This study investigates the ethnic differentials in contraceptive use in the north-eastern Ch’orti area of Guatemala, a region dominated by the Ladino culture. Data come from a household survey and in-depth interviews with service providers carried out in 2001 in the town of Jocotán, and a survey carried out in 1994 in two nearby indigenous villages (aldeas). Descriptive analysis and logistic regression are used to explore the data. Previous DHS surveys have used dress and language to classify ethnic groups. In (...) this paper, an alternative approach based on self-identification is adopted. The results reveal significant differences in contraceptive behaviour among different ethnic groups within the same town and region. The results show that self-identified Ladino women who represented the minority of the population had contraceptive behaviour similar to their counterparts elsewhere in Latin America. The extremely low levels of contraceptive use among indigenous women from the aldeas suggest that the corresponding DHS figures in this region are probably overestimated. (shrink)

Research has shown the importance of engaging in networking behaviors for employees’ career success. Networking behaviors can be seen as a proactive way of creating access to career-related social resources and we argue that this type of proactive career behaviors might be particularly relevant for freelancers who cannot depend on an organizational career system supporting their further development, yet whose careers are characterized by high levels of uncertainty and unpredictability. To date, however, our understanding of how freelancers, being a category (...) of workers that are deprived of an organizational context of support for career development, can safeguard their employability, is limited. Therefore, this study addresses this gap and investigates whether freelancers’ networking behaviors are positively associated with career outcomes, through the mediating role of the need for relatedness fulfillment and employability-enhancing competencies. Hypotheses are tested via Structural Equation Modelling using a sample of 1,874 freelancers from Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The results generally support our hypotheses, providing evidence for a significant association between networking behaviors and need for relatedness fulfillment, and between networking behaviors and employability-enhancing competencies. Moreover, we found a significant association between need for relatedness fulfillment and employability-enhancing competencies, being the mediators in our research model and the outcomes of career satisfaction and future career opportunities. Implications for career development in the contemporary workplace are discussed, with particular attention for need for relatedness fulfillment, employability, and sustainable careers of freelance workers. (shrink)

This paper investigates how young people give meaning to gender, sexuality, relationships, and desire in the popular social networking site Netlog. In arguing how SNSs are important spaces for intimate politics, the extent to which Netlog is a space that allows contestations of intimate stories and a voicing of difference is questioned. These intimate stories should be understood as self-representational media practices; young people make sense of their intimate stories in SNSs through media cultures. Media cultures reflect how audiences and (...) SNS institutions make sense of intimacy. This paper concludes that intimate stories as media practices in the SNS Netlog are structured around creativity, anonymity, authenticity, performativity, bricolage and intertextuality. The intimate storytelling practices focusing on creativity, anonymity, bricolage and intertextuality are particularly significant for a diversity of intimacies to proliferate. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the usefulness of qualitative research for studying the ethics of care, bringing to light the lived experience of health care recipients, together with the importance of methods that allow reconstruction of the processes underlying this lived experience. Lived experiences of families being approached for organ donation, parents facing the imminent death of their child and patients being treated using stem cell transplantation are used to illustrate how ethical principles are differentiated, modified or (...) contradicted by the narrative context of persons concerned. The integration of empirical data into ethics will help caregivers in their ethical decision making and may enrich care ethics as a narrative and interpretative field. (shrink)

Dit jaarboek van het 'Studium Generale' van de Hogeschool Gent bevat essays van de sprekers die tijdens het academiejaar 2012-2013 een lezing hebben gehouden over het jaarthema ‘Normaal!? Waar is de norm?’. In deze bundel wordt stilgestaan bij de vraag hoe de tweedeling normaal/abnormaal aan de orde is in de maatschappij, in de kunsten en in de (medische) wetenschappen.0Deze lezingenreeks werd samengesteld door Sofie Vandamme en georganiseerd i.s.m. Jeroen Cluckers. Het boek bevat bijdragen van Sofie Vandamme, Charlotte Mutsaers, (...) Peter Hinssen, Dirk De Wachter, Maartje Schermer, Piet Hoebeke, Kristien Hemmerechts, Patrick Allegaert en Bart Marius, Stijn Vanheule, Paul De Grauwe, Hilde Van den Bulck, Jens Franssen en Dieter Ceustermans. Ook de beste paper van de deelnemende studenten werd mee opgenomen. (shrink)

