In the Netherlands fertility doctors increasingly formulate protocols, which oblige patients to quit their unhealthy lifestyle before they are admitted to IVF procedures. We argue that moral arguments could justify parenting protocols that concern all future parents. In the first part we argue that want‐to‐be parents have moral responsibilities towards their future children to prevent them from harm by diminishing or eliminating risk factors before as well as during the pregnancy. This is because of the future children's potential to become (...) of a certain type, more specifically: a person that will be the want‐to‐be parents' child. Want‐to‐be parents intend to become pregnant and therefore have an additional moral reason to diminish the risks. Also, people who become pregnant unintentionally have the responsibility to prevent their children from harm, unless they become pregnant due to contraception failure. All people not wanting to become pregnant should use contraception methods carefully.In the second part of this paper we translate the want‐to‐be parents' responsibilities into practice. We distinguish four determinants of risk factors: modifiability, chance, severity and effort. We examine some evidence‐based risk factors based on these variables and deduce levels of responsibility.In conclusion, formulating informal requirements for want‐to‐be parents is morally required and therefore also for want‐to‐be parents in need of medical assistance. The protocols developed by fertility doctors in the Netherlands could be seen as the precursor for a general, informal Parenting Protocol that could be developed on the basis of an extended and thoroughly debated risk‐responsibility analysis. (shrink)

In the Netherlands fertility doctors increasingly formulate protocols, which oblige patients to quit their unhealthy lifestyle before they are admitted to IVF procedures. We argue that moral arguments could justify parenting protocols that concern all future parents. In the first part we argue that want‐to‐be parents have moral responsibilities towards their future children to prevent them from harm by diminishing or eliminating risk factors before as well as during the pregnancy. This is because of the future children's potential to become (...) of a certain type, more specifically: a person that will be the want‐to‐be parents' child. Want‐to‐be parents intend to become pregnant and therefore have an additional moral reason to diminish the risks. Also, people who become pregnant unintentionally have the responsibility to prevent their children from harm, unless they become pregnant due to contraception failure. All people not wanting to become pregnant should use contraception methods carefully.In the second part of this paper we translate the want‐to‐be parents' responsibilities into practice. We distinguish four determinants of risk factors: modifiability, chance, severity and effort. We examine some evidence‐based risk factors based on these variables and deduce levels of responsibility.In conclusion, formulating informal requirements for want‐to‐be parents is morally required and therefore also for want‐to‐be parents in need of medical assistance. The protocols developed by fertility doctors in the Netherlands could be seen as the precursor for a general, informal Parenting Protocol that could be developed on the basis of an extended and thoroughly debated risk‐responsibility analysis. (shrink)

AimVisual functions of the dorsal stream are considered vulnerable in children with early brain damage. Considering the recognition of objects in suboptimal representations a dorsal stream dysfunction, we examined whether children with early brain damage and impaired object recognition had either general or selective dorsal stream dysfunctions.MethodIn a group of children with early brain damage we evaluated the dorsal stream functioning. To determine whether these patients had an increased risk of a dorsal stream dysfunction we compared the percentage of patients (...) with impaired object recognition, assessed with the L94, with the estimated base rate. Then we evaluated the performance levels on motion perception, visual attention and visuomotor tasks in patients with and without object recognition abnormalities. A general dorsal stream dysfunction was considered present if a patient showed at least one abnormally low score in two out of three additional dorsal stream functions.ResultsSix of the eighteen patients with object recognition problems scored abnormally low on at least two additional dorsal stream functions. This was significantly higher than the base rate. The difference of 24.1% between the patients with and without object recognition problems was not significant. Of the patients with object recognition problems 72.2% had at least 1 dorsal weakness, whereas this was only the case in 27.3% of patients without object recognition problems. Compared to patients with normal object recognition, patients with object recognition problems scored significantly more abnormally low on motion perception and visual attention but did not differ on visuomotor skills.ConclusionChildren with object recognition problems seem at risk for other dorsal stream dysfunctions, but dysfunctions might be rather specific than general. Multiple functions/aspects should be evaluated in neuropsychological assessment of children at risk. (shrink)

