The aim of this study was to explore the coping resources of hope and sense of coherence, which are rooted in positive-psychology theory, as potential resilience factors that might reduce the emotional distress experienced by adults from three cultural groups in Israel during the chronic-stress situation of a pandemic. The three cultural groups examined were secular Jews, Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and Arabs. We compared these cultural groups during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, just before the Jewish New Year (mid-September (...) 2020) as a second lockdown was announced. Data were gathered from 248 secular Jews, 243 Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and 203 Arabs, who were 18–70 years old (M= 37.14,SD= 12.62). The participants filled out self-reported questionnaires including the Brief Symptom Inventory as a measure of emotional/psychological distress (i.e., somatization, depression, and anxiety) and questionnaires about sense of coherence and different types of hope (i.e., intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal) as measures of coping resources and resiliency. Differences were found between the three groups in terms of several variables. The Arab participants reported the highest levels of emotional distress and the lowest levels of interpersonal and transpersonal hope; whereas the Ultra-Orthodox participants revealed the highest levels of sense of coherence and other resilience factors. A structural equation model revealed that, in addition to the sociodemographic factors, only sense of coherence and intrapersonal hope played significant roles in explaining emotional distress, explaining 60% of the reported distress among secular Jews, 41% among Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and 48% among Arabs. We discuss our findings in light of the salutogenic and hope theories. We will also discuss their relevancy to meaning-seeking and self-transcendence theory in the three cultural groups. (shrink)

This paper presents a semantic and pragmatic theory of complex demonstratives. According to this theory, the semantic content of a complex demonstrative, in a context, is simply an object, and the semantic content of a sentence that contains a complex demonstrative, in a context, is a singular proposition. This theory is defended from various objections to direct reference theories of complex demonstratives, including King's objection from quantification into complex demonstratives.

In program synthesis, we transform a specification into a system that is guaranteed to satisfy the specification. When the system is open, then at each moment it reads input signals and writes output signals, which depend on the input signals and the history of the computation so far. The specification considers all possible input sequences. Thus, if the specification is linear, it should hold in every computation generated by the interaction, and if the specification is branching, it should hold in (...) the tree that embodies all possible input sequences. Often, the system cannot read all the input signals generated by its environment. For example, in a distributed setting, it might be that each process can read input signals of only part of the underlying processes. Then, we should transform a specification into a system whose output depends only on the readable parts of the input signals and the history of the computation. This is called synthesis with incomplete information. In this work we solve the problem of synthesis with incomplete information in its full generality. We consider linear and branching settings with complete and incomplete information. We claim that alternation is a suitable and helpful mechanism for coping with incomplete information. Using alternating tree automata, we show that incomplete information does not make the synthesis problem more complex, in both the linear and the branching paradigm. In particular, we prove that independently of the presence of incomplete information, the synthesis problems for CTL and CTL * are complete for EXPTIME and 2EXPTIME, respectively. (shrink)

Background Much like academic-industry partnerships, industry financial support of patient advocacy organizations has become very common in recent years. While financial conflicts of interest between PAOs and industry have received more attention in recent years, robust efforts to mitigate these conflicts are still limited. Main body The authors outline the possible benefits and ethical concerns that can result from financial interactions between biomedical companies and PAOs. They argue that the use of novel strategies, such as the creation of a standing (...) ethics committee, could be helpful in managing FCOIs and ensuring the warranted trust of PAO’s constituents. Although ethics committees to address FCOIs are common in the academic context, its use by PAOs is still limited. The authors conclude by describing the process of development and implementation of such an ethics committee at the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation. Conclusions While collaborations with industry can result in conflicts of interest, PAOs can develop strategies to address those conflicts. One such strategy is the creation of a standing independent ethics committee to guide PAOs on new and/or existing programs and protocols as they pertain to their industry relationships. (shrink)