Scholars increasingly point toward schools as meaningful contexts in which to provide psychosocial care for refugee children. Collaborative mental health care in school forms a particular practice of school-based mental health care provision. Developed in Canada and inspired by systemic intervention approaches, collaborative mental health care in schools involves the formation of an interdisciplinary care network, in which mental health care providers and school partners collaborate with each other and the refugee family in a joint assessment of child development and (...) mental health, as well as joint intervention planning and provision. It aims to move away from an individual perspective on refugee children’s development, toward an engagement with refugee families’ perspectives on their migration histories, cultural background and social condition in shaping assessment and intervention, as such fostering refugee empowerment, equality, and participation in the host society. Relating to the first stage of van Yperen’s four-stage model for establishing evidence-based youth care, this article aims to engage in an initial exploration of the effectiveness of a developing school-based collaborative mental health care practice in Leuven, Belgium. First, we propose a detailed description, co-developed through reflection on case documents, written process reflections, intervision, an initial identification of intervention themes, and articulating interconnections with scholarly literature on transcultural and systemic refugee trauma care. Second, we engage in an in-depth exploration of processes and working mechanisms, obtained through co-constructed clinical case analysis of case work collected through our practice in schools in Leuven, Belgium. Our descriptive analysis indicates the role of central processes that may operate as working mechanisms in school-based collaborative mental health care and points to how collaborative mental health care may mobilize the school and the family-school interaction as a vehicle of restoring safety and stability in the aftermath of cumulative traumatization. Our analysis furthermore forms an important starting point for reflections on future research opportunities, and central clinical dynamics touching upon power disparities and low-threshold access to mental health care for refugee families. (shrink)

AimsThis preliminary study aimed to investigate therapy-induced electrophysiological changes in persons with primary progressive aphasia. The investigated event-related potential components associated with language processing were the mismatch negativity, P300, N400, and P600.MethodsA linguistic ERP test battery and standardized language assessment were administered in four patients with PPA of which two received speech-language therapy and two did not receive therapy. The battery was administered twice with approximately 6 months in between in each patient. The results of the follow-up assessments were compared (...) to the results of the initial assessments.ResultsAlthough the results of the behavioral language assessment remained relatively stable between the initial and follow-up assessments, changes in the mean amplitudes, onset latencies, and duration of the ERP components were found in the four patients. In the two patients that did not receive SLT, an increased delay in 50% and a decreased mean amplitude in 25% of the measured ERP components were found. The electrophysiological changes found in the patients that received SLT were variable. Interestingly, the mismatch negativity and the N400 effect elicited by the categorical priming paradigm were less delayed and had an increased mean amplitude at the follow-up assessment in the patient with the non-fluent variant who received SLT. In this patient, the P600 component was absent at the initial assessment but present at the follow-up assessment.ConclusionAlthough no clear patterns in electrophysiological changes between patients who received SLT and patients who did not receive SLT were found by our preliminary study, it seems like the SLT induced improvements or compensation mechanisms in some specific language comprehension processes in the patient with the NFV. The results of this study are still preliminary because only four heterogeneous patients were included. Future studies should include larger patient groups of the three clinical variants because the therapy-induced electrophysiological changes might differ depending on the clinical variant and the underlying pathology. (shrink)

Dit jaarboek van het Studium Generale van de Hogeschool Gent bevat essays van de sprekers die tijdens het academiejaar 2013-2014 een lezing hebben gehouden over het jaarthema "Tijd? Altijd!". In deze bundel wordt stilgestaan bij de vraag hoe allerlei vormen van en opvattingen over tijd aan de orde zijn in de maatschappij, in de kunsten en in het wetenschappelijk onderzoek.0Deze lezingenreeks werd samengesteld en georganiseerd door Sofie Vandamme i.s.m. Jeroen Cluckers. Het boek bevat bijdragen van Sofie Vandamme, Benno (...) Barnard, Mark Fisher, Pedro De Bruyckere, Els Stuyven, Joke J. Hermsen, Marli Huijer, Dieter Ceustermans, Carl Devos, Petra Van Brabandt en Lisaboa Houbrechts"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