Fraud is a pervasive and challenging problem that costs society large amounts of money. By no means all fraud is committed by ‘professional criminals’: much is done by ordinary people who indulge in small-scale opportunistic deception. In this paper, we set out to investigate when people behave dishonestly, for example by committing fraud, in an online context. We conducted three studies to investigate how the rejection of one’s efforts, operationalized in different ways, affected the amount of cheating and information falsification. (...) Study 1 demonstrated that people behave more dishonestly when rejected. Studies 2 and 3 were conducted in order to disentangle the confounding factors of the nature of the rejection and the financial rewards that are usually associated with dishonest behavior. It was demonstrated that rejection in general, rather than the nature of a rejection, caused people to behave more dishonestly. When a rejection was based on subjective grounds, dishonest behavior increased with approximately 10%, but this difference was not statistically significant. We subsequently measured whether dishonesty was driven by the financial loss associated with rejection, or emotional factors such as a desire for revenge. We found that rejected participants were just as dishonest when their cheating did not led to financial gain. However, they felt stronger emotions when there was no money involved. This seems to suggest that upon rejection, emotional involvement, especially a reduction in happiness, drives dishonest behavior more strongly than a rational cost-benefit analysis. These results indicate that rejection causes people to behave more dishonestly, specifically in online settings. Firms wishing to deter customers and employees from committing fraud may therefore benefit from transparency and clear policy guidelines, discouraging people to submit claims that are likely to be rejected. (shrink)

We investigated, by means of the Reverse Correlation Task, visual representations of the culturally dominating group of local people held by sojourners as a function of their degree of cross-cultural adaptation. In three studies, using three different methods with three independent samples of sojourners and seven independent samples of Portuguese and US-American raters, we gathered clear evidence that poor adaptation goes along with more negative representations of locals. This indicates that sojourner adaptation is reflected, at a social-cognitive level, in the (...) valence of outgroup representations. (shrink)

Fabi and Goldberg have helpfully shed some light on the wrongs perpetuated by the current funding architecture on research, sponsorship, and career development in the field of bioethics. The...

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)

Qualitative Coalitional Games are a variant of coalitional games in which an agent's desires are represented as goals that are either satisfied or unsatisfied, and each choice available to a coalition is a set of goals, which would be jointly satisfied if the coalition made that choice. A coalition in a QCG will typically form in order to bring about a set of goals that will satisfy all members of the coalition. Our goal in this paper is to develop and (...) study logics for reasoning about QCGs. We begin by introducing a logic for reasoning about “static” QCGs, where participants play a single game, and we then introduce and study Temporal QCGs , i.e., games in which a sequence of QCGs is played. In order to represent and reason about such games, we introduce a linear time temporal logic of QCGs, called ℒ. We give a complete axiomatisation of ℒ, use it to investigate the properties of TQCGs, identify its expressive power, establish its complexity, characterise classes of TQGCs with formulas from our logical language, and use it to formulate several solution concepts for TQCGs. (shrink)

In this paper a corporate social responsibility audit is developed following the underlying methodology of the quality award/excellence models. Firstly the extent to which the quality awards already incorporate the development of social responsibility is examined by looking at the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the European Quality Award. It will be shown that the quality awards do not yet include ethical aspects in relation to social responsibility. Both a clear definition of social responsibility and an improved audit instrument (...) are required. A definition and an audit instrument are developed which stimulate movement in that direction and help organisations to reflect on their position in relation to social responsibility. (shrink)

