ABSTRACT Background: Biomedical science is producing an avalanche of data about risk factors, often with a small predictive value, associated with a broad diversity of diseases. Prevention and screening are increasingly moving from public health into the clinic. Therefore, the question of which risk factors to investigate and disclose in the individual patient, becomes ethically increasingly urgent. In line with Wilson and Jungner's public health‐related 10 principles for screening, it seems crucial to distinguish important from unimportant health risks. Aim: to (...) explore the ways in which clinicians distinguish important from unimportant health risks. Methods: We interviewed 36 respondents (gastroenterologists and gynaecologists/obstetrics) in 5 focus group interviews and 15 open in‐depth interviews on their interpretation of what makes a health risk important. Results: Physicians primarily interpreted importance as the severity of the possible harm, less often its probability. Possibilities of prevention or reassurance strongly influenced their judgment on importance. Discussion: It is not likely that interpreting ‘important’ as ‘severe’ will help in differentiating meaningful from meaningless risk knowledge. A more fundamental change in our ways of dealing with risk may be called for. We discuss existing literature on resilience as an alternative way to deal with risk. Balancing prevention and risk reduction with resilience could be a fruitful direction. (shrink)

Background: Biomedical science is producing an avalanche of data about risk factors, often with a small predictive value, associated with a broad diversity of diseases. Prevention and screening are increasingly moving from public health into the clinic. Therefore, the question of which risk factors to investigate and disclose in the individual patient, becomes ethically increasingly urgent. In line with Wilson and Jungner's public health-related 10 principles for screening, it seems crucial to distinguish important from unimportant health risks.Aim: to explore the (...) ways in which clinicians distinguish important from unimportant health risks.Methods: We interviewed 36 respondents (gastroenterologists and gynaecologists/obstetrics) in 5 focus group interviews and 15 open in-depth interviews on their interpretation of what makes a health risk important.Results: Physicians primarily interpreted importance as the severity of the possible harm, less often its probability. Possibilities of prevention or reassurance strongly influenced their judgment on importance.Discussion: It is not likely that interpreting ‘important’ as ‘severe’ will help in differentiating meaningful from meaningless risk knowledge. A more fundamental change in our ways of dealing with risk may be called for. We discuss existing literature on resilience as an alternative way to deal with risk. Balancing prevention and risk reduction with resilience could be a fruitful direction. (shrink)

Background: More and more quantitative information is becoming available about the risks of complications arising from medical treatment. In everyday practice, this raises the question whether each and every risk, however low, should be disclosed to patients. What could be good reasons for doing or not doing so? This will increasingly become a dilemma for practitioners.Objective: To report doctors’ views on whether to disclose or withhold information on low risks of complications.Methods: In a qualitative study design, 37 respondents were included. (...) Focus group interviews were held with 22 respondents and individual in-depth interviews with 15.Results: Doctors have doubts about disclosing or withholding information on complication risk, especially in a risk range of 1 in 200 to 1 in 10 000. Their considerations on whether to disclose or to withhold information depend on a complicated mix of patient and doctor-associated reasons; on medical and personal considerations; and on the kind and purpose of intervention.Discussion: Even though the degree of a risk is important in a doctor’s considerations, the severity of the possible complications and patients’ wishes and competencies have an important role as well. Respondents said that low risks should always be communicated when there are alternatives for the intervention or when the patient may prevent or mitigate the risk. When the appropriateness of disclosing risks is doubtful, doctors should always tell their patients that no intervention is without risk, give them the opportunity to gather all the information they need or want, and enable them to detect a complication at an early stage. (shrink)

Wearing facial masks became a common practice worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigated (1) whether facial masks that cover adult faces affect 4- to 6-year-old children’s recognition of emotions in those faces and (2) whether the duration of children’s exposure to masks is associated with emotion recognition. We tested children from Switzerland (N = 38) and Brazil (N = 41). Brazil represented longer mask exposure due to a stricter mandate during COVID-19. Children had to choose a face displaying (...) a specific emotion (happy, angry, or sad) when the face wore either no cover, a facial mask, or sunglasses. The longer hours of mask exposure were associated with better emotion recognition. Controlling for the hours of exposure, children were less likely to recognise emotions in partially hideen faces. Moreover, Brazilian children were more accurate in recognising happy faces than Swiss children. Overall, facial masks may negatively impact children’s emotion recognition. However, prolonged exposure appears to buffer the lack of facial cues from the nose and mouth. In conclusion, restricting facial cues due to masks may impair kindergarten children’s emotion recognition in the short run. However, it may facilitate their broader reading of facial emotional cues in the long run. (shrink)

This book is premised on the view that the idea of the avant garde has an increased importance in these times of global political crisis. Much cultural production today is shaped by a biopolitics that construes all creative and knowledge production in terms of capital accumulation. A different kind of culture is possible. This collection of writings, essays, interviews and artworks by many of today's most radical cultural practitioners and astute commentators on matters avant garde mediates the different strategies and (...) temporalities of avant-garde art and politics. Tracing diverse genealogies and trajectories, the book offers an inter-generational forum of ideas that covers different arts fields, from visual art, art activism, photography, film and architecture, to literature, theatre, performance, intermedia and music. This is an extraordinarily rich collection and is sure to be a benchmark for many years. (shrink)

