People judge positive information to be more alike than negative information. This good-bad asymmetry in similarity was argued to constitute a true property of the information ecology (Alves, H., Koch, A., & Unkelbach, C. (2017). Why good is more alike than bad: Processing implications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21, 69–79). Alternatively, the asymmetry may constitute a processing outcome itself, namely an influence of phasic affect on information processing. Because no research has yet tested whether phasic affect influences perceived similarity (...) among stimuli, we conducted 5 Experiments that also tested whether phasic affect can account for the higher judged similarity among positive compared to negative stimuli. In three experiments, we affectively charged pictures of different Pokemon by pairing them with monetary gains and losses (Exp. 1a, 1b) as well as positive and negative trait words (Exp. 2); yet, the evaluative charge did not differentially influence perceived similarity among the Pokemon. Experiment 3 replicated the basic similarity asymmetry among positive and negative words, and found that it was unaffected by externally induced phasic affect. Experiment 4 showed that phasic affect had no influence on perceived similarity of non-evaluative words either. We conclude that albeit a weak influence of phasic affect on perceived similarity of stimuli cannot be ruled out entirely, it can most likely not account for the typically medium to large sized asymmetry in similarity among positive and negative stimuli. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 153-155.

Background Symptom checker apps (SCAs) are mobile or online applications for lay people that usually have two main functions: symptom analysis and recommendations. SCAs ask users questions about their symptoms via a chatbot, give a list with possible causes, and provide a recommendation, such as seeing a physician. However, it is unclear whether the actual performance of a SCA corresponds to the users’ experiences. This qualitative study investigates the subjective perspectives of SCA users to close the empirical gap identified in (...) the literature and answers the following main research question: How do individuals (healthy users and patients) experience the usage of SCA, including their attitudes, expectations, motivations, and concerns regarding their SCA use? Methods A qualitative interview study was chosen to clarify the relatively unknown experience of SCA use. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with SCA users were carried out by two researchers in tandem via video call. Qualitative content analysis was selected as methodology for the data analysis. Results Fifteen interviews with SCA users were conducted and seven main categories identified: (1) Attitudes towards findings and recommendations, (2) Communication, (3) Contact with physicians, (4) Expectations (prior to use), (5) Motivations, (6) Risks, and (7) SCA-use for others. Conclusions The aspects identified in the analysis emphasise the specific perspective of SCA users and, at the same time, the immense scope of different experiences. Moreover, the study reveals ethical issues, such as relational aspects, that are often overlooked in debates on mHealth. Both empirical and ethical research is more needed, as the awareness of the subjective experience of those affected is an essential component in the responsible development and implementation of health apps such as SCA. Trial registration German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS): DRKS00022465. 07/08/2020. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/Protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/Proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

The article examines the legal status of living wills and health care proxies in Germany, the United States and Japan. The investigation begins with the question of what protection these three legal orders provide for the right to self-determination. Whereas in Germany and the United States, legislation and legal practice take the theory of informed consent very seriously, the doctor-patient relationship in Japan is much less oriented toward the idea of patient autonomy. This basic attitude is reflected in the legal (...) disposition given advance directives. In the USA, most of the individual states have legislation on the living will and health care proxies. In Germany, the judiciary and scholarly literature at least carefully affirm that they are legally binding. In Japan, at least currently, there is nothing at all similar to this approach. The authors then conduct a micro-legal comparison of cases of first impression decided in the USA and Germany and emphasize the amazing similarity of the judicial decisions in two cases . Finally, the question is raised for German law of whether, and in what form, further legislative development of the judicially established right to die appears reasonable. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht den rechtlichen Stellenwert von living wills und health care proxies in Deutschland, in den USA und in Japan. Ausgangspunkt der Untersuchung ist die Frage, welchen Schutz das Selbstbestimmungsrecht in den erwähnten Rechtsordnungen genießt. Während in Deutschland und in den USA Gesetzgebung und Rechtspraxis die Theorie vom informed consent sehr ernst nehmen, ist das Arzt-Patienten-Verhältnis in Japan weit weniger vom Gedanken der Autonomie des Patienten bestimmt. Diese Basiswertung schlägt auch im Bereich der rechtlichen Beurteilung von advance directives durch. In den USA sind living will und health care proxy in den meisten Einzelstaaten gesetzlich geregelt, in Deutschland wird ihre rechtliche Verbindlichkeit von Judikatur und Literatur zumindest vorsichtig bejaht. In Japan fehlen - zumindest derzeit - entsprechende Ansätze noch gänzlich.Die Verfasser stellen sodann einen Mikrorechtsvergleich zwischen den in den USA und in Deutschland entschiedenen cases of first impression an und betonen den erstaunlichen Gleichklang der rechtlichen Beurteilung dieser beiden Fälle .Schließlich wird für deutsches Recht die Frage gestellt, ob - und in welcher Form - eine legislative Weiterentwicklung des judiziell bereits etablierten right to die angemessen erschiene. (shrink)

Aus dem Inhalt: W. Bartuschat: Recht, Vernunft, Gerechtigkeit H. Ruessmann: Normative Begruendungsmoglichkeiten jenseits der Gesetzesbindung G. Luf: Gerechtigkeitstheorie zwischen Gemeinsinn und transzendentaler Reflexion: Uberlegungen im Anschlua an Rawls' Theorie der Gerechtigkeit R. Trapp: Politisches Handeln im wohlverstandenen Allgemeininteresse P. Koller: Soziale Gueter und soziale Gerechtigkeit R. Zaczyk: Gerechtigkeit als Begriff einer kritischen Philosophie im Ausgang von Kant U. Steinvorth: Gerechtigkeit in einer Weltgesellschaft R. Knieper: Versuch ueber die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Nationalstaates B. Sitter-Liver: Natur als Polis R. Wolf: Gerechtigkeit (...) und Umweltschutz G. Haney: Gerechtigkeit bei Marx H. Rottleuthner: Gerechtigkeit bei und nach Marx G. Lohmann: Soziale Gerechtigkeit und soziokulturelle Selbstdeutungen. (shrink)