In the automata-theoretic approach to verification, we translate specifications to automata. Complexity considerations motivate the distinction between different types of automata. Already in the 60s, it was known that deterministic Büchi word automata are less expressive than nondeterministic Büchi word automata. The proof is easy and can be stated in a few lines. In the late 60s, Rabin proved that Büchi tree automata are less expressive than Rabin tree automata. This proof is much harder. In this work we relate the (...) expressiveness gap between deterministic and nondeterministic Büchi word automata and the expressiveness gap between Büchi and Rabin tree automata. We consider tree automata that recognize derived languages. For a word language L, the derived language of L, denoted L, is the set of all trees all of whose paths are in L. Since often we want to specify that all the computations of the program satisfy some property, the interest in derived languages is clear. Our main result shows that L is recognizable by a nondeterministic Büchi word automaton but not by a deterministic Büchi word automaton iff L is recognizable by a Rabin tree automaton and not by a Büchi tree automaton. Our result provides a simple explanation for the expressiveness gap between Büchi and Rabin tree automata. Since the gap between deterministic and nondeterministic Büchi word automata is well understood, our result also provides a characterization of derived languages that can be recognized by Büchi tree automata. Finally, it also provides an exponential determinization of Büchi tree automata that recognize derived languages. (shrink)

Historian Dmitry Peretolchin quotes several of my publications on the creation and application of political technologies in the United States in his program about Saul Alinsky on the House of Cards podcast on the Den TV channel. An advertisement for the conference "Russian World Against the Global Reich" was inserted into this broadcast. This article: analyzes the statements of the podcast about Alinsky and his main ideas; showes that the main source of Alinsky's political technologies is the experience of professional (...) revolutionaries in Russia and that they in no way confirm the idea of a global Reich; describes the political technology that Alexander Prokhanov and his media complex uses to implement the Fifth Empire project, which is currently merged with the ideology of the Russian World; analyzes the ideological orientation of the House of Cards podcast and the Picture of the World club on the Den channel. The articles illustrates how the authors of the podcast are working to substantiate the propaganda direction of the media complex. The article also aims to show that political technologies, in particular, technologies of co-organization continue to develop and be implemented in countries with different political systems and can be applied to various types of social movements. (shrink)

This paper presents a theory of empty names that is consistent with direct-reference theory and Millianism.

In this paper, I defend a well-known theory of belief reports from an important objection. The theory is Russellianism, sometimes also called `neo-Russellianism', `Millianism', `the direct reference theory', `the "Fido"-Fido theory', or `the naive theory'. The objection concernssubstitution of co-referring names in belief sentences. Russellianism implies that any two belief sentences, that differ only in containing distinct co-referring names, express the same proposition (in any given context). Since `Hesperus' and `Phosphorus' both refer to the planet Venus, this view implies that (...) all utterances of (1) and.. (shrink)

In several jurisdictions, irremediable suffering from a medical condition is a legal requirement for access to assisted dying. According to the expressivist objection, allowing assisted dying for a specific group of persons, such as those with irremediable medical conditions, expresses the judgment that their lives are not worth living. While the expressivist objection has often been used to argue that assisted dying should not be legalised, I show that there is an alternative solution available to its proponents. An autonomy-based approach (...) to assisted suicide regards the provision of assisted suicide (but not euthanasia) as justified when it is autonomously requested by a person, irrespective of whether this is in her best interests. Such an approach has been put forward by a recent judgment of the German Federal Constitutional Court, which understands assisted suicide as an expression of the person’s right to a self-determined death. It does not allow for beneficence-based restrictions regarding the person’s suffering or medical diagnosis and therefore avoids the expressivist objection. I argue that on an autonomy-based approach, assisted suicide should not be understood as a medical procedure but rather as the person’s autonomous action. (shrink)

Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose reference shifts from context to context: some paradigm examples are ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘now’, ‘today’,‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘that’. Two speakers who utter a single sentence that contains an indexical may say different things. For instance, Fred and Wilma say different things when they utter the sentence ‘I am female’. Many philosophers (following David Kaplan 1989a) hold that indexicals have two sorts of meaning. The first sort of meaning is often called ‘character’ or ‘linguistic meaning’; the second (...) sort is often called ‘content’. Using this terminology, we can say that the word ‘I’ has a single character (or linguistic meaning), but has different contents in different contexts. (shrink)

I examine Alexander of Aphrodisias’ theory of action, addressing the question how his view that human actions are determined by reason accounts for the capacity of doing otherwise. Calling into question the standard view that Alexander frees agents from internal determination, I argue that (1) the capacity of doing otherwise is a consequence of determination by reason, since it enables agents to do something different from what they would have done had they followed external circumstances; and (2) this capacity is (...) compatible with causal determination by reason because as a case of potentiality for opposites, it grants agents the qualified possibility of doing otherwise insofar as their nature as human beings is concerned – a possibility which remains also when their actions are causally determined by reason and by their internal disposition. I show further that these elements of Alexander’s theory of action are ultimately based on his conception of the soul, specifically on his commitment to Aristotle’s view that the human soul is not purely rational, as the Stoics hold, but has nonrational and rational parts. (shrink)

