The high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases demands a reliable and sensitive risk assessment technique. In order to develop a fast and label-free immunosensor for C-reactive protein, a risk factor for this condition, anti-CRP antibodies were physically adsorbed to the hydrogen -terminated surface of nanocrystalline diamond. An Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay reference technique showed that this was a suitable substrate for antibody-antigen recognition reactions. Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy was used to electronically detect CRP recognition. The specificity of the immunosensor was demonstrated by incubation (...) with CRP and plasminogen as reference molecule. A different impedance behavior was observed in real-time after CRP addition as compared to plasminogen addition: the impedance increased only during CRP incubation. Fitting the data showed that this corresponded with a decrease in capacitance of the molecular layer due to its increased thickness by specific CRP recognition. Sensitivity experiments in real-time showed a clear discrimination between 1 μM, 100 nM, and 10 nM of CRP after 10 min at 100 Hz. Since, 10 nM of CRP was still clearly distinguishable from buffer solution, our CRP-directed immunosensor prototype reaches a sensitivity that is within the physiologically relevant concentration range of this biomarker in healthy controls and CVD patients. Moreover, this prototype displayed real-time discriminating power between spiked and unspiked serum, and thus also shows its applicability in this biological matrix. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The value of Plutarch’s perception of physical reality and his attitude towards the natural spectacle Plutarch was very interested in the natural world around him, not only in terms of its elementary composition and physical processes, but also with respect to its providential ordering and marvels. His writings teach us a lot about his perception of physical reality and about his attitude to the natural spectacle. He found his greatest inspiration in the ontological and epistemological framework of Plato’s Timaeus, but (...) a wide range of other authors were also of seminal interest to his project. Moreover, the highly literary value of Plutarch’s natural philosophical writings should not be underrated. It is therefore not surprising that recently scholars have started to reassess the ancient scientific value of Plutarch’s natural philosophical writings. Natural Spectaculars aims to give further impetus to this dynamic by treating several aspects of Plutarch’s natural philosophy which have remained unexplored up to now. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the meaning of the interpretive turn in the philosophy of the human sciences for a variety of contemporary philosophical debates. While hermeneutics seems to be firmly established as a tradition and methodology in the human sciences, interpretive philosophy seems to be under increasing pressure in recent philosophical trends such as the "posthuman turn," the "nonhuman turn," and the "speculative turn." Responding to this predicament, this book shows how hermeneutics is gaining new force and fresh applications (...) today by bringing together a group of leading interpretive philosophers to address such timely topics as the entanglement of social science, culture, and politics in liberal capitalist societies, the extremism with which some identities are held within those societies, the possibility of genuine, non-relativist dialogue in a "post-truth" era, the nature of the strong moral judgments people tend to make in that era, the significance of interpretation for understanding nonhuman life forms, and the inherently hermeneutic dimension of such practices as work and productive action, testimony and witnessing, and measurement in scientific practice. Updating the Interpretive Turn will be of interest to researchers working in critical social science, social philosophy, ethical theory, environmental philosophy, philosophy of work, philosophy of testimony, philosophy of measurement, and philosophical hermeneutics itself. (shrink)

The starting point of the present paper is Bell’s notion of local causality and his own sharpening of it so as to provide for mathematical formalisation. Starting with Norsen’s analysis of this formalisation, it is subjected to a critique that reveals two crucial aspects that have so far not been properly taken into account. These are the correct understanding of the notions of sufficiency, completeness and redundancy involved; and the fact that the apparatus settings and measurement outcomes have very different (...) theoretical roles in the candidate theories under study. Both aspects are not adequately incorporated in the standard formalisation, and we will therefore do so. The upshot of our analysis is a more detailed, sharp and clean mathematical expression of the condition of local causality. A preliminary analysis of the repercussions of our proposal shows that it is able to locate exactly where and how the notions of locality and causality are involved in formalising Bell’s condition of local causality. (shrink)