Symptom Checker Applications (SCA) are mobile applications often designed for the end-user to assist with symptom assessment and self-triage. SCA are meant to provide the user with easily accessible information about their own health conditions. However, SCA raise questions regarding ethical, legal, and social aspects (ELSA), for example, regarding fair access to this new technology. The aim of this scoping review is to identify the ELSA of SCA in the scientific literature. A scoping review was conducted to identify the ELSA (...) of SCA. Ten databases (e.g., Web of Science and PubMed) were used. Studies on SCA that address ELSA, written in English or German, were included in the review. The ELSA of SCA were extracted and synthesized using qualitative content analysis. A total of 25,061 references were identified, of which 39 were included in the analysis. The identified aspects were allotted to three main categories: (1) Technology; (2) Individual Level; and (3) Healthcare system. The results show that there are controversial debates in the literature on the ethical and social challenges of SCA usage. Furthermore, the debates are characterised by a lack of a specific legal perspective and empirical data. The review provides an overview on the spectrum of ELSA regarding SCA. It offers guidance to stakeholders in the healthcare system, for example, patients, healthcare professionals, and insurance providers and could be used in future empirical research to investigate the perspectives of those affected, such as users. (shrink)

Overtreatment is when medical or dental services are provided with a higher volume or cost than is appropriate. This study aimed to investigate how a group of dentists in Switzerland, a wealthy country known to have high standards of healthcare including dentistry, evaluated the meaning of unnecessary treatments from an ethical perspective and, assessed the expected frequency of different possible behaviors among their peers.

Statements’ rated truth increases when people encounter them repeatedly. Processing fluency is a central variable to explain this truth effect. However, people experience processing fluency positively, and these positive experiences might cause the truth effect. Three studies investigated positivity and fluency influences on the truth effect. Study 1 found correlations between elicited positive feelings and rated truth. Study 2 replicated the repetition-based truth effect, but positivity did not influence the effect. Study 3 conveyed positive and negative correlations between positivity and (...) truth in a learning phase. We again replicated the truth effect, but positivity only influenced judgments for easy statements in the learning phase. Thus, across three studies, we found positivity effects on rated truth, but not on the repetition-based truth effect: We conclude that positivity does not explain the standard truth effect, but the role of positive experiences for truth judgments deserves further investigation. (shrink)

Blumenbergs Philosophie ist eine Philosophie der Umwege und des Neuansetzens. Sie stellt einen Versuch dar, sich unter den Bedingungen der Moderne produktiv einzurichten, ohne ethische Ansprüche aus dem Blick zu verlieren. Das Provisorische kehrt bei Blumen-berg implizit wie explizit wieder. Als Beschreibungskategorie macht es die Welt erklärbar und stiftet eine Orientierungsleistung. In Kombination mit einer positiven Umdeutung des Umweges erlaubt es Distanzierung von einem unübersichtlichen Verstricktsein in Weltzusammenhänge sowie ein Handeln als ob wir wüssten, was wir tun. Ziel ist ein (...) Nachdenken, das der Vorläufigkeit moderner Wirklichkeiten gerecht wird. Der Band widmet sich der Figur des Provisorischen und der Umwegskultur und verbindet eine systematische Perspektive auf das Werk Blumenbergs mit philoso-phiehistorischen Einordnungen und der Diskussion bisher unbeachteter Anknüpfungspunkte. (shrink)

In 2004, twelve capuchin monkeys were moved from the labs of the Danish psychiatric hospital of Sankt Hans to a small private-owned zoo in another part of Denmark in order to be rehabilitated. These monkeys were the last nonhuman primates to be used as research animals in Danish biomedical laboratories. The normal procedure would be to kill research animals after the termination of an experiment; in this case, however, a decision was reached to close down the lab. The moral (...) landscape had changed, and it was no longer considered acceptable to use nonhuman primates in Danish biomedicine. From being considered a biological resource serving as a model of man, the monkeys had become moral subjects with a claim to a life suiting their natural needs. Simultaneously, the monkeys became instrumental in creating moral legitimacy for the actors involved in their rescue. What we see is an instance of pathfinding in a changing moral landscape where actors negotiate nonhuman primate nature as they create new moral positions for themselves. (shrink)

As in other European countries, in Denmark philosophy was an important factor in the cultural life of the nineteenth century. Kierkegaard lived and wrote in Copenhagen, where Hegelianism both flourished and met with serious criticism, and both of these elements can be found in his authorship. This chapter explores possible sources of inspiration for Kierkegaard's rejection of Danish Hegelianism and its follower, speculative theology, and discusses his influence on the fashionable Danish philosopher of the day, Rasmus Nielsen. By way of (...) conclusion, it is emphasized that Kierkegaard's understanding of Christianity and his struggle over it were decisive for a shift in Danish intellectual life around 1870. (shrink)

Drawing on a rich digitalized corpus of early modern texts, Hans-Juergen Diller argues that the concepts expressed by the English words >passion emotion emotion passion emotion<. But there are two concepts of a concept. According to the first, the meaning of a word expressing a concept is not sharply distinguished from the complete discourse in which it figures. According to the second, meaning is more narrow. For instance, it is restricted to the explicit definition an author provides. I show (...) that Descartes provides an explicit definition of passion and emotion in purely physical, a-moral terms. So Diller's method is not apt to trace concepts in the second, more restricted sense which Descartes himself has in mind. (shrink)