Small, mass-produced pipe-clay figurines were popular devotionalia in the late medieval Low Countries. In this paper, focusing on representations of the Christ Child, I study the sensory and playful ways in which such objects were used as ‘props of perception’ in spiritual games of make-believe or role-play. Not only does this particular iconography invite tactile and playful behaviour, the figurines fit within a larger context of image practices involving visions and make-believe. Through such practices images were animated and imbued with (...) a divine power. Contemporary written sources suggest that, especially for women, ownership of and sensory engagement with small-scale figures provided them with agency. (shrink)

Darwin’s theory predicts that linguistic behavior gradually evolved out of animal forms of communication. However, this prediction is confronted by the conceptual problem that there is an essential difference between signaling and linguistic behavior: using words is a normative practice. It is argued that we can resolve this problem if we note that language evolution is the outcome of an evolutionary transition, and observe that the use of words evolves during ontogenesis out of babbling. It is discussed that language evolved (...) as the result of an expansion of the vocalizing powers of our ancestors. This involved an increase in the volitional control of our speech apparatus, but also the evolution of socially guided learning. It resulted in unique human abilities, namely doing things with words and later reasoning and giving reasons. (shrink)

This paper examines how middle managers in the long term care sector use the discourse of professionalism to create ‘appropriate’ work conduct of care workers. Using Watson’s concept of professional talk, we study how managers in their daily work talk about professionalism of vocationally skilled care workers. Based on observations and recordings of mundane conversations by middle managers, we found four different professional talks that co-exist: appropriate looks and conduct, reflectivity about personal values and ‘good’ care, methodical work methods, competencies. (...) Jointly, these professional talks constitute an important discursive resource for middle managers to facilitate change on the work floor. Change involves the reconfiguration of care work and different managerial-worker relations. Middle managers use professional talks in both enabling and disenabling ways vis-à-vis care workers. Based on these findings, we suggest a more nuanced portrayal of the relationship between managers and professionals. Rather than being based on an intrinsic opposition, i.e. ‘managers versus professionals’, this relationship is flexibly reconstructed via professional talk. (shrink)

This book seeks to explain why different systems of sovereign states have built different types of fundamental institutions to govern interstate relations. Why, for example, did the ancient Greeks operate a successful system of third-party arbitration, while international society today rests on a combination of international law and multilateral diplomacy? Why did the city-states of Renaissance Italy develop a system of oratorical diplomacy, while the states of absolutist Europe relied on naturalist international law and "old diplomacy"? Conventional explanations of basic (...) institutional practices have difficulty accounting for such variation. Christian Reus-Smit addresses this problem by presenting an alternative, "constructivist" theory of international institutional development, one that emphasizes the relationship between the social identity of the state and the nature and origin of basic institutional practices. Reus-Smit argues that international societies are shaped by deep constitutional structures that are based on prevailing beliefs about the moral purpose of the state, the organizing principle of sovereignty, and the norm of procedural justice. These structures inform the imaginations of institutional architects as they develop and adjust institutional arrangements between states. As he shows with detailed reference to ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, absolutist Europe, and the modern world, different cultural and historical contexts lead to profoundly different constitutional structures and institutional practices. The first major study of its kind, this book is a significant addition to our theoretical and empirical understanding of international relations, past and present. (shrink)

Comte argued against the Cartesian conception of the mind that the thinker cannot simultaneously think or perceive and observe itself so doing. Based on insights from cognitive neuroscience, Dehaene has recently given a contemporary answer to Comte’s challenge. He has extended some ideas of Helmholtz on unconscious inferences and argued that we can resolve Comte’s problem by reformulating it in terms of the brain. Since the brain consists of different parts having different functions, it is possible that some parts are (...) involved in observing (they unconsciously process information) while other parts integrate the received information resulting in conscious experiences to which we have access. Dehaene’s answer is criticized and the alternative neo-Aristotelian resolution of Comte’s challenge is discussed. Explanations of blindsight are used to illustrate the differences between the two responses to Comte’s challenge. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Ideally, pro-environmental consumer behavior leads to a lower impact on the environment. However, due to negative behavioral spillovers environmentally friendly behavior could lead to an overall higher environmental impact if subsequent environmentally unfriendly behavior occurs. In this exploratory interview study we focused on two pathways leading to negative spillover: a psychological path and an economic path. We wanted to gain insight into people’s motivations to behave environmentally unfriendly and to explore people’s level of awareness of both pathways. Our results indicate (...) that pro-environmental behaviors that are associated with higher effort are performed less frequently, and that when people do not perform these behaviors they associate them with higher effort levels. When people perceive behaviors as more effortful they increasingly seem to use arguments to motivate and rationalize why performing the behavior is difficult or impossible. Moreover, we found that although some people can imagine that moral licensing and rebound effects could occur and can provide examples from their own lives, most people assess these concepts as not rational. People seem unaware of the relation between a first pro-environmental behavior and a subsequent behavior, and therefore inconsistencies in behavior go unnoticed. As people are good at rationalizing why they do not perform specific PEBs, they in general feel satisfied with their own pro-environmental actions. In order to discourage negative spillovers, we describe a number of approaches and research ideas aimed at taking away the grounds for rationalization. (shrink)