The history of twentieth-century American psychology is often depicted as a history of the rise and fall of behaviorism. Although historians disagree about the theoretical and social factors that have contributed to the development of experimental psychology, there is widespread consensus about the growing and declining influence of behaviorism between approximately 1920 and 1970. Since such wide-scope claims about the development of American psychology are typically based on small and unrepresentative samples of historical data, however, the question rises to what (...) extent the received view is justified. This paper aims to answer this question in two ways. First, we use advanced scientometric tools to quantitatively analyze the metadata of 119.278 papers published in American journals between 1920 and 1970. We reconstruct the development and structure of American psychology using co-citation and co-occurrence networks and argue that the standard story needs reappraising. Second, we argue that the question whether behaviorism was the ‘dominant’ school of American psychology is historically misleading to begin with. Using the results of our bibliometric analyses, we argue that questions about the development of American psychology deserve more fine-grained answers. (shrink)

It has been hypothesized that illusory agency detection is at the basis of belief in supernatural agents and paranormal beliefs. In the present study a biological motion perception task was used to study illusory agency detection in a group of skeptics and a group of paranormal believers. Participants were required to detect the presence or absence of a human agent in a point-light display. It was found that paranormal believers had a lower perceptual sensitivity than skeptics, which was due to (...) a response bias to ‘yes’ for stimuli in which no agent was present. The relation between paranormal beliefs and illusory agency detection held only for stimuli with low to intermediate ambiguity, but for stimuli with a high number of visual distractors responses of believers and skeptics were at the same level. Furthermore, it was found that illusory agency detection was unrelated to traditional religious belief and belief in witchcraft, whereas paranormal beliefs were strongly related to illusory agency detection. These findings qualify the relation between illusory pattern perception and supernatural and paranormal beliefs and suggest that paranormal beliefs are strongly related to agency detection biases. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the Hole Argument can be formulated without using the notion of isomorphism, and for this reason it is not threatened by the criticism of Halvorson and Manchak (Br J Philos Sci, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1086/719193). Following Earman and Norton (Br J Philos Sci 38, pp. 515–525, 1987), I divide the Hole Argument into two steps: the proof of the Gauge Theorem and the transition from the Gauge Theorem to the conclusion of radical indeterminism. In the analaysis (...) of the first step, I argue that the Gauge Theorem does not rely on the notion of isomorphism but on the notion of the diffeomorphism-invariance of the equations of local spacetime theories; however, for this approach to work, the definition of local spacetime theories needs certain amendments with respect to Earman and Norton’s formulation. In the analysis of the second step, I postulate that we should use the notion of radical indeterminism instead of indeterminism simpliciter and that we should not decide in advance what kind of maps are to be used in comparing models. Instead, we can tentatively choose some kind of maps for this purpose and check whether a given choice leads to radical indeterminism involving empirically indistinguishable models. In this way, the use of the notion of isomorphism is also avoided in the second step of the Hole Argument. A general picture is that physical equivalence can be established by means of an iterative procedure in which we examine various candidate classes of maps, and, depending on the outcomes, we need to broaden or narrow these classes. The Hole Argument can be viewed as a particular instance of this procedure. (shrink)

This study examined whether stimulation of immigrant and national pupils’ use of high‐quality helping behaviour during cooperative learning in classrooms boosts their maths‐related talk more than in an educational situation in which such stimulation is largely absent . A total of 59 elementary‐age pupils enrolled in a CL maths curriculum of 11 lessons. They were video taped during two lessons while working together on maths assignments to assess their maths‐related talk. We found that the quality of maths‐related talk was higher (...) in the experimental condition. Furthermore, immigrant pupils’ used less maths‐related talk than the national pupils. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Le monde n'est pas caché par ses apparences. Il se donne assez clairement, à condition de le regarder et de l'aimer, malgré les violences et les désordres qui occupent presque tout le champ du regard. Il faut parfois cligner des yeux pour renouveler sa vision. En une centaine de courts chapitres, tour à tour narratifs, réflexifs, critiques, ce livre aborde de front le thème de la vérité et du bonheur. Mêlant le récit à l'essai, il explore notre quotidien comme une (...) planète inconnue. Les surprises sont au rendez-vous. Les preuves abondent. Les aventures ne manquent pas."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

