Beknopte weergave van de voornaamste kenmerken van het werk van een aantal filosofen en theologen, afkomstig uit China, India, Israël, Perzië en Griekenland.

Objectives: There are indications that institutional review board members do not find it easy to assess the risks and benefits in medical experiments, although this is their principal duty. This study examined how IRB members assessed the risk/benefit ratio of a specific phase II breast cancer clinical trial.Participants and methods: The trial was evaluated by means of a questionnaire administered to 43 members of IRBs at six academic hospitals and specialised cancer centres in the Netherlands. The questionnaire addressed: identification and (...) estimation of inconvenience, toxicity, psychosocial distress, and benefits of trial participation to patients; identification and estimation of benefits to future patients and medical science; assessment of the trial’s RBR; and assessment of its ethical acceptability.Results: Most IRB members expected trial participation to involve fairly or very serious inconvenience, fairly severe to sometimes life-threatening toxicity, and serious psychological and social consequences. Conversely, the perceived likelihood of benefits to patients was modest. Most regarded the study as important, and the balance between risks and benefits to be favourable, and believed that the protocol should be approved. The IRB members’ final judgement on the trial’s ethical acceptability was significantly correlated with their RBR assessment of the protocol.Conclusions: Because most patients who participate in clinical trials hope this will prolong their lives, it is suggested that patient information should better describe the anticipated benefits—for example, the likelihood of prolonging life. This would allow patients to make decisions regarding participation based on realistic expectations. (shrink)

We prove that modal logic formulated in a language with the cover modality is exponentially more succinct than the usual box-and-diamond version. In contrast with this, we show that adding the so-called public announcement operator to the latter results in a modal system that is exponentially more succinct than the one based on the cover modality.

This paper demonstrates the undecidability of a number of logics with quantification over public announcements: arbitrary public announcement logic, group announcement logic, and coalition announcement logic. In APAL we consider the informative consequences of any announcement, in GAL we consider the informative consequences of a group of agents all of which are simultaneously making known announcements. So this is more restrictive than APAL. Finally, CAL is as GAL except that we now quantify over anything the agents not in that group (...) may announce simultaneously as well. The logic CAL therefore has some features of game logic and of ATL. We show that when there are multiple agents in the language, the satisfiability problem is undecidable for APAL, GAL, and CAL. In the single agent case, the satisfiability problem is decidable for all three logics. (shrink)

Systematische uiteenzetting van de wijsbegeerte der wetsidee.

By analyzing a gedanken experiment designed to measure the distance l between two spatially separated points, we find that this distance cannot be measured with uncertainty less than (ll 2 P) 1/3 , considerably larger than the Planck scale lP (or the string scale in string theories), the conventional-wisdom uncertainty in distance measurements. This limitation to space-time measurements is interpreted as resulting from quantum fluctuations of space-time itself. Thus, at very short distance scales, space-time is “foamy.” This intrinsic foaminess of (...) space-time provides another source of noise in the interferometers. The LIGO/VIRGO and LISA generations of gravity-wave interferometers, through future refinements, are expected to reach displacement noise levels low enough to test our proposed degree of foaminess in the structure of space-time. (shrink)

This contribution is a gentle introduction to so-called dynamic epistemic logics, that can describe how agents change their knowledge and beliefs. We start with a concise introduction to epistemic logic, through the example of one, two and finally three players holding cards; and, mainly for the purpose of motivating the dynamics, we also very summarily introduce the concepts of general and common knowledge. We then pay ample attention to the logic of public announcements, wherein agents change their knowledge as the (...) result of public announcements. One crucial topic in that setting is that of unsuccessful updates: formulas that become false when announced. The Moore-sentences that were already extensively discussed at the conception of epistemic logic in Hintikka’s ‘Knowledge and Belief’ give rise to such unsuccessful updates. After that, we present a few examples of more complex epistemic updates. Our closing observations are on recent developments that link the ‘standard’ topic of belief revision, as in ‘On the Logic of Theory Change: partial meet contraction and revision functions’, by Alchourron et al. , to the dynamic epistemic logics introduced here. (shrink)

In meeting the challenges of fashioning a new health care system, South Africa stands poised to contribute to a better future for its own citizens and the subcontinent.

This study aims to examine the development of diversity and inclusion (D&I) literature and identify its prominent themes and blind spots. The research was conducted using bibliometric analysis on the Web of Science database and included 2510 publications. Results showed that the development of D&I literature had increased exponentially since the 1960s, mainly due to different political and societal events. The geographic development showed that research was primarily conducted in developed countries where quotas and other legislation are implemented. The thematic (...) development revealed a stable but narrow focus on diversity management, board diversity, and team diversity, with little attention to inclusion. The keyword analysis strongly emphasized surface-level diversity, such as gender, race, and cultural diversity, while deep-level diversity received less attention. This study concludes that previous D&I literature has mainly focused on the financial effects of D&I and neglected other elements, such as the effects on social performance, its ethical implications, and the relationship between diversity and inclusion. The study recommends future research to expand the interpretation of diversity, examine the relationship between diversity and inclusion, and explore the effects of diversity on non-financial outcomes such as social performance and ethics. This study provides a valuable contribution to the field of business ethics by highlighting the blind spots in D&I literature and encouraging future research to consider the ethical implications of diversity in the workplace. (shrink)

Casper Hendrik Rautenbach: 'Deeds, more than ideas, make life meaningful'Professor Casper Hendrik Rautenbach was born on 6th of March 1902 in Zeerust in the Western Transvaal, RSA, where he matriculated at the Zeerust Public School at the end of 1918. In June 1923 he was awarded the MA degree in Philosophy and at the end of the same year the BD degree in Theology. In 1932 he completed his thesis, titled 'Sedelike Keuring '. After serving as clergyman in the Nederduitsch (...) Hervormde Kerk van Afrika, and as lecturer in Philosophy and Christian Ethics, he was promoted to Rector of the University of Pretoria, an office which he held from the 9th of April 1948 until the 30th of June 1970. Professor Rautenbach is respected as an outstanding academic and leading churchman. He achieved outstanding results in the educational field especially by playing an active role in the formulation of the Education Policy Act. (shrink)

(1983). The exegete as restorer and interpreter: An essay about ancient Hebrew poetics, as exemplified by Psalm 121. Bijdragen: Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 350-365.