Making good decisions in extremely complex and difficult processes and situations has always been both a key task as well as a challenge in the clinic and has led to a large amount of clinical, legal and ethical routines, protocols and reflections in order to guarantee fair, participatory and up-to-date pathways for clinical decision-making. Nevertheless, the complexity of processes and physical phenomena, time as well as economic constraints and not least further endeavours as well as achievements in medicine and healthcare (...) continuously raise the need to evaluate and to improve clinical decision-making. This article scrutinises if and how clinical decision-making processes are challenged by the rise of so-called artificial intelligence-driven decision support systems (AI-DSS). In a first step, this article analyses how the rise of AI-DSS will affect and transform the modes of interaction between different agents in the clinic. In a second step, we point out how these changing modes of interaction also imply shifts in the conditions of trustworthiness, epistemic challenges regarding transparency, the underlying normative concepts of agency and its embedding into concrete contexts of deployment and, finally, the consequences for (possible) ascriptions of responsibility. Third, we draw first conclusions for further steps regarding a ‘meaningful human control’ of clinical AI-DSS. (shrink)

I examine the question why in Proclus' view genetic processes provide demonstrative explanations, in light of the interpretation of Aristotle's theory of demonstration in late antiquity. I show that in this interpretation mathematics is not an explanatory science in the strict sense because its objects, being immaterial, do not admit causal explanation. Placing Proclus' account of demonstrative explanation in this context, I argue that this account is aimed at answering the question whether mathematical proofs provide causal explanation as opposed to (...) grounds. I show further that Proclus can answer this question in the affirmative due to his realist view of mathematical objects and the priority he ascribes to causal relations over logical relations. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a new semantics for demonstratives. Now some may think that David Kaplan (1989a,b) has already given a more than satisfactory semantics for demonstratives, and that there is no need for a new one. But I argue below that Kaplan's theory fails to describe the linguistic meanings of 'that' and other true demonstratives. My argument for this conclusion has nothing to do with cognitive value, belief sentences, or other such contentious matters in semantics and the philosophy (...) of mind. Rather, it appeals to the obvious fact that there can be true utterances of certain sentences containing several occurrences of the same demonstrative (for instance, 'That is taller than that'). My argument can be answered by making a fairly modest revision in Kaplan's theory. But I believe that the resulting revised version of Kaplan's theory ignores or distorts various important semantic features of 'that'. Thus I ultimately argue in favor of a more substantial departure from Kaplan's theory. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the theory I favor is that it ascribes three distinct sorts of meanings to demonstratives. (shrink)

We use names to talk about objects. We use predicates to talk about properties and relations. We use sentences to attribute properties and relations to objects. We say things when we utter sentences, often things we believe.

Die Studie untersucht die Entstehung der modernen Philosophiegeschichte, wie sie sich im Übergang vom Barock zur Aufklärung als philosophische Disziplin innerhalb des gelehrten Diskurses der historia literaria konstituierte. Die Auffassung, daß Philosophie ein Produkt menschlicher Verstandestätigkeit sei und mit dem Denken der Griechen beginne, erweist sich dabei als Resultat eines Traditionsbruchs, mit dem die entstehende Aufklärung sich vom christlichen Aristotelismus der Schulphilosophie sowie von den platonisch-hermetischen Spekulationen der Schwärmer und Pansophen absetzte. In der Umbruchphase zwischen Barock und Aufklärung entsteht so (...) der moderne philosophiegeschichtliche Kanon, der sich fundamental von der zuvor gültigen historischen Logik der Wissenschaftsgeschichte unterscheidet. Die Geschichte der Philosophie wird nun nicht länger als Sammelbecken unterschiedlich perfekter Ausformulierungen einer archetypischen Weisheit verstanden, sondern im Kontext der 'Entdeckung der geschichtlichen Welt' als ein kontingenter temporaler Prozeß menschlicher Wissenschaftsentwicklung begriffen. Wie es zu dieser Entdeckung der Philosophiegeschichte kam und worin ihre wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Implikationen bestehen, ist Gegenstand der Darstellung, die gegenüber der bisherigen Forschung verstärkt die Interdependenzen zwischen theologischem, philosophischem, rechts- und literärgeschichtlichem Diskurs berücksichtigt. (shrink)