BackgroundBalancing the rights and obligations of custodians and applicants in relation to access to biobanks is of utmost importance to guarantee trust and confidence. This study aimed to reveal which issues divide different stakeholders in an attempt to determine the rights and/or obligations held on human biological materials and data.MethodsTwenty-eight informants in the Benelux and Scandinavia were interviewed in order to capture the perspectives of experts and stakeholders in relation to the rights and obligations held by custodians and applicants with (...) respect to access to HBM and data.ResultsThere was no consensus among the informants on whether the custodian of a biobank should decide upon the scientific merits and the utility of an access request. Nearly all informants agreed that a new request or an amendment to the initial request has to be submitted when an applicant wants to use leftover HBM in a new or follow-up project. Several informants felt that it might be justified to charge higher access fees to external or industrial applicants that did not contribute to the collection of HBM and data. Most informants agreed that a custodian of a biobank could request the sharing and return of research results. It was furthermore argued that some of the benefits of research projects should be fed back into biobanks.ConclusionsThe interviews revealed a rather complex web of rights and obligations allocated to the custodian and the applicant in relation to access to HBM and data stored in biobanks. Some rights and obligations are negotiated on a case-by-case basis, while others are stipulated in access arrangements. We did find a consensus on the attribution of certain general rights to the custodians and the applicant. (shrink)

In this editorial contribution, two issues relevant to the question, what should be at the top of the research agenda for ethics and technology, are identified and discussed. Firstly: can, and do, engineers make a difference to the degree to which technology leads to morally desirable outcomes? What role does professional autonomy play here, and what are its limits? And secondly, what should be the scope of engineers’ responsibility; that is to say, on which issues are they, as engineers, morally (...) obliged to reflect? The research agendas proposed by the authors contributing to this special section, implicitly, give different answers to these questions. We suggest that an explicit discussion of these issues would greatly help in constructing a common research agenda. (shrink)

Probabilistic models have much to offer to philosophy. We continually receive information from a variety of sources: from our senses, from witnesses, from scientific instruments. When considering whether we should believe this information, we assess whether the sources are independent, how reliable they are, and how plausible and coherent the information is. Bovens and Hartmann provide a systematic Bayesian account of these features of reasoning. Simple Bayesian Networks allow us to model alternative assumptions about the nature of the information sources. (...) Measurement of the coherence of information is a controversial matter: arguably, the more coherent a set of information is, the more confident we may be that its content is true, other things being equal. The authors offer a new treatment of coherence which respects this claim and shows its relevance to scientific theory choice. Bovens and Hartmann apply this methodology to a wide range of much discussed issues regarding evidence, testimony, scientific theories, and voting. Bayesian Epistemology is an essential tool for anyone working on probabilistic methods in philosophy, and has broad implications for many other disciplines. (shrink)

Balancing the rights and obligations of custodians and applicants in relation to access to biobanks is of utmost importance to guarantee trust and confidence. This study aimed to reveal which issues divide dif..

Genesis – known by many, understood by few. After reading his lectures, there is no doubt that Viktor von Weizsäcker falls under the second category. Weizsäcker was not a philosopher by profession,...

