson from Spinoza’s analysis of the theological-political disputes is that such theories do not deal in truth, but, in affect, they do not spring from a lack of education but a lack of certainty. The work of Spinoza opens up a different approach, and if our aim is like that of the TTP, to defend political life against the threat of civil war, such a different approach is in order. (shrink)

In this thesis, I investigate realist, anti-realist and pluralist views in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of complexity. The philosophy of science can inform the philosophy of complexity and vice versa because we can consider scientific inquiry to largely involve the study of complex systems. I however find that the relevant realist, anti-realist and pluralist views are problematic in various ways, and that a version of pragmatism suggests a promising alternative. This version of pragmatism incorporates elements of pluralism, (...) but maintains a commitment to epistemic hierarchy, convergence and progress. The way to develop such a version of pragmatism is, I argue, by rebooting William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science. Whewell however held to the following two transcendental claims: 1. Empirical inquiry undertaken in science properly practiced can reveal necessary truths. 2. The revelation of such necessary truths grants us a glimpse of the mind of God. Such transcendental claims are obviously at odds with pragmatism. There are however core features of Whewell’s view that are notably pragmatist in nature, features that explicitly inspired Charles Sanders Piece’s convergent pragmatism. These are as follows: 3. Subject and object (or mind and world) are inextricably entwined during scientific inquiry; they are not separated by anything like a correspondence relationship. 4. Science progresses via what Whewell calls the consilience of inductions (an ongoing merging of scientific theories, a merging that increases our understanding of the world over time). I modify Whewell’s view by stripping away its transcendental elements while maintaining its pragmatist elements. What remains is, I argue, a robust and novel kind of pragmatism suitable for being introduced into the contemporary philosophy of science. Whewell suitably-pragmatised can offer new insights into ongoing debates, particularly those around the nature of scientific progress, scientific truth and scientific understanding. (shrink)

The notion of cognitive act is of importance for an epistemology that is apt for constructive type theory, and for epistemology in general. Instead of taking knowledge attributions as the primary use of the verb 'to know' that needs to be given an account of, and understanding a first-person knowledge claim as a special case of knowledge attribution, the account of knowledge that is given here understands first-person knowledge claims as the primary use of the verb 'to know'. This means (...) that a cognitive act is an act that counts as cognitive from a first-person point of view. The method of linguistic phenomenology is used to explain or elucidate our epistemic notions. One of the advantages of the theory is that an answer can be given to some of the problems in modern epistemology, such as the Gettier problem. (shrink)

Sound and complete axiomatizations are provided for a number of different logics involving modalities for the knowledge of multiple agents and operators for branching time, extending previous work of Halpern, van der Meyden and Vardi [to appear, SIAM Journal on Computing] for logics of knowledge and linear time. The paper considers the system constraints of synchrony, perfect recall and unique initial states, which give rise to interaction axioms. The language is based on the temporal logic CTL*, interpreted with respect to (...) a version of the bundle semantics. (shrink)

Background Notwithstanding the need to produce evidence-based knowledge on medications for pregnant women, they remain underrepresented in clinical research. Sometimes they are excluded because of their supposed vulnerability, but there are no universally accepted criteria for considering pregnant women as vulnerable. Our aim was to explore whether and if so to what extent pregnant women are vulnerable as research subjects. Method We performed a conceptual and empirical analysis of vulnerability applied to pregnant women. Analysis A conceptual analysis supports Hurst's definition (...) of vulnerability. Consequently, we argue that pregnant women are vulnerable if they encounter an identifiably increased likelihood of incurring additional or greater wrong. According to the literature, this increased likelihood could exist of four alleged features for pregnant women's vulnerability: informed consent, susceptibility to coercion, higher exposure to risk due to lack of knowledge, vulnerability of the fetus. Discussion Testing the features against Hurst's definition demonstrates that they all concern the same issue: pregnant women are only vulnerable because a higher exposure to risk due to lack of scientific knowledge comprises an increased wrong. Research Ethics Committees have a responsibility to protect the vulnerable, but a higher exposure to risk due to lack of scientific knowledge is a much broader issue and also needs to be addressed by other stakeholders. Conclusions The only reason why pregnant women are potentially vulnerable is to the extent that they are increasingly exposed to higher risks due to a lack of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, the discussion can advance to the development of practical strategies to promote fair inclusion of pregnant women in clinical research. (shrink)

