Dieser Beitrag hinterfragt das weitläufige Verständnis von Polyamorie als eine Form der Liebe beziehungsweise Beziehungsform, die (1) notwendigerweise romantische Liebesbeziehungen in einem engen Verständnis beinhaltet, das heißt einschließlich Sex, und (2) Freundschaft ausschließt. Über eine Untersuchung und Zurückweisung der These, dass romantische Liebesbeziehungen ohne Sex nicht denkbar sind, kommt der Beitrag zu einer Analyse von romantischen Liebesbeziehungen und Freundschaften. Anhand einer vergleichenden Analyse der in romantischen Liebesbeziehungen wie auch in engen Freundschaften realisierten Beziehungsgüter kann gezeigt werden, dass sich diese kaum (...) in einem normativ relevanten Sinne unterscheiden. Letztendlich kann Polyamorie damit plausiblerweise nur auf einem weiten Verständnis romantischer Liebesbeziehungen aufbauen, was das Konzept inklusiver gestaltet und in polyamoren Beziehungskonstellationen Raum für Freundschaften und nicht-sexuelle romantische Beziehungen bietet. Dieser Artikel leistet damit nicht nur einen explikativen und präzisierenden Beitrag zur philosophischen Debatte rund um Polyamorie, sondern möchte den Begriff neu prägen. (shrink)

This essay theorizes how the enforcement of universal norms contributes to the solidification of sovereign rule. It does so by analyzing John Locke’s argument for the founding of the commonwealth as it emerges from his notion of universal crime in the Second Treatise of Government. Previous studies of punishment in the state of nature have not accounted for Locke’s notion of universal crime which pivots on the role of mankind as the subject of natural law. I argue that the dilemmas (...) specific to enforcing the natural law against “trespasses against the whole species” drive the founding of sovereign government. Reconstructing Locke’s argument on private property in light of universal criminality, the essay shows how the introduction of money in the state of nature destabilizes the normative relationship between the self and humanity. Accordingly, the failures of enforcing the natural law require the partitioning of mankind into separate peoples under distinct sovereign governments. This analysis theorizes the creation of sovereign rule as part of the political productivity of Locke’s notion of universal crime and reflects on an explicitly political, rather than normative, theory of “humanity.”. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to analyse the value-ladenness of technology in the context of medicine. To address this issue several characteristics of technology are investigated: i) its interventive capacity, ii) its expansiveness and iii) its influence on the concept of disease, iv) its generalising character, v) its independence of the subjective experience of the patient. By this analysis I hope to unveil the double face of technology: Technology has a Janus-face in modern medicine, and the opposite of its (...) factual face is evaluative. (shrink)

Like some ethical dilemmas, this question has an obvious answer that may not be right. On first reflection, it seems entirely unreasonable and inappropriate to expect staff members to withhold supportive care. Legally, a designated surrogate has the authority to refuse pain medication on the patient's behalf, but is it ethically defensible? A patient lacking decisionmaking capacity is crying out in pain; can we really imagine just closing the door? What do we say to other patients, visitors, and staff members, (...) such as physicians, nurses, housekeepers, and dietary workers, who might hear the patient? Do we place a sign on the door, one noting that the surrogate has refused, on behalf of the patient, to authorize the administration of pain medication and that the hospital or nursing home must comply with the surrogate's decision? (shrink)

The following description is based upon an actual case in which a patient initiated legal action after suffering a complication subsequent to an invasive diagnostic procedure performed by a senior fellow. Named as codefendants were the senior fellow, attending physician, and the hospital. Because any hospital with house staff is potentially vulnerable to similar litigation, Ethics Committees at Work is addressing the questions raised by this dilemma.

The belated but formal acknowledgment of medical errors and their impact has been well documented. Curiously, the topic of management or executive mistakes in healthcare is not raised in professional meetings nor, until recently, addressed by an article in health administration journals.

Our ethics committee is revising the organization's policy on forgoing life-sustaining treatment. The current policy now includes the statement, “When life-sustaining treatment is forgone, supportive care will be provided to relieve pain and ensure the patient's comfort, unless the patient or surrogate refuses those measures.” Is it reasonable, however, for the surrogate to have the authority to refuse consent for pain medication and/or other supportive care?