This article discusses some essential differences between the Cartesian and neo-Aristotelian conceptions of child development. It argues that we should prefer the neo-Aristotelian conception since it is capable of resolving the problems the Cartesian conception is confronted by. This is illustrated by discussing the neo-Aristotelian alternative to the Cartesian explanation of the development of volitional powers, and the neo-Aristotelian alternative to the Cartesian simulation theory and theory–theory account of the development of social cognition. The neo-Aristotelian conception is further elaborated by (...) discussing how it differs from both behaviorism and cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

Abstract‘Adoptionism’ is an early Christian ‘heresy’ often associated with early strands of Jewish Christian tradition. It figures as such in handbooks of church history and New Testament studies alike. This essay investigates the origins of the concept of ‘adoptionism’ in the historiography of early Christianity, offers a fresh analysis of the relevant ‘adoptionist’ sources, and concludes that the concept is a misleading one. Therefore, the proposal is made to abandon the notion of ‘adoptionism’ as a category and to focus on (...) the authors involved as such and to investigate what their soteriological and christological concerns were, rather than to identify them as ‘adoptionists’ and to study them with that identification as a starting point. (shrink)

How can agents act virtuously out of habit? Virtuous actions are done for the right reasons, and acting for (right) reasons seems to involve deliberation. Yet, deliberation is absent if an agent’s action is habitual. That implies that the relationship between reasons and actions should be characterized in such a way that deliberation is unnecessary. In this paper, I examine three possible solutions: radical externalism, unconscious psychologism, and unconscious factualism. I argue that these proposals all fail to cast reasons in (...) their proper role. In light of that, I propose an alternative view of how to account for habitual virtuous actions, based on the work of G. E. M. Anscombe. I maintain that if we focus on the inherently rational structure of actions, the tension between acting habitually and acting for the right reason dissolves. (shrink)

Safe-by-Design is an approach to engineering that aims to integrate the value of safety in the design and development of new technologies. It does so by integrating knowledge of potential dangers in the design process and developing methods to design undesirable effects out of the innovation. Recent discussions have highlighted several challenges in conceptualizing safety and integrating the value into the design process. Therefore, some have argued to design for the _responsibility_ for safety, instead of for safety itself. However, this (...) idea has not been developed further. In this article, we develop an approach to Safe-by-Design, grounded in care ethics, which builds on the idea of designing for responsibility and can deal with the complexity that is inherent to the conceptualization of safety. We describe five ways in which care ethics contributes to the conceptualization of Safe-by-Design: (1) It suggests the development of ‘circles of care’ in which stakeholders share the responsibility for safety; (2) it recognizes the importance of considering safety as something that is situated in the surroundings of a technology, instead of as a property of the technology itself; (3) it acknowledges that achieving safety is labour that requires an ongoing commitment; (4) it emphasizes that the way in which we relate to technology impacts its safety; and (5) it recognizes the role of emotions in assessing safety. All these elements combined lead to a broader understanding of safety and a philosophically more substantial and practically more appealing conceptualization of Safe-by-Design. (shrink)

Theories based on Frankfurt’s (Am Philos Q 15(2):157–162, 1978) view of action have recently been developed to account for passive, automatic, and habitual actions. What these theories share is that they aim to distinguish between actions and mere bodily movements without appealing to psychological states as causes. Instead, agents have guidance control over their actions. In this paper I argue that the versions of the theory that have been proposed are problematic. I propose to pay attention to Frankfurt’s other claim (...) instead: that actions and mere bodily movements are inherently different. I argue that Anscombe’s approach to action does take this inherent distinction seriously, and is able to account for passive, automatic, and habitual actions. (shrink)