According to the “discrimination argument,” it would be discriminatory and hence impermissible to categorically exclude people with mental illness (PMI) from access to assisted suicide (AS) if AS is accessible to people with somatic illnesses. In objection to this, it could be argued that excluding PMI is not discriminatory, but rather based on their inability to meet certain eligibility criteria for AS. Which criteria are deemed necessary depends on the approach taken to justifying AS. In this article, we describe two (...) distinct ethical approaches to justifying AS and the eligibility criteria they entail and examine whether PMI can fulfill these criteria. A widespread “joint” approach based on beneficence and autonomy assumes that AS is justified when it alleviates the severe and irremediable suffering of a person who autonomously requests AS. An alternative, exclusively autonomy‐based approach assumes that providing AS is justified when a person's request is autonomous, regardless of whether AS is in her best interests. The latter approach underlies an important judgment of the German Federal Constitutional Court from 2020. We argue that PMI can in principle fulfill both beneficence‐ and autonomy‐based eligibility criteria for AS, and that a blanket exclusion of all PMI from AS is thus discriminatory on either approach. However, depending on which approach is taken, there are differences regarding the subgroups of PMI that would be eligible for AS. Whether the exclusion of specific PMI is discriminatory therefore depends on how we understand and justify AS. (shrink)

L’interactivité est communément perçue comme la marque caractéristique des technologies digitales et, par extension, de différentes formes de fictions, de médias ou d’œuvres numériques – de la littérature hypertextuelle et des jeux vidéo au net art. On peut toutefois s’interroger sur le sens précis qu’il convient de donner à cette notion, ainsi que sur les promesses auxquelles elle est souvent associée. À défaut de pouvoir cerner un concept unique et maxi-englobant d’interactivité, nous suggérons qu’il est plus profitable de tenter d’identifier (...) des types et des degrés d’interactivité. Nous tentons de montrer pourquoi cette théorie pluraliste et gradualiste est plus attrayante que d’autres approches développées dans la littérature récente. Nous mettons enfin cette conception à l’épreuve du jeu vidéo, en montrant qu’elle permet de réévaluer le rôle que joue l’interactivité dans ce médium, mais qu’elle met aussi au jour les limitations inhérentes des fictions interactives que l’on y trouve. (shrink)

In the article ‘Represent Me: Please! Towards an Ethics of Digital Twins in Medicine’, I analysed and tried to better understand the main ethical challenges associated with Digital Twins. For those who are just entering the debate with this article: DT is a metaphor for a bundle of artificial intelligence driven simulation technologies that constantly, in real time and ad personam simulate single or multiple parts of the body and make predictions about future health states based on these simulations. My (...) argument addresses the need to look at the breadth of challenges through a perspective of representation. From such a take, key consequences can be drawn for the further development of such technologies, the required means of control and not least the way to think about the interaction between humans and ‘their’ simulations. I am very grateful for the subsequent suggestions, criticisms and further arguments, which have helped me to elaborate my arguments more clearly and have led to a substantial advancement of the debate and the discussion about ethical questions in dealing with DT. Jenny Blumenthal-Barby,1 Deborah Lupton,2 Jenny Krutzinna,3 Janina Loh,4 Brent Mittelstadt,5 Sven Nyholm,6 Daniel Tigard7 and Max Tretter8 have made excellent points, which, in the following, I will not be able to reply to individually and in detail. In this response, I will try to bundle the open points and questions along the comments and considerations mentioned above and attempt to outline their significance for an ethics of DT. Four challenges seem to be central. A first point addresses anthropological issues. It is concerned …. (shrink)

Trust is one of the big buzzwords in debates about the shaping of society, democracy, and emerging technologies. For example, one prominent idea put forward by the High‐Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence appointed by the European Commission is that artificial intelligence should be trustworthy. In this essay, we explore the notion of trust and argue that both proponents and critics of trustworthy AI have flawed pictures of the nature of trust. We develop an approach to understanding trust in AI (...) that does not conceive of trust merely as an accelerator for societal acceptance of AI technologies. Instead, we argue, trust is granted through leaps of faith. For this reason, trust remains precarious, fragile, and resistant to promotion through formulaic approaches. We also highlight the significance of distrust in societal deliberation, as it is relevant to trust in various and intricate ways. Among the fruitful aspects of distrust is that it enables individuals to forgo technology if desired, to constrain its power, and to exercise meaningful human control. (shrink)