Is technology value-free or is it value-laden? How does technology affect human autonomy? These questions, viewed within the context of medicine, are the focus of attention in this article. The central argument is that we need neither to subscribe to the value-neutrality dictum nor to the all-encompassing value-ladenness thesis to explain the pertinent position of technology in medicine. Technology is constitutive of and strongly implicated in difficult questions of value. This, however, does not mean that technology is identical to (or (...) neutral to) these value-laden questions. Technology poses issues of value, but only some of these relate to technology qua technology. Hence, it makes a difference whether we discuss general questions of value posed by technology or whether we discuss the value-ladenness of technology. Admitting technological value-ladenness does not imply that we are subject to a technological imperative that reduces our autonomy, on the contrary, it explains how technology increases our responsibility. This is particularly prominent in medicine. (shrink)

--2. Bd. Des Sokrates Apologie. Kriton. Euthydemos. Menexenos. Gorgias. Menon. Bearb. von H. Hofmann.--3. Bd. Phaidon. Das Gastmahl. Kratylos. Bearb. von D. Kurz.--4. Bd. Politeia. Der Staat. Bearb. von D. Kurz.--5. Bd. Phaidros. Parmenides. Briefe. Bearb. von D. Kurz.--6. Bd. Theaitetos. Der Sophist. Der Staatsmann. Bearb. von P. Staudacher.--7. Bd. Timaios, Kritias. Philebos. Bearb. von K. Widdra.--8. Bd. Nomōn. Gesetze. Bearb. von K. Schöpsdau. 2 v.

The emerging concept of systems medicine (or ‘P4 medicine’—predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory) is at the vanguard of the post-genomic movement towards ‘precision medicine’. It is the medical application of systems biology, the biological study of wholes. Of particular interest, P4 systems medicine is currently promised as a revolutionary new biomedical approach that is holistic rather than reductionist. This article analyzes its concept of holism, both with regard to methods and conceptualization of health and disease. Rather than representing a medical (...) holism associated with basic humanistic ideas, we find a technoscientific holism resulting from altered technological and theoretical circumstances in biology. We argue that this holism, which is aimed at disease prevention and health optimization, points towards an expanded form of medicalization, which we call ‘holistic medicalization’: Each person’s whole life process is defined in biomedical, technoscientific terms as quantifiable and controllable and underlain a regime of medical control that is holistic in that it is all-encompassing. It is directed at all levels of functioning, from the molecular to the social, continual throughout life and aimed at managing the whole continuum from cure of disease to optimization of health. We argue that this medicalization is a very concrete materialization of a broader trend in medicine and society, which we call ‘the medicalization of health and life itself’. We explicate this holistic medicalization, discuss potential harms and conclude by calling for preventive measures aimed at avoiding eventual harmful effects of overmedicalization in systems medicine (quaternary prevention). (shrink)

According to Ramsey and colleagues the main constituent psychological processes of innovation are response to novelty, exploration, and the ability to recognize a novel solution. I fully support this view but point out that novelty reactions are often context-specific. I will expand on this and discuss the possible consequences of context-specific novelty reactions on the emergence of innovations.

There has been a significant increase in the use of radiological services in the past 30 years. There are many reasons for this, but one has received little attention: the increased role of patient autonomy in healthcare. Patients demand x rays, CT scans, MRI, and positron emission tomography scans. The key question in this article is how a moral principle, such as respect for patient autonomy, can influence the extension of radiological services. A literature review reveals how patient autonomy is (...) acknowledged in radiology, and how it is used both to explain and to justify the increase in radiological examinations. Furthermore, it also shows how the premises favouring patients’ exercise of their autonomy are not always present, which makes patient autonomy subject to adverse side effects and even abuse. Patient autonomy can be used to reduce the professionals’ responsibility for radiological examinations , to increase the popularity of the profession , to increase the income of the professionals or their institutions, and to promote professional activity. Patient autonomy intended to reduce paternalism, to legitimise otherwise morally unjustifiable actions , and to protect patients, can easily be used as a moral means for opposite ends. These adverse effects are not peculiar to radiology. However, they emerge particularly clearly in explanations and justifications of the substantial increase in radiological services, as well as in debates on overuse of radiological services. (shrink)