Waarom je denkt objectief en rechtvaardig te zijn, maar dat toch niet bent. -/- We kunnen mensen onrechtvaardig behandelen zonder het te willen, en zelfs zonder het op te merken. Onbewust en ongewild maken we onderscheid tussen personen op basis van hun gender, etniciteit, leeftijd, lichaamsgewicht of seksuele oriëntatie. Hoe kan het dat ons zelfbeeld zo afwijkt van ons gedrag? -/- Het antwoord lijkt helder: in het onbewuste liggen vooroordelen opgeslagen, die ongemerkt onze gedachten, gevoelens en beslissingen beïnvloeden. Maar is (...) dat wel de juiste manier om over deze problematiek na te denken? Is het wel behulpzaam om de blik naar binnen te richten? Filosoof en psycholoog Lieke Asma pleit voor een radicaal ander perspectief. Om oog te krijgen voor onze blinde vlekken, moeten we de aandacht juist verplaatsen naar de wereld buiten ons. Alleen door te kijken naar patronen in gedrag, keuzes en reacties, en door te luisteren naar ervaringen van anderen kunnen we discriminatie herkennen en voorkomen. (shrink)

Vrije wil is een raadselachtig fenomeen. Wij mensen hebben de indruk dat we zelf keuzes maken, maar de wetenschap vertelt een heel ander verhaal: onze handelingen zijn slechts het resultaat van onze persoonlijke eigenschappen, onbewuste associaties en hersenprocessen. Ons bewuste zelf is niets meer dan een passieve toeschouwer. Het is dan ook niet verrassend dat wetenschappelijk onderzoek vaak uitmondt in determinisme of ‘willusionisme’. -/- Maar wat is vrije wil eigenlijk? En wat betekent het om zelf te kiezen? In Mijn intenties (...) en ik verkent Lieke Asma vrije wil en legt ze nauwgezet uit hoe we over de vrijheid van onze eigen keuzes en handelingen moeten nadenken. Wat blijkt? Filosofisch onderzoek en het in ogenschouw nemen van het perspectief van de handelende persoon zijn essentieel voor een goed begrip van vrije wil. (shrink)

Rahat Naqvi and Hans Smits' edited collection, "Thinking about and Enacting Curriculum in 'Frames of War'" is centered on the theme of how the current global order creates precarious conditions for human life. The contributors respond to the challenges Judith Butler posed about the fragility of life and questions about how we apprehend, and take up ethically, our responsibilities for those who are considered "Other." The overarching objective of the book is the meaning of a call to ethics, and (...) how discussion of framing and frames is a provocation to think about our responsibilities as curriculum scholars and practitioners"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

David McClelland’s research on the different kinds of (implicit) motives and how to measure them has a substantial influence on contemporary psychology of motivation. He did not, however, reflect on the nature of implicit motives in much detail. In this paper I fill this gap. I argue that implicit motives should not be understood as mental states the agent has no introspective access to. Instead, I propose that the implicit motives that McClelland and others in the field distinguish – the (...) power, achievement, and affiliation motive – are generic descriptions of specific ends an agent may act for. These motives are implicit, because they are not explicitly expressed but merely implied in what the agent does, thinks, and feels. Establishing whether an agent acts for or has a certain implicit motive, then, is a matter of interpreting the agent’s expressions. This proposal is in line with and explains the empirical findings. (shrink)

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the nature of conscious control. As a result, experiments suggesting that we lack conscious control over our actions cannot be properly evaluated. Joshua Shepherd (2015; 2021) aims to fill this gap. His proposal is grounded in the standard causalist account of action, according to which, simply put, bodily movements are controlled by the agent if and only if they are caused, in the right way, by the relevant psychological states. In this paper, I (...) argue that the proposal does not succeed in distinguishing between mere causation and actual control; it does not solve the problem of deviant causation. On the basis of my criticism, Anscombean action theory promises to offer a valuable perspective. It suggests that an important function of consciousness is to integrate an action into a rational whole. If this is on the right track, it supports Shepherd’s overall claim that the importance of consciousness for action control is often underestimated, because this contribution of consciousness may often go unnoticed in experimental settings. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that instead of primarily paying attention to the nature of implicit attitudes that are taken to cause implicit discrimination, we should investigate how discrimination can be implicit in itself. I propose to characterize implicit discrimination as unintentional discrimination: the person responds to facts unintentionally and often unconsciously which are, given their end, irrelevant and imply unfair treatment. The result is a unified account of implicit bias that allows for the different ways in which it can (...) display itself and can be explained. Furthermore, the view can account for the central characteristics of implicit bias: (1) that it is, for a variety of reasons, difficult to control, (2) that we are not necessarily unconscious of implicit bias but not properly conscious either, and (3) that we can unintentionally discriminate regardless of whether we claim to care about fairness. (shrink)