The concept of meaningful work is used to evaluate the quality of work. Typical cases of meaningless work that have been used to clarify this concept are assembly line work, and work involving other types of mindless tasks, but also David Graeber's ‘bullshit jobs’. I argue that there are at least two fundamental reasons to care about meaningful work: reasons from the wellbeing of the worker and reasons pertaining to meaningfulness of the worker's life. I first argue that a concept (...) of meaningful work needs to reflect these two values, but that these two values may come apart. Because of this, accounts that provide a single answer to the question to what extent a particular work context is meaningful work for a particular worker are unable to reflect these two values. I then survey three promising accounts of meaningful work: perfectionism, which captures the self-interested aspect of meaningful work well but fails to capture the meaningfulness aspect appropriately; consequentialism, which captures the meaningfulness aspect well but fails to capture the self-interested aspect; and Wolf's Fitting Fulfilment View of meaningful projects, which can be read as addressing both concerns but leads to implausible judgments about meaningful work. I then argue that we should conceive of the concerns that fall under the notion of meaningful work as two separate concepts and values. The best work incorporates both these dimensions but falling short on either dimension is problematic for different reasons. (shrink)

Over the past decades, both wild and domesticated insect pollinators are in dramatic decline, which puts at stake the existence of species, ecosystem resilience and global food security. Globally, 87 of major food crops depend on animal pollination. Together these account for 35 % of the world food production volume. Pollinator mediated crops are indispensable for essential micronutrients in the human diet. Many ornamental plants as well as crops for fibre, fodder, biofuels, timber and phytopharmaceuticals also depend on insect pollinators. (...) This article aims to map the current situation of pollinators worldwide, with a focus on the critical role of pollinators in the human food chain and ecosystem sustainability, their intrinsic and extrinsic value, as well as the causes of their declines and the interventions needed to conserve them, in order to develop an argument for the importance of conserving and restoring pollinator populations and diversity. The present pollinator crisis threatens global and local food security, can worsen the problems of hidden hunger, erodes ecosystem resilience, and can destabilise ecosystems that form our life support system. An integrated approach that simultaneously addresses the key drivers is needed. This includes creation and restoration of floral and nesting resources, a global phase out of prophylactic use of neonicotinoids and fipronil, improvement of test protocols in authorisation of agrochemicals, and restoration and maintenance of independence in regulatory science. The authors argue that an international treaty for global pollinator stewardship and pollinator ecosystem restoration should be initiated in order to systemically counteract the current crisis. (shrink)

The philosophical aspects of Greek medicine are now more widely appreciated, not only by historians of science and medicine but also by students of philosophy in a more narrow sense. There has also been a greater appreciation of the fact that Greek medical writers not only reflect a derivative awareness of developments in philosophy but that they also actively contributed to the formation of philosophical thought more strictly defined, for instance by developing concepts and methodologies for the acquisition of knowledge (...) and understanding. Yet the consequences of this for a renewed study of the formation of Greek philosophy have yet to be drawn; and disciplinary boundaries between historians of medicine on the one hand and philosophers and historians of philosophy on the other still pose obstacles to an integrated account of Greek thought that takes on board the contributions by the medical writers. Some preliminary remarks may therefore be in order. (shrink)

Route memory is frequently assessed in virtual environments. These environments can be presented in a fully controlled manner and are easy to use. Yet they lack the physical involvement that participants have when navigating real environments. For some aspects of route memory this may result in reduced performance in virtual environments. We assessed route memory performance in four different environments: real, virtual, virtual with directional information (compass), and hybrid. In the hybrid environment, participants walked the route outside on an open (...) field, while all route information (i.e., path, landmarks) was shown simultaneously on a handheld tablet computer. Results indicate that performance in the real life environment was better than in the virtual conditions for tasks relying on survey knowledge, like pointing to start and end point, and map drawing. Performance in the hybrid condition however, hardly differed from real life performance. Performance in the virtual environment did not benefit from directional information. Given these findings, the hybrid condition may offer the best of both worlds: the performance level is comparable to that of real life for route memory, yet it offers full control of visual input during route learning. (shrink)

We analyze the cognitive strategies underlying performance in the Number task, a Math game that requires both arithmetic fluency and mathematical creativity. In this game all elements in a set of numbers have to be used precisely once to create a target number with basic arithmetic operations. We argue that some instances of this game are NP complete, by showing its relation to the well-known Partition problem. We propose heuristics based on the distinction in forward and backward reasoning. The Number (...) Game is part of Math Garden, a popular online educational platform for practicing and monitoring math skills using innovations in computerized adaptive testing. These educational games generate enormous amounts of rich data on children's cognitive development. We found converging evidence for the use of forward proximity heuristics in the data of Math Garden, consisting of more than 20 million answers to 1,700 items. Item difficulties and the structure of correct answers were analyzed. (shrink)