It is a commonly held belief among many psychological scientists that the more plausible a hypothesis, the better it is scientifically. It is also often believed that if there are two alternative theories which are equally strong in terms of explanatory power, one should choose the plausible theory over the implausible one. The goal of this article is to challenge these assumptions. Based on Popper's philosophical views, it will be argued that psychological scientists should be encouraged to formulate implausible hypotheses (...) and theories. Examples from other scientific disciplines will be presented to illustrate this argument. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In health care priority setting different criteria are used to reflect the relevant values that should guide decision-making. During recent years there has been a development of value frameworks implying the use of multiple criteria, a development that has not been accompanied by a structured conceptual and normative analysis of how different criteria relate to each other and to underlying normative considerations. Examples of such criteria are unmet need and severity. In this article these crucial criteria are conceptually clarified and (...) analyzed in relation to each other. We argue that disease-severity and condition-severity should be distinguished and we find the latter concept better reflects underlying normative values. We further argue that unmet need does not fulfil an independent and relevant role in relation to condition-severity except for in some limited situations when having to distinguish between conditions of equal severity. (shrink)

Systems medicine, which is based on computational modelling of biological systems, is emerging as an increasingly prominent part of the personalized medicine movement. It is often promoted as ‘P4 medicine’. In this article, we test promises made by some of its proponents that systems medicine will be able to develop a scientific, quantitative metric for wellness that will eliminate the purported vagueness, ambiguity, and incompleteness—that is, normativity—of previous health definitions. We do so by examining the most concrete and relevant evidence (...) for such a metric available: a patent that describes a systems medicine method for assessing health and disease. We find that although systems medicine is promoted as heralding an era of transformative scientific objectivity, its definition of health seems at present still normatively based. As such, we argue that it will be open to influence from various stakeholders and that its purported objectivity may conceal important scientific, philosophical, and political issues. We also argue that this is an example of a general trend within biomedicine to create overly hopeful visions and expectations for the future. (shrink)

A program for the simulation of rational social normative trust, predictive `trust,' and predictive reliance between agents will be introduced. It offers a tool for social scientists or a trust component for multi-agent simulations/multi-agent systems, which need to include trust between agents to guide the decisions about the course of action. It is based on an analysis of rational social normative trust (RSNTR) (revised version of M. Tuomela 2002), which is presented and briefly argued. For collective agents, belief conditions for (...) collective agency should be added. For the various forms of trust agents must have (at least) subjectively rational reasons to believe that the conditions of the trust account are fulfilled. A list of such reasons (of varied weights), e.g., given by empirical research, can manually be built into a parameter file or be generated by a calling program in a fixed format. From this list of reasons the program randomly generates a belief base for the agents of the artificial society. Reasons can be chained together so that one set of reasons satisfies several belief conditions. The program checks if the conditions are fulfilled for the artificial agents' social normative trust/predictive `trust'/`predictive reliance' in another agent that he will perform an action X. Each outcome is logged to a result file. In conclusion we discuss various aspects of the application of a trust component of the suggested kind in empirical research, social simulation, and multi-agent systems. (shrink)

A widespread assumption in recent research on attitudes is that self-reported evaluations reflect conscious attitudes, whereas indirectly assessed evaluations reflect unconscious attitudes. The present article reviews the available evidence regarding unconscious features of indirectly assessed “implicit” attitudes. Distinguishing between three different aspects of attitudes, we conclude that people sometimes lack conscious awareness of the origin of their attitudes, but that lack of source awareness is not a distinguishing feature of indirectly assessed versus self-reported attitudes, there is no evidence that people (...) lack conscious awareness of indirectly assessed attitudes per se, and there is evidence showing that, under some conditions, indirectly assessed attitudes influence other psychological processes outside of conscious awareness. Implications for the concept of “implicit attitudes” are discussed. (shrink)