From May to November 1931, the Exposition coloniale internationale was held in Paris. Publicized as a trip around the world in a single day, it was designed to stimulate investments and general enthusiasm for the colonies. Along with exotic temporary pavilions representing the various colonies, model villages inhabited by colonial natives, and pavilions representing commercial product brands and other colonial powers, the exposition included a zoo and an aquarium featuring animals from the colonies. Installing a large aquarium had been a (...) costly and difficult process, and construction was plagued by many delays and problems. But when the aquarium finally opened a few months into the exposition, it quickly became a favorite of the public. With the double mission to provide a living synthesis of the products of the warm waters of the French empire and give visitors a sense of the diversity, beauty, and economic resources of their colonial possessions, the aquarium functioned as a panorama that presented a striking visual metaphor for the empire. This article follows the aquarium during the exposition and in the years that followed. We explore its place in the history of aquaria in general and pay particular attention to its role in the exposition and within the French colonial context of the 1930s and onward. Here, both the scientists in charge of the site and the aquatic animals living in its tanks and terrariums provide a window into the relationship of marine biology, public education, consumerism, and colonialism at mid-twentieth century. (shrink)

Onora O’Neill ist eine der bedeutendsten Persönlichkeiten aus dem Kreis der Schüler*innen von John Rawls und hat sich in ihrer ganzen philosophischen Tätigkeit intensiv mit dessen politischer Philosophie beschäftigt. Von Rawls übernimmt O’Neill die Grundidee, dass Gerechtigkeitsansprüche vernünftig gerechtfertigt werden müssen und dass wir selbst Gerechtigkeitsprinzipien in einer vernünftigen Prozedur konstruieren. Jedoch wirft O’Neill Rawls vor, idealisierte Modelle anzuführen, ohne die dahinterliegende Metaphysik kritisch zu hinterfragen. Daher plädiert O’Neill für eine Rückkehr zu Kant und seiner kritischen Überprüfung der Vernunft und (...) der Metaphysik. (shrink)

BackgroundAs the range of therapeutic options in the field of oncology increases, so too does the strain on health care budgets. The imbalance between what is medically possible and financially feasible is frequently rendered as an issue of tragic choices, giving rise to public controversies around health care rationing.Main bodyWe analyse the Norwegian media discourse on expensive cancer drugs and identify four underlying premises: (1) Cancer drugs are de facto expensive, and one does not and should not question why. (2) (...) Cancer drugs have an indubitable efficacy. (3) Any lifetime gained for a cancer patient is an absolute good, and (4) cancer patients and doctors own the truth about cancer. Applying a principle-based approach, we argue that these premises should be challenged on moral grounds. Within the Norwegian public discourse, however, the premises largely remain unchallenged due to what we find to be unjustified claims of moral superiority. We therefore explore alternative framings of the issue of expensive cancer drugs and discuss their potential to escape the predicament of tragic choices.ConclusionsIn a media discourse that has seemingly stagnated, awareness of the framings within it is necessary in order to challenge the current tragic choices predicament the discourse finds itself in. In order to allow for a discourse not solely concerned with the issue of tragic choices, the premises that underlie it must be subjected to critical examination. As the field of oncology advances rapidly, we depend on a discussion of its opportunities and challenges that is meaningful, and that soberly addresses the future of cancer care—both its potential and its limits. (shrink)

La filosofía fue entre nosotros, durante largo tiempo, un “juego social”, en las últimas décadas se ha venido transformando en (pseudo)campo, y en la actualidad está expuesta a sucumbir a la heteronomía, decayendo a la degradada situación de “espacio de servicios”. Así la doctrina de Bourdieu esclarece el surgimiento, la situación actual, y en cierto modo también la peripecia futura de la filosofía en España. Y al mismo tiempo consigue explicar porque, en este preciso momento, es plausible el pesimista diagnóstico (...) de que el peligro de regresión a la heteronomía compromete la existencia del incipiente campo filosófico español. Simplemente ocurre que en las situaciones de crisis las percepciones de los agentes adquieren una relevancia de la que suelen carecer en etapas más apacibles. En los períodos de desilusión los agentes se vuelven lúcidos, en una palabra, porque entonces resulta más difícil “seguir el juego” que el campo les exige. Ya que tomar parte en dicho juego no es más, según Bourdieu, que una forma de ilusión. (shrink)

Abstract:Since the birth of autism as a psychiatric category, autistic individuals have been described as preoccupied with the world of objects and detached from the world of subjects, thus marking a distinction between the “social” and the “non-social” still prevalent in autism research and diagnostic criteria. The aim of this article is to question this distinction by examining the role of things in autistic forms of social interaction. Drawing on qualitative data from an ongoing qualitative and phenomenological study on social (...) interaction among youth with autism, I argue that material things enjoy a sustaining and facilitating role in autistic social interaction for two reasons: First, by being sensible things open to tactile, auditory, and visual engagement, and second, by being things that incorporate normative practices. This relation between the material and the social in which the latter is mediated by the former, is beneficial to individuals with autism because it exploits a particular relation to materiality to consolidate a shaky attunement to the social world. I propose a materially mediated mode of interaction guided by the approaches to perception, embodiment, and materiality developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and James Gibson. This account puts pressure on the phenomenological emphasis on the face-to-face encounter and brings intersubjectivity into view as a many-faceted phenomenon realizable not only through interbodily dynamics but also through the material landscapes situating social encounters. (shrink)