On the basis of both published and unpublished manuscripts written from 1914 to 1917, this article gives an overview of Lev Vygotsky’s early ideas. It turns out that Vygotsky was very much involved in issues of Jewish culture and politics. Rather surprisingly, the young Vygotsky rejected all contemporary ideas to save the Jewish people from discrimination and persecution by creating an autonomous state in Palestine or elsewhere. Instead, until well into 1917, Vygotsky proposed the rather traditional option of strengthening the (...) spiritual roots of the Jews by returning to the religious writings. Socialism was rejected, because it merely envisioned the compulsory redistribution of material goods and ‘man lives not by bread alone’. It was only after the October Revolution that Vygotsky switched from arguments in favour of the religious faith in the Kingship of God to the communist belief in a Radiant Future. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Over the past few decades the concept of (human) dignity has deeply pervaded medical ethics. Appeals to dignity, however, are often unclear. As a result some prefer to eliminate the concept from medical ethics, whereas others try to render it useful in this context. We think that appeals to dignity in medical ethics can be clarified by considering the concept from an historical perspective. Firstly, on the basis of historical texts we propose a framework for defining the concept in (...) medical debates. The framework shows that dignity can occur in a relational, an unconditional, a subjective and a Kantian form. Interestingly, all forms relate to one concept since they have four features in common: dignity refers, in a restricted sense, to the ‘special status of human beings’; it is based on essential human characteristics; the subject of dignity should live up to it; and it is a vulnerable concept, it can be lost or violated. We argue that being explicit about the meaning of dignity will prevent dignity from becoming a conversation‐stopper in moral debate. Secondly, an historical perspective on dignity shows that it is not yet time to dispose of dignity in medical ethics. At least Kantian and relational dignity can be made useful in medical ethics. (shrink)

The label ‘Translational Research’ (TR) has become ever more popular in the biomedical domain in recent years. It is usually presented as an attempt to bridge a supposed gap between knowledge produced at the lab bench and its use at the clinical bedside. This is claimed to help society harvest the benefits of its investments in scientific research. The rhetorical as well as moral force of the label TR obscure, however, that it is actually used in very different ways. In (...) this paper, we analyse the scientific discourse on TR, with the aim to disentangle and critically evaluate the different meanings of the label. We start with a brief reconstruction of the history of the concept. Subsequently, we unravel how the label is actually used in a sample of scientific publications on TR and examine the presuppositions implied by different views of TR. We argue that it is useful to distinguish different views of TR on the basis of three dimensions, related to (1) the construction of the ‘translational gap’; (2) the model of the translational process; and (3) the cause of the perceived translational gap. We conclude that the motive to make society benefit from its investments in biomedical science may be laudable, but that it is doubtful whether the dominant views of TR will contribute to this end. (shrink)

Four experiments examined the strategies that individuals develop in sentential reasoning. They led to the discovery of five different strategies. According to the theory proposed in the paper, each of the strategies depends on component tactics, which all normal adults possess, and which are based on mental models. Reasoners vary their use of tactics in ways that are not deterministic. This variation leads different individuals to assemble different strategies, which include the construction of incremental diagram corresponding to mental models, and (...) the pursuit of the consequences of a single model step by step. Moreover, the difficulty of a problem (i.e. the number of mental models required by the premises) predisposes reasoners towards certain strategies. Likewise, the sentential connectives in the premises also bias reasoners towards certain strategies, e.g., conditional premises tend to elicit reasoning step by step whereas disjunctive premises tend to elicit incremental diagrams. (shrink)

Due to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the anthrax letters of a few weeks later, the concept of dual use has spread widely in the life sciences during the past decade. This article is aimed at a clarification of the dual use concept and its scope of application for the life sciences. Such a clarification would greatly facilitate the work of policymakers seeking to ensure security while avoiding undesirable interventions of government in the conduct of science. The article starts (...) with an overview of the main developments in life sciences in relation to dual use. This is illustrated by discussions on synthetic biology and dual use. The findings lead to a reconsideration of the dual use concept. An area in need of further attention is to what extent threats and intentions should have impact on the definition of dual use. Possible threats are analyzed against the background of the phenomenon of securitization of health care and life sciences: considering these sectors of society in security terms. Some caveats that should be taken into account in a dual use policy are described. An acceptable, adequate and applicable definition of the dual use concept could help researchers, universities, companies and policy makers. Such a definition should build upon, but go beyond, the view developed in the influential Fink-report, which concentrates on the so-called ‘experiments of concern’, e.g. experiments that enhance the virulence of pathogens (National Research Council of the National Academies 2004) It will be argued that—in addition to these more technical aspects—a definition of dual use should include the aspect of threats and intentions. (shrink)