This article analyzes Drucilla Cornell’s critical theory as a practice of engaging with radical thinking and radical politics in the interest of revolutionary transformation. Arguing that Walter Benjamin’s imperative to wrest tradition away from conformism is at the heart of Cornell’s work, the article shows how Cornell applies this imperative both to the tradition of resistance against oppression and to critical theory itself. The article follows Cornell’s call to decolonize the critical theoretical project by bringing Surinamese anticolonial activist and writer (...) Anton de Kom, various collectives that participated in the 2022 German art festival documenta 15, and the disobedience of six young Palestinian “Freedom Riders” into conversation with Cornell’s writings on the South African Revolution and on Afro-Caribbean liberatory thought. (shrink)

What makes video games unique as an audiovisual medium is not just that they are interactive, but that this interactivity is rule bound and goal oriented. This means that player experience, including experience of the music, is somehow shaped or structured by these characteristics. Because of its emphasis on action in perception, James Gibson’s ecological approach to psychology—particularly his concept of affordances—is well suited to theorise the role of music in player experience. In a game, players perceive the environment and (...) gameplay situations in terms of the goal-oriented actions they afford. Nondiegetic music, not tied to any place in the digital game world, can play a unique role in the structuring of these affordances. Through a series of case studies, I will show that music creates and structures situations both in the game environment (such as the appearance of enemies in Unreal) and beyond the game environment (such as the death of an avatar and the restart of a level in Super Mario Bros.). (shrink)

In this contribution, I discuss some less well-known premodern and early modern antecedents of Spinoza’s concepts and claims in the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_. On the one hand, I will argue, Spinoza’s notion of prophecy owes more to Moses Maimonides than to any Christian author; and through Maimonides, Spinoza may be linked to the discussion of prophecy in _The Virtuous City_ by the tenth-century Islamic philosopher al-Farabî. Spinoza’s concern with prophecy as a popular formulation of the Divine Law may be fruitfully seen (...) in the light of these two authors. On the other hand, Spinoza’s notion of _pietas_ has arguably been shaped by a number of early modern authors from the Low Countries, including Thomas a Kempis and Erasmus: it does not consist in merely obeying the law, but also has a clear devotional and theist dimension of love for God and for one’s neighbors. As such, it may be associated with recent ideas on philosophy and spiritual exercises. These findings have a number of non-trivial implications for Spinoza’s place in the rise of modern, academic Western philosophy. I will discuss these implications in the context of Pierre Hadot’s influential views on philosophy as a way of life and Michel Foucault’s notion of spirituality. (shrink)

Michiels, Thomas | : Si les théories de la reconnaissance ont permis de renouveler plusieurs domaines de l’éthique, peu d’auteurs se sont intéressés jusqu’à présent à leur apport aux débats éducatifs. Or, que peut précisément le concept de reconnaissance pour l’éthique de l’éducation? C’est la question posée par cet article. Examinant de prime abord plusieurs propositions faites par la littérature, cette étude leur oppose ensuite une vision plus exigeante de la reconnaissance, soit, le fondement légitime d’une théorie relationnelle de (...) la justice éducative. (shrink)

This study presents an approach to metaphor that systematically takes contextual factors into account. It analyses how metaphors both depend on, and change, the context in which they are uttered, and specifically, how metaphorical interpretation involves the articulation of asserted, implied and presupposed material. It supplements this semantic analysis with a practice-based account of metaphor at the conceptual level, which stresses the role of sociocultural factors in concept formation.

What is the difference between the earthly paradise, the Golden Age and the ideal city? This question is most important for whoever is interested in the various ways human societies have had for imagining an ideal state of perfection or social harmony. If we are not to confuse such different systems of representation as mythical thought, millenarianism and Utopia, it is absolutely necessary that we do not reduce the descriptions of an earthly paradise and a Golden Age to simple precursors (...) of the ideal city of the Utopians. It is especially important not to call “Utopian” every representation of the ideal society, Utopia being only one— and the most, recent—of its modalities. The Utopian dream Translated by Jeanne Ferguson takes up and at the same time alters the paradisiacal and millenarian imagination: it would be difficult to believe that the passage of primitive societies to great urban civilizations, then to modern society occurred without major repercussions on the vision of these societies, that the ideal state of social perfection did not vary from one to the other. (shrink)