Reflection on the relationship between free will and consciousness has mainly revolved around Libet-style experiments, for example by criticizing the claim that conscious intentions never cause what we do. Less attention has been paid to whether this response captures the sense in which consciousness is relevant for free will, however. In this paper I argue that scholars seem to accept two assumptions they should reject: (1) that the relationship between free will and consciousness is best characterized in terms of conscious (...) states and/or processes being part of the causal chain leading up to the action, and (2) that the third-person perspective is a suitable means to capturing the relationship between free will and consciousness. I provide an alternative proposal of how free will and consciousness may be related, in which an agent’s self-understanding of what she is doing and why, while acting, takes center stage. In order to capture the relationship between the two, I argue, the first-person perspective should be investigated instead of explained away. (shrink)

Most language learners have difficulties acquiring the phonemes of a second language (L2). Unfortunately, they are often judged on their L2 pronunciation, and segmental inaccuracies contribute to miscommunication. Therefore, we aim to determine how to facilitate phoneme acquisition. Given the close relationship between speech and co-speech gesture, previous work unsurprisingly reports that gestures can benefit language acquisition, e.g., in (L2) word learning. However, gesture studies on L2 phoneme acquisition present contradictory results, implying that both specific properties of gestures and phonemes (...) used in training, and their combination, may be relevant. We investigated the effect of phoneme and gesture complexity on L2 phoneme acquisition. In a production study, Dutch natives received instruction on the pronunciation of two Spanish phonemes, /u/ and /θ/. Both are typically difficult to produce for Dutch natives because their orthographic representation differs between both languages. Moreover, /θ/ is considered more complex than /u/, since the Dutch phoneme inventory contains /u/ but not /θ/. The instruction participants received contained Spanish examples presented either via audio-only, audio-visually without gesture, audio-visually with a simple, pointing gesture, or audio-visually with a more complex, iconic gesture representing the relevant speech articulator(s). Preceding and following training, participants read aloud Spanish sentences containing the target phonemes. In a perception study, Spanish natives rated the target words from the production study on accentedness and comprehensibility. Our results show that combining gesture and speech in L2 phoneme training can lead to significant improvement in L2 phoneme production, but both gesture and phoneme complexity affect successful learning: Significant learning only occurred for the less complex phoneme /u/ after seeing the more complex iconic gesture, whereas for the more complex phoneme /θ/, seeing the more complex gesture actually hindered acquisition. The perception results confirm the production findings and show that items containing /θ/ produced after receiving training with a less complex pointing gesture are considered less foreign-accented and more easily comprehensible as compared to the same items after audio-only training. This shows that gesture can facilitate task performance in L2 phonology acquisition, yet complexity affects whether certain gestures work better for certain phonemes than others. (shrink)

We live today in the first global system of sovereign states in history, encompassing all of the world's polities, peoples, religions and civilizations. Christian Reus-Smit presents a new account of how this system came to be, one in which struggles for individual rights play a central role. The international system expanded from its original European core in five great waves, each involving the fragmentation of one or more empires into a host of successor sovereign states. In the most important, associated (...) with the Westphalian settlement, the independence of Latin America, and post-1945 decolonization, the mobilization of new ideas about individual rights challenged imperial legitimacy, and when empires failed to recognize these new rights, subject peoples sought sovereign independence. Combining theoretical innovation with detailed historical case studies, this book advances a new understanding of human rights and world politics, with individual rights deeply implicated in the making of the global sovereign order. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of institutions as clusters of stable solutions to recurrent coordination problems can illuminate and explain some unresolved difficulties and problems adhering to institutional definitions of art initiated by George Dickie and Arthur Danto. Their account of what confers upon objects their institutional character does not fit well with current work on institutions and social ontology. The claim that “the artworld” confers the status of “art” onto objects remains utterly mysterious. The “artworld” is a generic notion that designates a (...) sphere of human activity that involves practices that create goals that have led to the emergence of formal and informal institutions. But those institutions, rather than magically “creating” objects subjected to esthetic appreciation, merely solve familiar and ubiquitous coordination problems created by artistic activity in ways other institutions in other areas solve similar and/or analogous coordination problems. (shrink)