Autism research has recently witnessed an embodied turn. In response to the cognitivist approaches dominating the field, phenomenological scholars have suggested a reconceptualization of autism as a disorder of embodied intersubjectivity. Part of this interest in autistic embodiment concerns the role of sensory differences, which have recently been added to the diagnostic criteria of autism. While research suggests that sensory differences are implicated in a wide array of autistic social difficulties, it has not yet been explored how sensory and social (...) experience in autism relate on a phenomenological level. Given the importance of the sensory dimension of social encounters in phenomenological analyses of autism, this question must be considered crucial. This article investigates the role played by sensory differences in autistic social experience. Through a phenomenological analysis informed primarily by the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with particular emphasis on the relation between intersubjectivity and perception, I argue that sensory differences affect the way other people appear in autistic experience on a pre-reflective level. By drawing on autistic young adults’ experiential descriptions of social encounters, this article identifies three aspects of how sensory differences affect social experiences in autism. First, social encounters manifested as sensorially disturbing, chaotic, and unpredictable events. Second, the embodied expressions of others appeared unfamiliar, threatening, and promoted a sense of detachment from the social world. Third, deliberate practices were employed to actively seek perceptual and social meaning in these disorienting social encounters. This analysis stresses the importance of understanding embodied intersubjectivity through its sensory dimensions. In addition, it indicates an important avenue for future research in exploring the potential role of practice in maintaining an intuitive grip on social meaning. By approaching social encounters as sensory and perceptual events, I emphasize how social difficulties in autism are inherently world-involving phenomena rather than a cognitive deficit reducible to the autistic person. (shrink)

Autistic difficulties with social interaction have primarily been understood as expressions of underlying impairment of the ability to ‘mindread.’ Although this understanding of autism and social interaction has raised controversy in the phenomenological community for decades, the phenomenological criticism remains largely on a philosophical level. This article helps fill this gap by discussing how phenomenology can contribute to empirical methodologies for studying social interaction in autism. By drawing on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and qualitative data from an ongoing study (...) on social interaction in autism, I discuss how qualitative interviews and participant observation can yield phenomenologically salient data on social interaction. Both, I argue, enjoy their phenomenological promise through facilitating attention to the social-spatial-material fields in and through which social interactions and experiences arise. By developing phenomenologically sound approaches to studying social interaction, this article helps resolve the deficiency of knowledge concerning experiential dimensions of social interaction in autism. (shrink)

Although compassion in healthcare differs in important ways from compassion in everyday life, it provides a key, applied microcosm in which the science of compassion can be applied. Compassion is among the most important virtues in medicine, expected from medical professionals and anticipated by patients. Yet, despite evidence of its centrality to effective clinical care, research has focused on compassion fatigue or barriers to compassion and neglected to study the fact that most healthcare professionals maintain compassion for their patients. In (...) contributing to this understudied area, the present report provides an exploratory investigation into how healthcare professionals report trying to maintain compassion. In the study, 151 professionals were asked questions about how they maintained compassion for their patients. Text responses were coded, with a complex mixture of internal vs. external, self vs. patient, and immediate vs. general strategies being reported. Exploratory analyses revealed reliable individual differences in the tendency to report strategies of particular types but no consistent age-related differences between older and younger practitioners emerged. Overall, these data suggest that while a range of compassion-maintaining strategies were reported, strategies were typically concentrated in particular areas and most professionals seek to maintain care using internal strategies. A preliminary typology of compassion maintaining strategies is proposed, study limitations and future directions are discussed, and implications for the study of how compassion is maintained are considered. (shrink)

The article develops a methodological and empirical approach for gauging the ways Big Data can be collected and distributed through mobile apps. This approach focuses on the infrastructural components that condition the disclosure of smartphone users’ data – namely the permissions that apps request and the third-party corporations they work with. We explore the surveillance ecology of mobile apps and thereby the privacy implications of everyday smartphone use through three analytical perspectives: The first focuses on the ‘appscapes’ of individual smartphone (...) users and investigates the consequences of which and how many mobile apps users download on their phones; the second compares different types of apps in order to study the app ecology and the relationships between app and third-party service providers; and the third focuses on a particular app category and discusses the functional as well as the commercial incentives for permissions and third-party collaborations. Thereby, the article advances an interdisciplinary dialogue between critical data studies, political economy and app studies, and pushes an empirical and critical perspective on mobile communication, app ecologies and data economies. (shrink)