L’abbaye du Mont-César a célébré lors de diverses manifestations religieuses et culturelles le premier centenaire de sa fondation. C’est le 13 avril 1899 que des moines, venus de l’abbaye de Maredsous, prenaient possession de la première aile d’un nouveau monastère bénédictin, édifié sur une butte historique, au nord de la ville de Louvain. Autrefois s’y était dressé, face à la ville, un château des ducs de Brabant. Nul doute que la proximité de l’université de Louvain avec ses multiples facultés n’ait (...) largement contribué à cette fondation bénédictine. (shrink)

The fourh version contains the edition of Books I-II and the first part of Book III of Walter Burley's Expositio et quaestiones omnium librorum Physicorum Aristotelis. It is a preprint version and has not undergone the peer review process.

This interview with Charles Taylor explores a central concern throughout his work, namely, his concern to ‘reenchant’ self and world through a careful examination of value as emanating from the world rather than from ourselves. It focuses especially on the status of his central doctrine of ‘strong evaluation’ against the background of mainstream meta-ethical theories, such as neo-Kantian constructivism and robust realist non-naturalism. Additionally, the relationship between Taylor’s theism and his moral–political philosophy is discussed. A key issue that is examined (...) is what ontological background picture can make sense of the strong evaluative experience of higher worth. Some other related issues that are explored revolve around Taylor’s papers ‘Disenchantment-Reenchantment’ and ‘Recovering the Sacred’, which tentatively explore the meaning of reenchantment. (shrink)

Can emotions be rational or are they necessarily irrational? Are emotions universally shared states? Or are they socio-cultural constructions? Are emotions perceptions of some kind? Since the publication of Jerry Fodor’s The Modularity of Mind (1983), a new question about the philosophy of emotions has emerged: are emotions modular? A positive answer to this question would mean, minimally, that emotions are cognitive capacities that can be explained in terms of mental components that are functionally dissociable from other parts of the (...) mind. But depending on the kind of modules that are considered, be they Chomskyan, Fodorian, Darwinian, or some other kind, the answer to this question might well be different. The twelve new essays in this volume address the question of whether emotions, or at least some of them, are, in some sense of the word, modules, and explore how this could potentially influence our understanding of emotional phenomena. (shrink)

First, Mahtani argues that both in the game The Mug and in the Sleeping Beauty we should not defer to a trusted person under a particular designation if they do not self-identify under this designation. This invites a more complex Reflection Principle. I respond that there are more parsimonious ways to avoid the challenges posed to the Reflection Principle. Second, Mahtani argues that preferences create a hyperintensional context, which poses a challenge to the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle that can be averted (...) by supervaluation. I respond that such an appeal to supervaluation would block randomization as a fair allocation device. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive critical account of Taylor’s writings, and argues that a close examination of his central concept of “strong evaluation” reveals both the potential of and the tensions in his entire thinking.

In Essai sur le don (Essay on Gifts), a work that the author himself noted was only indicative and incomplete, Marcel Mauss recommended in his conclusions on general sociology and morality that the analysis should be taken further and future research should focus on certain cultural areas that he had not been able to take into account: Micronesia, Indochina, Tibet, Burma, and North Africa, among others. And he stressed the existence, among the Berbers, of “remarkable practices of taoussa,” the study (...) of which, he said, had been the business of Doutté and Maunier (Mauss 1968b: 274, n. 1). (shrink)

" Le point de départ de ce livre est une conférence dans laquelle j'ai présenté à un large public les points essentiels de mon livre, Apprendre à vivre.