Être vu, nu, par un chat ; essayer de savoir quel effet cela fait d’être une chauve-souris ; penser les modes de cohabitation et de compagnonnage que nous formons avec les animaux, en dépit de toutes les violences que nous leur faisons subir, constituent autant d’expériences de pensée limites qui ont ponctué le discours philosophique sur l’animalité au xxe siècle. Il n’est pas étonnant que Cora Diamond fasse un cas de toutes ces expériences : ce qu’elle nomme « une difficulté (...) de la réalité », c’est-à-dire un point d’achoppement entre la pensée et ce qu’elle essaye de saisir, le réel, qui est susceptible de nous faire perdre nos concepts. Je me propose dans ce texte d’explorer les voies de cette difficulté, qui sont souvent des voies contournées ou des déviations. L’idée est aussi de réfléchir aux moyens dont la philosophie dispose pour affronter cette difficulté, sans dénégation et sans déviation. (shrink)

In this article I explain three puzzling features of Simplicius’ use of syllogistic reconstructions in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics: (1) Why does he reconstruct Aristotle’s non-argumentative remarks? (2) Why does he identify the syllogistic figure of an argument but does not explicitly present its reconstruction? (3) Why in certain lemmata does he present several reconstructions of the same argument? Addressing these questions, I argue that these puzzling features are an expression of Simplicius’ assumption that formal reasoning underlies Aristotle’s prose, (...) hence they reflect his attempt to capture as faithfully as possible Aristotle’s actual mode of reasoning. I show further that, as a consequence of this seemingly descriptive use of syllogistic reconstructions, logic serves Simplicius not only as an expository and clarificatory tool of certain interpretations or philosophical views, but also motivates and shapes his exegetical stances and approach. (shrink)

Delia Graff Fara maintains that many desire ascriptions underspecify the content of the relevant agent’s desire. She argues that this is inconsistent with certain initially plausible claims about desiring, desires, and desire ascriptions. This paper defends those initially plausible claims. Part of the defense hinges on metaphysical claims about the relations among desiring, desires, and contents.

David Kaplan distinguishes between character and content in his theory of demonstratives and indexicals. This paper argues that David Kaplan's theory of demonstratives contains two different, incompatible, descriptions of what character is. It argues that one of them is superior. It argues that, ultimately, a theory of indexicals needs a theory of structured characters.

Alexis Anne-Braun Dans cet article, je présente quelques-uns des enjeux du débat en philosophie contemporaine sur la photographie. Ce débat, comme cela a déjà été noté dans un certain nombre de publications récentes, est en fait hanté par une question sceptique, qui fut posée à la photographie dès son invention : si l’image photographique s’excepte du régime traditionnel de la représentation et si elle est bien le résultat d’une prise de vue automatique, en quel sens pouvons-nous encore dire qu’elle (...) est artistique? Il me semble que le concept goodmanien d’exemplification permet de répondre au défi lancé par le sceptique. J’essaie de montrer pourquoi. Plus encore, je m’emploie à montrer comment le concept goodmanien d’exemplification pourrait s’accommoder assez bien de la spécificité du médium photographique. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 2, Page 202-220, Summer 2022.

This paper examines the widely accepted contention that geometrical constructions serve in Greek mathematics as proofs of the existence of the constructed figures. In particular, I consider the following two questions: first, whether the evidence taken from Aristotle's philosophy does support the modern existential interpretation of geometrical constructions; and second, whether Euclid's Elements presupposes Aristotle's concept of being. With regard to the first question, I argue that Aristotle's ontology cannot serve as evidence to support the existential interpretation, since Aristotle's ontological (...) discussions address the question of the relation between the whole and its parts, while the modern discussions of mathematical existence consider the question of the validity of a concept. In considering the second question, I analyze two syllogistic reformulations of Euclidean proofs. This analysis leads to two conclusions: first, it discloses the discrepancy between Aristotle's view of mathematical objects and Euclid's practice, whereby it will cast doubt on the historical and theoretical adequacy of the existential interpretation. Second, it sets the conceptual background for an alternative interpretation of geometrical constructions. I argue, on the basis of this analysis that geometrical constructions do not serve in the Elements as a means of ascertaining the existence of geometrical objects, but rather as a means of exhibiting spatial relations between geometrical figures. (shrink)

In this paper I present an analysis of causal relevance for properties. I believe that most of us are already familiar with the notion of a causally relevant property. But some of us may not recognize it "under that description." So I begin below with some intuitive explanations and some illustrative examples.