BackgroundDementia care is essential to promote the well-being of patients but remains a difficult task prone to ethical issues. These issues include questions like whether manipulating a person with dementia is ethically permissible if it promotes her best interest or how to engage with a person who is unwilling to recognize that she has dementia. To help people living with dementia and their carers manage ethical issues in dementia care, we developed the CARE intervention. This is an intervention focused on (...) promoting the ethical self-efficacy of people living with dementia and carers, i.e., their confidence that they can manage ethical issues when they occur. The purpose of this paper is to explain and discuss how we have developed the CARE intervention to promote the ethical self-efficacy of people living with dementia, their family, and professional carers through a specific and, we believe, new use of literary texts.MethodsThe CARE intervention has been developed in two phases: First, we conducted a needs assessment of the occurrence of ethical issues in dementia care and the need for an intervention to support people living with dementia and their carers in managing such issues. Second, in a design phase, we developed the CARE intervention to meet identified needs.ResultsTo address identified ethical issues in dementia care we designed the CARE intervention as a workshop format where people living with dementia and carers can meet, discuss literary texts, and deliberate on how to solve such issues. The workshop is structured by the following elements: An agenda of ethical issues, a collection of literary cases exemplifying ethical issues, a moderator with an understanding of dementia care, and an overview of the ethical principles relevant to the discussion of ethical issues. >This workshop concept is operationalized in three applications tailored to meet the specific ethical issues of each of the study´s three target groups: people living with dementia and family carers, professional and family carers, and professional carers.ConclusionWe conclude the paper by stating that it is possible to develop an intervention that promotes the ethical self-efficacy of people living with dementia and family and professional carers. (shrink)

Autism is a highly heterogeneous phenomenon. Not only is it difficult to understand the various and diverse aspects of autism, their relation to each other is also complex and still poorly understood. In my article, “Material encounters. A phenomenological account of social interaction in autism,” I have addressed this heterogeneity by presenting an understanding of how social features of autism relate to behavioral features. Straddling this divide between the social and the non-social that still pervades much thinking in philosophy, psychiatry, (...) and psychology is crucial for understanding the diverse experiences of autistic persons and... (shrink)

Indoor radon is a natural radioactive gas that enters homes through cracks in the foundations. It is one of the leading causes of lung cancer. Although radon can be detected with an indoor radon test and can be mitigated by means of either ventilation or professional measures, testing and mitigating rates of the at-risk population remain insufficient. The objective of this study is to systematically review the current level of evidence regarding the design and effectiveness of mass media campaigns to (...) address the health risks of indoor radon to homeowners. The results show that informative tone of voices prevailed, other components, such as emotional or social components, were often not included. Furthermore, the focus was mostly on intention and less on behavior itself, and on testing instead of mitigation. Further research is needed to test effective and innovative communication strategies to increase protective behavior concerning indoor radon. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, his main work of theoretical philosophy, frequently uses metaphors from law. In this first book-length study in English of Kant's legal metaphors and their role in the first Critique, Sofie Møller shows that they are central to Kant's account of reason. Through an analysis of the legal metaphors in their entirety, she demonstrates that Kant conceives of reason as having a structure mirroring that of a legal system in a natural right framework. Her study (...) shows that Kant's aim is to make cognisers become similar to authorized judges within such a system, by proving the legitimacy of the laws and the conditions under which valid judgments can be pronounced. These elements consolidate her conclusion that reason's systematicity is legal systematicity. (shrink)

In Ecowomanism at the Panamá Canal: Black Women, Labor, and Environmental Ethics, Sofía Betancourt constructs environmental ethics at the intersection of the global North and global South. Betancourt explores transnational environmental justice through the lived experience of women from the African Diaspora who migrated to Panamá to work on the Canal.