Recent research suggests that one can have the feeling of being the cause of an action’s outcome, even in the absence of a prior intention to act. That is, experienced self-agency over behavior increases when outcome representations are primed outside of awareness, prior to executing the action and observing the resulting outcome. Based on the notion that behavior can be represented at different levels, we propose that priming outcome representations is more likely to augment self-agency experiences when the primed representation (...) corresponds with a person’s behavior representation level. Three experiments, using different priming and self-agency tasks, both measuring and manipulating the level of behavior representation, confirmed this idea. Priming high level outcome representations enhanced experienced self-agency over behavior more strongly when behavior was represented at a higher level, rather than a lower level. Thus, priming effects on self-agency experiences critically depend on behavior representation level. (shrink)

This paper attempts to liberate the concept of "spirituality" from its apolitical consumerized present, and suggests that our thinking about selves as well as about secularity and religion must recognize its debts to Orientalist practices.

Bowman-Smart and colleagues (2023) argue that techniques to screen and analyze the fetal genome are rapidly evolving, and are sometimes already offered commercially. These new developments will all...

In most Western countries, health law bioethics are strongly intertwined. This strong connection is the result of some specific factors that, in the early years of these disciplines, facilitated a rapid development of both. In this paper, I analyse these factors and construe a development theory existing of three phases, or ideal‐typical models. In the moralistic‐paternalistic model, there is almost no health law of explicit medical ethics and the little law there is is usually based on traditional morality, combined with (...) paternalist motives, the objections to this modal are that its paternalism and moralism are unacceptable, that it is too static and knows no external control mechanisms. In the liberal model, which is now dominant on most Western countries, law and ethics closely cooperate and converge, both disciplines use the same framework for analysis: they are product‐oriented rather than practice‐oriented; they use the same conceptual categories, they focus on the minimally decent rather than the ideal, and they are committed to the same substantive normative theory in which patient autonomy and patient rights are central. However, each of these four characteristics also result in a certain one‐sidedness. In some countries, a third model is emerging. In this postliberal model, health law is more modest and acknowledges its inherent and normative limits, whereas ethics takes a richer and most ambitious self image. As a result health law and ethics will partly diverge again. (shrink)

Patient participation in healthcare is highly promoted for democratic reasons. Older patients make up a large part of the hospital population but their voices are less easily heard by most patient participation instruments. The client council can be seen as an important medium to represent the interests of this increasing group of patients. Every Dutch healthcare institution is obliged to have a client council and its rights are legally established. This paper reports on a case study of a client council (...) in a hospital and shows how equality as the core democratic value manifests itself in practice and marginalizes the voices of older patients. Based on the work of Joan Tronto we show that sameness is the driving force behind the functioning of the client council which leads the council to operate as part of the hospital system. Consequently, important aspects of the hospital practice remain out of sight. To be of greater value for all patients we argue that successful patient participation requires not only equal opportunities but also ‘the condition of equal voice’. (shrink)

The impact of philosophy of science on biology is slight. Evolutionary biology, however, is nowadays an exception. The status of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is seriously challenged from a methodological perspective. However, the methodology used in the relevant discussions is plainly defective. A correct application of methodology to evolutionary theory leads to the following conclusions. The theory of natural selection is unfalsifiable in a strict sense of the term. This, however, does not militate against the theory, because no scientific (...) theory whatever is testable in this way. Under a more liberal testability criterion, the theory is surely testable. None the less, certain research programs may tend to make the theory untestable in practice. It has often been argued that the tautologous character of the principle of natural selection, allegedly the focus of evolutionary theory, makes the theory untestable through circular reasoning. Actually, the principle is only a tautology if ‘fitness’ is wrongly defined in terms of actual survival. But even then circular reasoning need not ensue. Evolutionary principles do not permit, without additional information, the derivation of statements about evolutionary events concerning particular species or populations. If this were a reason to criticize the theory , any other scientific theory would be inadequate by the same token. (shrink)

Offers a practical philosophy of the life sciences, showing how scientific reasoning can, in limited contexts, be translated into the language of philosophy, and how science can correct the philosophy of science.