Stephen Schiffer says that Nathan Salmon and I are committed to the special-case consequence. He also says that it is possible for - to be true.

Selected papers, presented at the conference titled "Birds as Ornithologists: Scholarship Between Faith and Reason", held at Theg-mchog rnam-grol bshad-sgrub dar-rgyas-gling, Monastery, Bylakuppe, India, July 23-25, 2017.

This study focuses on women who define themselves as being undecided about becoming mothers. It addresses the question of how these women navigate their lives between two main conflicting cultural directives and perceptions: pronatalism and familism entwined in perception of linear time on one hand; and individualism and its counterpart, the notion of flexible liquid society, on the other. The research is based on group meetings designated for these women, which were facilitated by the first author. Ten women participated in (...) the study—of whom, most were heterosexual, half were single, and half were partnered. Data were collected using questionnaires completed during individual interviews that preceded the group encounter; transcripts of the discussions held during the ten group sessions; and questions regarding the status of the women’s doubts about motherhood asked 4 years after participating in the group. Our findings expand the existing typology of women’s reproductive decision-making, and demonstrate how categories that are commonly perceived as binary intersect when one challenges the rigid classifications of “active decisions” and “passive decisions”; “motherhood” and “non-motherhood,” and “want to be a mother” and “do not want to be a mother.” The findings also suggest that after becoming mothers, women can change their maternal status from “non-mother” to “mother,” yet still continue to view themselves as indecisive regarding motherhood. Based on our findings, we will argue that while indecisiveness about motherhood derives from individualized neoliberal rhetoric, it simultaneously undermines that same rhetoric and contradicts the injunction to “know, to decide, to strive.” It opposes the expectation in post-feminist discourse, that women will make choices about their bodies and exert them, while also opposing the pronatalist rhetoric, and the temporal linear discourse positing that women should “move forward” toward motherhood along with the ticking of the “biological clock.” Whereas some women sought to resolve their indecisiveness, other women found that the indecisiveness leaves all options open in a manner that expands their boundaries of autonomy in a society that seeks to limit it. (shrink)

This paper offers a way to think philosophically about Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests and in particular their ethical implications. I focus on how the faces of the Screen Tests’ participants appear on the screen, making a link to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. For Levinas, the human face signifies the possibility of transcending day-to-day structures of perception based on understanding, knowledge and visual representation, and can therefore invite an encounter with radical alterity. I make a connection between Levinas’s reading of (...) the face and the observations of a number of film theorists who see the cinematic close-up as a unique image, transcending the status of an ordinary perceptual phenomenon. I examine two Screen Tests, those of Bob Dylan and Ann Buchanan, using them as concrete examples of how film close-ups can open viewers to the face, in a Levinasian sense: the epiphany of radical alterity. This allows me to claim that despite Levinas’s declared hostility towards the visual, his philosophical articulation of the notion of the face helps to show the ethical implications of the appearance of the human face in cinema in general, and in Warhol’s Screen Tests in particular. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 5, October 2020, Page 171-174.

Previously unpublished fragments of Merleau-Ponty’s insights about cinema have added an important layer to our understanding of the medium. In this paper I examine these fragments along with some of Merleau-Ponty’s other observations about cinema, in the context of his work on perception and temporality. My aim is to show how his thought is relevant for understanding an important topic in film theory: cinematic point of view. With Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological articulation of what it is to see, the possibility opens up (...) of conceptualizing the structure of cinematic point of view as a “whole” that is concomitantly dynamic and always plural. (shrink)

This paper argues that data-driven medicine gives rise to a particular normative challenge. Against the backdrop of a distinction between the good and the right, harnessing personal health data towards the development and refinement of data-driven medicine is to be welcomed from the perspective of the good. Enacting solidarity drives progress in research and clinical practice. At the same time, such acts of sharing could—especially considering current developments in big data and artificial intelligence—compromise the right by leading to injustices and (...) affecting concrete modes of individual self-determination. In order to address this potential tension, two key elements for ethical reflection on data-driven medicine are proposed: the controllability of information flows, including technical infrastructures that are conducive towards controllability, and a paradigm shift towards output-orientation in governance and policy. (shrink)