In the past decades, affective science has overwhelmingly demonstrated the unique properties of affective information to bias our attention, memory, and decisions. At the same time, accumulating evidence suggests that neutral and affective representations rely on the same working memory substrates for the selection and computation of information and that they are therefore restricted by the same capacity limitations that these substrates impose. Here, we integrate these insights into a working memory model of affective processing (WMAP). Drawing on competitive access (...) models of working memory, we discuss its role in the various stages of affective processing, from attentional selection to maintenance and memory storage, and resulting feelings and actions. We end our overview with some open questions and future directions. (shrink)

We study the relationship between risk managers’ dark triad personality traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) and their selective hedging activities. Using a primary survey of 412 professional risk managers, we find that managers with dark personality traits are more likely to engage in selective hedging than those without. This effect is particularly pronounced for older, male, and less experienced risk managers. The effect is also stronger in smaller firms, less centralized risk management departments, and family-owned firms.

With healthcare systems under pressure from scarcity of resources and ever‐increasing demand for services, difficult priority setting choices need to be made. At the same time, increased attention to patient involvement in a wide range of settings has given rise to the idea that those who are eventually affected by priority setting decisions should have a say in those decisions. In this paper, we investigate arguments for the inclusion of patient representatives in priority setting bodies at the policy level. We (...) find that the standard justifications for patient representation, such as to achieve patient‐relevant decisions, empowerment of patients, securing legitimacy of decisions, and the analogy with democracy, all fall short of supporting patient representation in this context. We conclude by briefly outlining an alternative proposal for patient participation that involves patient consultants. (shrink)

The selfish goal metaphor is interesting and intriguing. It accounts for the idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies in peoples' goal pursuits without invoking free will, self-regulatory, or self-control failures. However, people pursue multiple goals, sometimes simultaneously. We argue that the model proposed in the target article may gain significant theoretical and practical value if the principles underlying goal selection and/or balancing on a moment-to-moment basis are clearly specified and integrated with the notion of the selfish goal.

This article correlates fine-grained semantic variability and change with measures of occurrence frequency to investigate whether a word’s degree of semantic change is sensitive to how often it is used. We show that this sensitivity can be detected within a short time span (i.e., 20 years), basing our analysis on a large corpus of German allowing for a high temporal resolution (i.e., per month). We measure semantic variability and change with the help of local semantic networks, combining elements of deep (...) learning methodology and graph theory. Our micro-scale analysis complements previous macro-scale studies from the field of natural language processing, corroborating the finding that high token frequency has a negative effect on the degree of semantic change in a lexical item. We relate this relationship to the role of exemplars for establishing form–function pairings between words and their habitual usage contexts. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 5, Page 1023-1023, September 2022.

The relationship between tax authorities and taxpayers is essential for tax compliance. The aim of the present paper was to explore systematically the determinants of this relationship and related tax compliance behaviors based on the extended slippery slope framework. We used in-depth qualitative interviews with 33 self-employed taxpayers and 30 tax auditors. Interviewees described the tax relationship along the extended slippery slope framework concepts of power and trust. However, also novel sub-categories of power (e.g., setting deadlines) and trust (e.g., personal (...) assistance) were mentioned. Furthermore, also little-studied categories of tax behavior emerged, such as accepting tax behavior e.g., being available to the tax authorities, or stalling tax behavior e.g., the intentional creation of complexity. The results comprehensively summarize the determinants of the tax relationship and tax compliance behaviors. Additionally, results highlight future research possibilities and illustrate policy interventions. (shrink)

The late 18th century is characterized by two crucial events: the rise of Goethe as a dominating literary figure and the emergence of Kant’s critical philosophy and its productive reception not only in the philosophical but also literary discourse of the time. While the Tübingen School concreatively adopted Kant’s philosophy as a system of ideas, they also critically responded to its intellectualising impulse by positing the equiprimordiality of world and Self, of art and reason. Adhering to the self-critical impulse of (...) Kant’s philosophy by positing the equiprimordiality of both the empirical world and the intelligible subject, and trying to overcome the “chorismos” between them through the classicist model of aesthetic Bildung, they argued for the co-extensiveness of the reality of both philosophy and literature. The authors investigate how the latent antagonism between these divergent traditions of the so-called Goethezeit creates the thrust behind the intellectual firework of divergent literary and philosophical discourses from around 1800, throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. (shrink)