There is an increasing call for preventive state interventions in so-called families at risk—that is, interventions before any overt harm has been done by parents to their children or by the children to a third party, in families that are statistically known to be liable to harm children. One of the basic principles of liberal morality, however, is the citizen's right to be free from state intervention so long as no demonstrable harm has been done. On the other hand, Joel (...) Feinberg interprets the harm principle as a harm prevention principle, so that the risk of harm also might be a reason for interference. The question that needs to be asked, therefore, is whether enforced preventive intervention in the cases where families are judged to be at risk can be justified within the limits of liberalism. (shrink)

In this article we take up Burtonwood's criticism of our view that liberal states should, under certain conditions, fund denominational schools. We not only reject his plea for the accommodation of strong faith schools by liberalism but also criticise his portrayal of the character of the conflict between liberals and strong faith school advocates. Arguing that liberalism is not part of the diversity of goods, we maintain that liberals and strong faith school advocates should not be seen as competing on (...) the same playing field. Rather, liberalism transcends the battleground both by enabling and conditioning the competition between adherents of rival conceptions of the good. (shrink)

This volume honours the life and work of Solomon Feferman, one of the most prominent mathematical logicians of the latter half of the 20th century. In the collection of essays presented here, researchers examine Feferman’s work on mathematical as well as specific methodological and philosophical issues that tie into mathematics. Feferman’s work was largely based in mathematical logic, but also branched out into methodological and philosophical issues, making it well known beyond the borders of the mathematics community. With regard to (...) methodological issues, Feferman supported concrete projects. On the one hand, these projects calibrate the proof theoretic strength of subsystems of analysis and set theory and provide ways of overcoming the limitations imposed by Gödel’s incompleteness theorems through appropriate conceptual expansions. On the other, they seek to identify novel axiomatic foundations for mathematical practice, truth theories, and category theory. In his philosophical research, Feferman explored questions such as “What is logic?” and proposed particular positions regarding the foundations of mathematics including, for example, his “conceptual structuralism.” The contributing authors of the volume examine all of the above issues. Their papers are accompanied by an autobiography presented by Feferman that reflects on the evolution and intellectual contexts of his work. The contributing authors critically examine Feferman’s work and, in part, actively expand on his concrete mathematical projects. The volume illuminates Feferman’s distinctive work and, in the process, provides an enlightening perspective on the foundations of mathematics and logic. (shrink)

Dieses Handbuch bietet erstmals einen umfassenden und systematischen Zugang zu den Theorien des Krieges. Der erste Teil des Werkes ist interdisziplinär angelegt und es werden verschiedene Kriegstheorien dargestellt – von anthropologischen bis hin zu religiösen Ansätzen. Der zweite Teil stellt zentrale Theoretiker des Krieges vor. Der dritte Teil enthält empirische Fallstudien vom Mittelalter bis in die Gegenwart zu Teilaspekten der Kriegstheorien. Insgesamt stellt der Band die Dynamik der theoretischen Entwicklung dar. Dabei berücksichtigt er die jeweiligen politischen, sozioökonomischen und technologischen Faktoren.

Einleitung -- Opernmusik -- Theaterwissenschaft -- Schauspielmusik -- Filmmusik -- Funktionssystem für Musik in der Oper -- Analysen im Lichte der Funktionen.

In this article we take up Burtonwood’s criticism of our view that liberal states should, under certain conditions, fund denominational schools. We not only reject his plea for the accommodation of strong faith schools by liberalism but also criticise his portrayal of the character of the conflict between liberals and strong faith school advocates. Arguing that liberalism is not part of the diversity of goods, we maintain that liberals and strong faith school advocates should not be seen as competing on (...) the same playing field. Rather, liberalism transcends the battleground both by enabling and conditioning the competition between adherents of rival conceptions of the good. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno—philosopher, cultural critic, sociologist, and music theorist—was one of the most important German intellectuals of the twentieth century. This concise, readable life is the first attempt to look at his philosophical and literary work in its essential political context. Central to Adorno’s intellectual development were his musical training, his father’s Jewish roots, and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, which forced him to emigrate to the United States. While in exile, he and Max Horkheimer wrote Dialectic of (...) Enlightenment, a bold attempt to illuminate the dark side of modernity, and on his own Adorno wrote a series of connected essays on the “culture industry”—his indictment of mass culture. A co-founder of the famous Frankfurt School, Adorno returned to head it after the war, assuming a key role in the intellectual life of postwar West Germany until his untimely death in 1969. Ja;ger’s biography sheds new light on many aspects of Adorno’s life and writings and on his relationships with such figures as Paul Celan, Bertolt Brecht, and Walter Benjamin. (shrink)

Among the items in his legacy, the Florentine philosopher and humanist Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) left an extensive collection of Latin letters, which illustrate his studies and how he viewed himself as a teacher and counselor of princes. This book provides an introduction to this letter collection, analyzing selected letters with reference to the roles adopted by the author and his literary strategies.

" Pour moi, la figure humaine, le corps humain n'ont pas plus d'importance que des clés ou des vélos. C'est vrai. Ce sont pour moi des objets valables plastiquement et à disposer suivant mon choix. On doit reconnaître que les traditions picturales qui nous précèdent - la figure et le paysage - sont lourdes d'influences. [...] Il a fallu, pour y voir clair, que l'artiste moderne se détache de cette emprise sentimentale. Nous avons franchi cet obstacle : l'objet a remplacé (...) le sujet, l'art abstrait est venu comme une libération totale, et on a pu alors considérer la figure humaine non comme une valeur sentimentale mais uniquement comme une valeur plastique. Voilà pourquoi dans l'évolution de mon œuvre, de 1905 à maintenant, la figure humaine reste volontairement inexpressive. ". (shrink)

Essays, written between 1920 and 1953, by an influential, modern painter on the purpose of art in modern life.