Why is a Reformational philosophy needed in Africa? It is necessary, because something is missing in African Christianity. Most Western missionaries taught Africans a “broken” or dualistic worldview. This caused a divorce between traditional culture and their new Christian religion. The Christian faith was perceived as something remote, only concerned with a distant past and a far-away future . It could not become a reality in their everyday lives. It could not develop into an all-encompassing worldview and lifestyle. Because Reformational (...) philosophy advocates the Biblical, holistic approach of a comprehensive worldview, it is welcomed on our continent. It contains a healing and liberating message to our bleeding and lost continent. What Africans, however, neither want nor can afford, is an ivory tower philosophy, playing intellectual games; a philosophy which does not do or change anything. They want a philosophy which is a “marriage” between abstract ideas and the facts on the ground. They need a Christian philosophy with compassion that may even contribute to the alleviation of their poverty! (shrink)

Newborn screening consists of taking a few drops of blood from a baby's heel in the first week of life and testing it for a list of disorders. In the United States and most countries in Europe, newborn screening programs began in the 1960s and 1970s with screening for phenylketonuria (PKU), a rare metabolic disease that causes severe and irreversible mental retardation unless treated before problems arise. As knowledge about rare diseases expanded and new screening technologies were introduced—such as the (...) tandem mass spectrometer and high‐performance liquid chromatography—the same blood sample could be used to test for a whole list of disorders. In general, screening programs in most countries have tended to expand, but in different countries they have expanded in different ways. Regulation also varies. In some states, screening is mandatory, whereas in others—Wyoming and Maryland—parents are asked for their informed consent. Germany and France have adopted an explicit informed consent procedure, whereas other European countries have a more informal “opt‐out” procedure that does not require signing an informed consent form. Whether newborn screening requires informed consent is an ongoing issue in bioethics. In this article, we will focus on the tension between informed consent and the problem of compliance in newborn screening. Asking for informed consent—allowing parents to opt out—is often thought to pose a threat to compliance. Building on the work of Onora O'Neill on informed consent and trust, however, as well as on work she coauthored with Neil Manson, we will argue that informed consent procedures may actually help maintain trust in newborn screening and may therefore support compliance. (shrink)

Various philosophers and evolutionary biologists have recently defended the thesis that species are individuals rather than sets. A decade of debates, however, did not suffice to settle the matter. Conceptual analysis shows that many of the key terms involved are ambiguous. Current disagreements should dissolve once this is recognized. Explication of the concepts involved leads to new programs for philosophical research. It could also help biology by showing how extant controversies concerning evolution may have conceptual rather than factual roots.

Whether its title, ύπέρ τοῦ μ γεννᾶν is authentic or not, the work transmitted as ‘Book X’ of Aristotle's History of Animals deals with a wide range of possible causes for failure to conceive and generate offspring. It sets out by saying that these causes may lie in both partners or in either of them, but in the sequel the author devotes most of his attention to problems of the female body. Thus he discusses the state of the uterus, the (...) occurrence and modalities of menstruation, the condition and position of the mouth of the uterus, the emission of fluid during sleep , physical weakness or vigour on awakening after this nocturnal emission, the occurrence of flatulence in the uterus and the ability to discharge this, moistness or dryness of the uterus, wind-pregnancy, and spasms in the uterus. Then he briefly considers the possibility that the cause of infertility lies with the male, but this is disposed of in one sentence: if you want to find out whether the man is to blame, the author says, just let him have intercourse with another woman and see whether that produces a satisfactory result . The writer also acknowledges that the problem may lie in a failure of two otherwise healthy partners to match sexually, or as he puts it, to ‘run at the same pace’ ἲσοδρομῆσαι during intercourse, but he does not go into this possibility at great length , and he proceeds to discuss further particulars on the female side. (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)

We demonstrate ways to incorporate nondeterminism in a system designed to formalize the reasoning of agents concerning their abilities and the results of the actions that they may perform. We distinguish between two kinds of nondeterministic choice operators: one that expresses an internal choice, in which the agent decides what action to take, and one that expresses an external choice, which cannot be influenced by the agent. The presence of abilities in our system is the reason why the usual approaches (...) towards nondeterminism cannot be used here. The semantics that we define for nondeterministic actions is based on the idea that composite actions are unravelled in the strings of atomic actions and tests that constitute them. The main notions used in defining this semantics are finite computation sequences and finite computation runs of actions. The results that we obtain meet our intuitions regarding events and abilities in the presence of nondeterminism. (shrink)