We explored the effects of resilience in the healthcare setting during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Our study sheds light on the cross-level effects of resilience in hospitals and thus responds to calls to research this empirically. In a cross-sectional study design, the perceptions of resilience of employees in hospitals and of transformations at the individual, team, and organizational level were analyzed. An online survey was conducted in summer 2020 in Germany in which 1,710 healthcare workers completed a self-report questionnaire. (...) Results indicate that resilience is both a highly interrelated construct on the individual and organizational level and also positively linked to perceptions of transformation as an indicator for demonstration of resilience. We also found a partial mediation effect of organizational resilience and team efficacy, respectively, on the relationship between individual resilience and perceived transformation on the individual and organizational level as well as a full mediation on the team level. The study highlights the interdependence of individual and organizational resilience and its impact on perceived transformation in German hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas team efficacy is crucial for performance in regular work operations, during a pandemic the organizational level becomes more relevant. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Infants show impressive speech decoding abilities and detect acoustic regularities that highlight the syntactic relations of a language, often coded via non-adjacent dependencies. It has been claimed that infants learn NADs implicitly and associatively through passive listening and that there is a shift from effortless associative learning to a more controlled learning of NADs after the age of 2 years, potentially driven by the maturation of the prefrontal cortex. To investigate if older children are able to learn NADs, Lammertink et (...) al. recently developed a word-monitoring serial reaction time task and could show that 6–11-year-old children learned the NADs, as their reaction times increased then they were presented with violated NADs. In the current study we adapted their experimental paradigm and tested NAD learning in a younger group of 52 children between the age of 4–8 years in a remote, web-based, game-like setting. Children were exposed to Italian phrases containing NADs and had to monitor the occurrence of a target syllable, which was the second element of the NAD. After exposure, children did a “Stem Completion” task in which they were presented with the first element of the NAD and had to choose the second element of the NAD to complete the stimuli. Our findings show that, despite large variability in the data, children aged 4–8 years are sensitive to NADs; they show the expected differences in r RTs in the SRT task and could transfer the NAD-rule in the Stem Completion task. We discuss these results with respect to the development of NAD dependency learning in childhood and the practical impact and limitations of collecting these data in a web-based setting. (shrink)

Sharing within communities has gained popularity in recent years. However, taking part in a community also comes with a certain amount of risk. This perceived amount of risk can be contained by regulations within a community as well as by potential participants’ trust in the community and the other members. We argue for a relation between regulation and the willingness to take the risk of joining a sharing community with trust as mediator. Thereby, we distinguish between two kinds of regulation (...) (soft and harsh regulation) and two kinds of trust (implicit and reason-based trust) on two different levels (vertical and horizontal trust). In one laboratory and one online experiment with overall 432 participants, we found that the compound of high soft and low harsh regulation increases participants’ willingness to take the risk of participation and the effect of soft regulation is mediated mainly by vertical and horizontal reason-based trust. Based on our results, we encourage sharing communities to count on soft regulation in order to increase potential members’ trust in the community and therefore take the risk to participate. (shrink)

A classical quantified modal logic is used to define a "feasible" arithmetic A 1 2 whose provably total functions are exactly the polynomial-time computable functions. Informally, one understands $\Box\alpha$ as "α is feasibly demonstrable". A 1 2 differs from a system A 2 that is as powerful as Peano Arithmetic only by the restriction of induction to ontic (i.e., $\Box$ -free) formulas. Thus, A 1 2 is defined without any reference to bounding terms, and admitting induction over formulas having arbitrarily (...) many alternations of unbounded quantifiers. The system also uses only a very small set of initial functions. To obtain the characterization, one extends the Curry-Howard isomorphism to include modal operations. This leads to a realizability translation based on recent results in higher-type ramified recursion. The fact that induction formulas are not restricted in their logical complexity, allows one to use the Friedman A translation directly. The development also leads us to propose a new Frege rule, the "Modal Extension" rule: if $\vdash \alpha$ then $\vdash A \leftrightarrow \alpha$ a for new symbol A. (shrink)