This special section is the outcome of a conference organized in Würzburg, as part of the interdisciplinary research project Motivational and Volitional Processes of Human Integration: Philosophical and Psychological Approaches to Human Flourishing (2018–2021). The goal of the project was to connect (philosophical) perspectives on flourishing to empirical research that suggests that implicit motives play an important role in who we are and what we do and decide. One main aim was to find a middle ground between two extremes that (...) conceptualize implicit motives either as recalcitrant states that hamper flourishing, or as reflecting who we really are, much more than our explicit motives. We propose that both implicit and explicit motives are crucial to flourishing. The articles in this special section bring up other important questions as well. First of all, what is the role of the external world? It seems to be crucial for being a self, but it may also hamper flourishing. And second, how should the relationship between the self as basic subjectivity, and the self with certain values, desires, and intentions be understood? (shrink)

Under poor circumstances, co-residence of a grandmother is generally considered to be beneficial for children. Empirical evidence does not unequivocally support this expectation and suggests that the grandmother’s importance depends on the family’s circumstances. We study the relationship between grandmother’s co-residence and children’s schooling in sub-Saharan Africa under a broad range of circumstances. Results make clear that the effect of a co-residing grandmother varies but is almost always positive. Grandmothers over age 60 are most effective in helping their children. They (...) are particularly important for girls, and when the mother is deceased or not living in the household. Grandmothers are less effective in situations with few opportunities, as in very poor regions or in communities with few schooling opportunities. Our findings indicate that providing support to grandmothers should not be overlooked when designing policies aimed at strengthening the position of women and children in the sub-Saharan African context. (shrink)

Neuroscience and the Illusion of Free WillCurrently, few neuroscientists and philosophers still defend the claim that neuroscience has shown the brain ‘decides’ what we do and that free will is an illusion. This does not imply, however, that this kind of neuroscientific researchcould notsay anything about the existence of free will. Neuroscience can offer insights in the unconscious causes and underlying processes of our actions and, because of this, could perhaps show whether we act out of free will or not. (...) In this paper I will argue that in this regard the possibilities of neuroscientific research are limited. I understand free will, in line with Dana Nelkin and Susan Wolf, as the ability to do the right thing for the right reasons. I will show that whether someone acts intentionally, what it is that she is doing, and for which reasons she acts cannot be determined by studying unconscious causes or other unconscious processes related to the action. The action and reason necessarily depend on the perspective of the acting agent. Furthermore, neuroscientific research cannot show us whether the reasons and the actions areright. It could perhaps offer a unique contribution when it comes to the question of whether we areableto the right thing for the right reasons. To what extent it can remains an open question. (shrink)

Rahat Naqvi and Hans Smits' edited collection, "Thinking about and Enacting Curriculum in 'Frames of War'" is centered on the theme of how the current global order creates precarious conditions for human life. The contributors respond to the challenges Judith Butler posed about the fragility of life and questions about how we apprehend, and take up ethically, our responsibilities for those who are considered "Other." The overarching objective of the book is the meaning of a call to ethics, and (...) how discussion of framing and frames is a provocation to think about our responsibilities as curriculum scholars and practitioners"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The quality of our theoretical argumentation, the diversity and insights of our methods, and our general level of understanding are markedly better than a generation ago. However, this progress has been driven by a division of labor with increased specialization that has led each part of the field to become narrower.

In The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle develops a theory of institutional facts and objects, of which money, borders and property are presented as prime examples. These objects are the result of us collectively intending certain natural objects to have a certain status, i.e. to ‘count as’ being certain social objects. This view renders such objects irreducible to natural objects. In this paper we propose a radically different approach that is more compatible with standard economic theory. We claim that (...) such institutional objects can be fully understood in terms of actions and incentives, and hence the Searlean apparatus solves a non-existent problem. (shrink)

The distinction between concept and intuition is of the utmost importance for understanding Kant’s critical philosophy. For, as Kant himself claimed, all the distinctive claims of this philosophy rest on, and develop out of, a detailed account of the way all our cognition of things requires both intuitions and concepts.