In a work that appeared in 1967 but which has lost none of its interest today, P. Alexandre gave a list of the 51 languages of Black Africa (or homogeneous dialectical and linguistic groups) that approached or surpassed a million speakers. For each of them he evaluated available documentation, on a scale of from 1 to 6. He gave the rating 1 to languages for which the documentation was poor (outdated grammars and dictionaries, incomplete or absurd systems of unscientific transcription) (...) and the rating 6 to languages for which works conforming to modern requirements were available (correctly noted sound systems, phonological and phonetic descriptions, annotated texts, dictionaries, stylistic and dialectological studies, audio material). Only three languages merited the rating 6 and only four were rated 5. This means that only seven languages out of about 1200 could be considered as accurately described, that is, offering all the necessary guarantees to the specialist. (shrink)

In this paper I want to show that consumer concerns can be implemented in food chains by organizing ethical discussions of conflicting values that include them as participators. First, it is argued that there are several types of consumer concerns about food and agriculture that are multi-interpretable and often contradict each other or are at least difficult to reconcile without considerable loss. Second, these consumer concerns are inherently dynamic because they respond to difficult and complex societal and technological situations and (...) developments. For example, because of the rising concern with global warming, carbon dioxide absorption of crops is now attracting public attention, which means that new requirements are being proposed for the environmentally friendly production of crops. Third, there are different types of consumers, and their choices between conflicting values differ accordingly. Consumers use different weighing models and various types of information in making their food choices. Changing food chains more in accordance with consumer concerns should at least take into account the multi-interpretable, dynamic, and pluralist features of consumer concerns, for example, in traceability schemes. In discussing usual approaches such as codes, stakeholder analysis, and assurance schemes, I conclude that these traditional approaches can be helpful. However, in cases of dynamic, pluralistic, and uncertain developments, maintaining some pre-existing evaluating scheme or some clear cut normative hierarchy, such as codes or assurance schemes, can be disastrous in undermining new ethical desirable initiatives. Instead of considering ethical standards and targets as fixed, which is done with codes and schemes, it is more fruitful to emphasize the structure of the processes in which ethical weighing of relevant consumer concerns get shaped. The concept of “Ethical Room for Maneuver” (ERM) is constructed to specify the ethical desirable conditions under which identification and weighing of paramount values and their dilemmas can be processed. The main aims of the ERM are making room in all the links of the food chain for regulating and implementing the relevant consumer concerns by (1) balancing and negotiating, (2) supporting information systems that are relevant and communicative for various consumer groups and (3) organizing consumer involvement in the links of the food chain. The social and political context of agriculture and food production, particularly in Europe, gives ample opportunity for implementing several types of Ethical Rooms for Maneuver. Finally, I discuss several types of Ethical Rooms for Manoeuvre in the food chains that can be communicated by means of specific traceability schemes to less involved stakeholders with the potential consequence that the stakeholders will be motivated to be more involved. (shrink)

BackgroundIn many countries health insurers, employers and especially governments are increasingly using pressure and coercion to enhance healthier lifestyles. For example by ever higher taxes on cigarettes and alcoholic beverages, and ever stricter smoke-free policies. Such interventions can enhance healthier behaviour, but when they become too intrusive, an unfree society can emerge. Which lifestyle interventions that use pressure or coercion are justifiable and which are not? We tried to develop an assessment model that can be used for answering this question, (...) on a generally acceptable way, for all sorts of lifestyle interventions.MethodsThe intended assessment model was developed in three phases. In the first phase the model was theoretically developed on the basis of literature study and reasoning. In the second phase the model was empirically tested by assessing two detailed cases from everyday practice using the model. The model was improved again and again. In the third phase the 10th version of the model was developed while writing this article.ResultsAn assessment model for the justification of intrusive lifestyle interventions. It comprises three components: 12 assessment criteria ; an assessment structure with three filters ; a way of assessing.ConclusionsWe have developed an assessment model for the justification of lifestyle interventions that use pressure or coercion to promote health. The correctness, completeness and practicality of the model are likely. Important principles for the justification are the logic and completeness of the underlying argumentation and the proper use of the available scientific information. Parties for and against a particular intervention could use the model to test and strengthen their argumentation and to improve the quality of the intervention. (shrink)