This paper explores trans poetics as a way of doing trans philosophy. I begin by giving an overview of the current state of trans philosophy. I then give examples of other literatures wherein poetics is taken to be philosophically robust. After giving a brief history of trans poetics, I turn to the poetics statements and poetry of three trans poets—D'Lo, Ching-In Chen, and micha cárdenas—featured in the 2013 anthology Troubling the Line. I show how poetry is often uniquely able to (...) capture the ambiguity of the WTF of trans experience in ways that differ from philosophical argumentation. I conclude by suggesting that poetics might move us away from a potential politics of suffering in trans philosophy to a politics of liberation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What, Exactly, Does the Madperson Lack?Sofie Jeppsson, PhD (bio)Justin garson has already received well-earned recognition for his Madness: A philosophical exploration (2022), in which he distinguishes the view of madness as a dysfunction from madness as a strategy—a distinction that cuts across traditional distinctions between, for example, biological/neurological and psychological/social views. On the dysfunction view, going mad might be comparable to something like having an asthma attack or, (...) more long-term, developing type 1 diabetes. If the trachea closes up and prevents air from passing through, that is a dysfunction in the breathing apparatus. If the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas cease to produce insulin, making the person dependent on insulin shots to stay alive, that is a dysfunction. On the strategy view, going mad is rather like getting a fever when already infected with some pathogen. Given that you have the pathogen reproducing inside you, a rising body temperature provides a strategy (although not, of course, something the ill person chose) to keep the reproduction rate down, thus giving the immune system a better chance at vanquishing the infection. That does not mean that fevers are harmless—if a fever becomes high enough, it might itself do damage to the body. Still, it is a strategy, not a mere dysfunction. Analogously, on the Madness as strategy view, going mad might help a person deal with old traumas or an ongoing terrible situation, even as the madness may also be damaging in itself.In this paper, Garson introduces us to another interesting distinction: between seeing madness as a lack of reason, or as a perversion of or difference in reason. Garson writes that present-day psychiatry tends to see madness as a lack, whereas the late modern thinkers conceived of it as a perversion of reason. The late moderns clearly saw madness as something negative, but if we retain something like their basic view, merely change our evaluation from the negative perversion to the more neutral difference, we have a better basis for regarding Madness as a complicated and problematic but still cherished identity, and for Mad Pride.This is another interesting distinction well worth calling attention to. I’m uncertain how well the J.C.A. Heinroth example works—the text cited seems to show that he had a Madness as strategy view, but is it a Madness as a different kind of reason view?—but the other examples work better. Nevertheless, I want to push back a little against the claim that present-day psychiatry and philosophy of psychiatry tend to regard madness as a lack of something whereas the early moderns saw it as a difference. (Just a friendly little push, mind you, but still.)Arthur Wigan’s description of two brains, one functional and one dysfunctional, still seems to posit a lack of proper function in one of them. Sure, he does not say that the madperson lacks as much as the [End Page 313] idiot, who has two dysfunctional brains whereas the madperson has one functional and one dysfunctional. Still, there’s a lack. This two-brain picture also has its modern analogues: It brings to mind (albeit in a less biologically concrete and reified form) much psycho-educational material on, for example, how to live with bipolar disorder, according to which a supposed sane and rational part of the psychiatric patient’s mind should learn to handle and control the other, mad part (e.g., Miklowitz, 2012).According to John Locke, madpeople reason just fine, but they start from false premises. Is not this, too, something that madpeople are supposed to lack? Correct and realistic premises to start from? Locke writes that madpeople have “taken their fancies for realities,” but “make right deductions from them.” Moreover, Locke’s theory is reminiscent of modern bottom-up theories like Brendan Maher’s (1999)—madpeople have bizarre experiences on the basis of which they form bizarre beliefs, but we need not postulate that they suffer from any problems with, for example, reasoning and drawing inferences to explain why they believe what they do. Theorists who instead argue for a top-down or two-factor account of why madpeople stick... (shrink)

In historiography there is a tendency to see the Great War as marking the end of scientific optimism and the period that followed the war as a time of discord. Connecting to current (inter)national historiographical debate on the question of whether the First World War meant a disruption from the pre-war period or not, this article strives to prove that faith in scientific progress still prevailed in the 1920s. This is shown through the use of Belgium as a case study, (...) which suggests that the generally adopted cultural pessimism in the post-war years did not apply to the public rhetoric of science in this country. Diverse actors—scientists, industrialists, politicians, the public opinion and the military staff—declared a confidence in science, enhanced by wartime results. Furthermore, belief in science in Belgium was not affected by public outcry over the use of mustard gas, unlike in the former belligerent countries where the gas became an unpleasant reminder of how science was used during the war. Even German science with its industrial applications remained the norm after 1918. In fact, the faith in science exhibited during the pre-war years continued to exist, at least until the 1920s, despite anti-German sentiments being voiced by many sections of Belgian society in the immediate aftermath of the war. (shrink)