Most analyses of whistleblowing are concerned with the whistleblower as an actor or with the act of whistleblowing itself. However, as soon as the whistleblower enters the public arena, a social dynamic emerges of interdependent actors with different responsibilities and different interests.Such a dynamic demands a more comprehensive approach in which the motives of the different actors in the public debate are taken into account.This approach is developed here using an exemplary case of whistleblowing that took place in a Dutch (...) research institute.The intensive media attention damaged both the institute and the whistleblower.In retrospect this could have been avoided.In our analysis we give extra attention to the motives involved and to the inevitability of media logic.In order to avoid unnecessary damage we recommend guidelines to the three basic actors:the whistleblower, the organization and the media. (shrink)

If someone commits the mereological fallacy, then he ascribes psychological predicates to parts of an animal that apply only to the (behaving) animal as a whole. This incoherence is not strictly speaking a fallacy, i.e. an invalid argument, since it is not an argument but an illicit predication. However, it leads to invalid inferences and arguments, and so can loosely be called a fallacy. However, discussions of this particular illicit predication, the mereological fallacy, show that it is often misunderstood. Many (...) misunderstandings concern the use of this illicit predication in the course of discussions of understanding the mind/body problem. Our aim here is to provide an accessible overview through discussing common misconceptions of the fallacy. We also discuss how conceptual investigations of the relation between living organisms and their parts fit within the framework of modern evolutionary theory, i.e. inclusive fitness theory. (shrink)

The aim of this empirical study is to understand how bachelor students at universities of applied sciences (UAS) use their ethical compasses during internships. Semi-structured interviews were held with 36 fourth-year bachelor students across four UAS and three different programs in the Netherlands: Initial Teacher Education, Business Services, and Information and Communication Technology. To our knowledge, no studies appear to have investigated and compared students from multiple professional fields, nor identified the dynamics and the sequence of the strategies in the (...) decision-making process that students use when faced with ethical dilemmas during internships. We found that students’ ethical dilemmas stemmed from: mentors’ or managers’ behaviours/requests, colleagues’ behaviours, organisations’ morally questionable incentives, pupils’ home situations, and pupils’ behaviours/personal stories. The majority of students used multiple strategies and first investigated the ethical dilemmas they encountered and then avoided, intervened, delegated responsibilities, or adjusted to their environments. Students’ values played an important role in experiencing an ethical dilemma, however, these values were not always acted upon. We identified that rather students’ beliefs about having influence and/or ownership (or not), personal interest(s) and power relations influenced the way how they used their ethical compasses. Thus, instead of navigating on moral standards (of their profession), students reacted on beliefs which reflected the ways in which they constructed their internship contexts, social relationships and their own (and others) needs. As a result, half of the mentioned dilemmas were resolved in a prudent-strategic manner (e.g., by prioritising personal interests), instead of morally. This indicates that students did not always convert (moral) values into moral action and did not use their ethical compasses in the way UAS aspires. Finally, this study found that the ways in which students used their ethical compasses were strongly influenced by their environments. (shrink)

Human enhancement issues are not merely academic: the technologies and trends involved give rise to new needs and social demands, provide opportunities for individuals and society, and present new risks. They also challenge crucial cultural notions, social concepts and views of the human condition, and may cause new forms of social pressure and social exclusion. This chapter reports on a systematic attempt by the European Technology Assessment Group (ETAG), conducted on behalf of the Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) panel (...) of the European Parliament, to suggest policy options on the issue of human enhancement. It outlines and discusses a number of strategies for dealing with the issue in a European policy context, identifying a reasoned pro‐enhancement approach, a reasoned restrictive approach, and a systematic case‐by‐case approach as viable options. (shrink)

Contemporary discussion concerning institutions focus on, and mostly accept, the Searlean view that institutional objects, i.e. money, borders and the like, exist in virtue of the fact that we collectively represent them as existing. A dissenting note has been sounded by Smit et al. (Econ Philos 27:1–22, 2011), who proposed the incentivized action view of institutional objects. On the incentivized action view, understanding a specific institution is a matter of understanding the specific actions that are associated with the institution and (...) how we are incentivized to perform these actions. In this paper we develop the incentivized action view by extending it to institutions like property, promises and complex financial organisations like companies. We also highlight exactly how the incentivized action view differs from the Searlean view, discuss the method appropriate to such study and discuss some of the virtues of the incentivized action view. (shrink)