Oproep aan christenen om zich te bezinnen en terug te keren tot het wezenlijke van hun geloof.

The latter part of the 20th century is known for a surge in the so-called ‘genitive theologies’. Usually, a genitive theology has an ulterior motive, aiming at the transformation of a society or the promotion of sound politics and economy. In recent years, this trend culminated in public theology. The issue of religion with an ulterior motive was raised by Van de Beek in a seminal article focusing on theology without gaining anything from it as an answer to the (...) surging genitive theologies of the latter part of the 20th century and the public theologies of today. Taking into account Van de Beek’s critique against ‘religion with an ulterior motive’, this article explores the concept of the church as a moral agent in dialogue with Van de Beek. The central theoretical argument of this investigation is that Van de Beek’s ecclesiology is valuable when defining the role of the church as a moral agent. However, the perspective of the Kingdom of God concerning the church can enrich one’s views and can add value to his valid critique on public theology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Match-fixing is a major ethical issue in sports. Although research interest in match-fixing has increased in recent years, we remain largely in the dark regarding how both betting- and non-betting-related match-fixing relate to the moral decision-making of those involved. Drawing on Rest’s theory of morality and on the perceptions of a large sample of participants in Flemish sports, this study indicates that most match-fixing incidents are non-betting-related, while moral motivation and associated challenges clearly differ according to the type of (...) match-fixing. Therefore, each type of match-fixing requires different preventive measures. (shrink)

PurposeTo explore the mindfulness practice, its long-term effects, facilitators and barriers, in clinical clerkship students 2 years after participation in an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction training.MethodA qualitative study was performed by semi-structured in-depth interviews with 16 clinical clerkship students selected by purposive sampling. Students had participated in a MBSR training 2 years before and were asked about their current mindfulness practice, and the long-term effects of the MBSR training. Thematic analysis was conducted using the constant comparison method. Data saturation was (...) reached after 16 interviews.ResultsMost interviewees were still engaged in regular, predominantly informal, mindfulness practice, although some discontinued mindfulness practice and reported an “unchanged lifestyle.” Three main themes came forward; “focused attention and open awareness” during daily activities as core elements of long-term mindfulness practice; “changes in behavior and coping” that resulted from taking a pause, reflecting, recognizing automatic behavioral patterns and making space for a conscious response; “integration in personal and professional life” by enhanced enjoyment of daily activities, improved work-life-balance and making different career choices. Barriers and facilitators in starting and maintaining mindfulness practice were understanding and intention as “pre-conditions”; practical, personal, and professional factors of students in maintaining practice.ConclusionTwo years after participation in a MBSR training, many interviewees were still engaged in mindfulness practice contributing to both personal and professional changes. In light of the high clerkship demands, MBSR training could be a valuable addition to medical curricula, supporting medical students in developing necessary competencies to become well-balanced professionals. (shrink)

This book is about time and its powerful influence on our personal and collective daily life. It presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date overview of contemporary knowledge on temporal psychology inspired by Zimbardo's work on Time Perspective (TP). With contributions from renowned and promising researchers from all over the globe, and at the interface of social, personality, cognitive and clinical psychology, the handbook captures the breadth and depth of the field of psychological time. Time perspective, as the way people construe (...) the past, the present and the future, is conceived and presented not only as one of the most influential dimensions in our psychological life leading to self-impairing behaviors, but also as a facet of our person that can be de-biased and supportive for well-being and happiness. Written in honor of Philip G. Zimbardo on his 80th birthday and in acknowledgement of his leading role in the field, the book contains illustrations of the countless studies and applications that his theory has stimulated, and captures the theoretical, methodological and practical pathways he opened by his prolific research. (shrink)

On 13 June 2003, elections for both the regional parliaments and the European Parliament were held in Belgium.The percentage of voters casting a preferential vote increased when compared with the previous regional and European elections of 1999, reaching scores clearly higher than 60%. The new electoral laws are one explanation for this increase, together with societal evolutions, such as individualism, anti-party feelings, personalization of polities and the appearance of cartels. In comparison with the federal elections of 2003 however, there was (...) a decrease in prererential voting, due to lower campaign expenditures and to the success of parties that traditionally do not attract many preferential votes. Voters can also cast a vote for several candidates figuring on the same party list, which is contrary to the past done quite frequently now. Finally, more candidates than ever succeeded in becoming elected out oî the order of the party list. (shrink)

The Flemish-nationalist party Volksunie ceased to exist in 2001. Due to deep divisions within the party, it was decided to organise a referendum in which each party-member could vote for a project, outlining the future of the party. Since none of the three projects managed to obtain a 50 %-majority, a requisite to preserve the party name, the name Volksunie disappeared and the party was split up in two new parties. In this article we tried to answer the question which (...) members voted for which project. A mail survey was held among a sample of Volksunie-members. Explanations for voting behaviour were found in characteristics of voters, their viewpoints on issues and their appreciation of notable party leaders. Finally, we analysed the second preference-party of the Volksunie-members in order to estimate with which existing parties the two new parties could possibly form future alliances. (shrink)

At the Belgian parliamentary elections in June 1999, the Flemish nationalist party 'Volksunie' which formed an alliance with the social-liberal ID21 progressed slightly. On July 10, 1999, the party decided to participate in the purple-green-yellow Flemish government, but at the same time they decided to stay out of the federal Belgian government. Two years later, the VU-Party Bureau decided that due to deep divisions within the party it had become impossible for the party to continue. The 15.000 party members were (...) asked to judge about the future of the party. Because no party project managed to obtain a 50 %-majority in the party member referendum, the VU dissappeared. Two new parties - the 'Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie' and 'Spirit' - emerged from the ruins of the VU. The collapse of the VU can be seen as the most far-reaching change in the Flemish party political context of the last decade. This article focusses on the last two and a half years of the VU and on the first year of the N-VA and Spirit. In a first part, achronological overview is build up. This part provides an overview «from day to day» of the events that played a role in the collapse of the VU and the creation of the N-VA and Spirit. The second part of the article draws amore morphological picture of the VU, the N-VA and Spirit: data are presented about the internal organisation of these parties. By offering an extensive overview of facts and figures, it is the intention of the authors to provide a solid guidelinefor further investigation. (shrink)

At 13 June 1999, elections for the regional Parliaments, the federal Parliament and the European Parliament were held in Belgium.The percentage of voters casting a preferential vote at these elections increased again, reaching the highest score ever in Belgian history. On average, 60,9 % of the electorate expressed their preference for one or more candidates. Although voters have the possibility to cast a multiple preferential vote, this possibility is not used very much. A voter who cast a preferential vote, only (...) vote on average for 1,73 candidates.The further increase in preferential votes was a little surprise since strong limitations were imposed upon campaign expenditures and on commercial affichage. Political and social evolutions, such as individualism, anti-party feelings and mediatisation seem to have had a stronger impact upon preferential voting than these material limitations.The use of the preferential vote varies from one constituency to another, from Flemings to Walloons, and from one party to another. There were some notable evolutions. The voters of the extreme-right Vlaams Blok and of the green parties Agalev and Ecolo, who traditionally cast less preferential votes than voters of other parties, have dimished the gap between them and the other parties. Another important evolution is the decrease of pref erential voting in some constituencies in Wallonia. As for the Senate and the European Parliament, more Flemings now cast a preferential vote than Walloons do. The large constituencies used for these elections seem to attract very well-known politicians and as a consequence also very much preferential votes in Flanders.Despite the increase in preferential voting, the order of the list, composed by the party remained in most cases decisive whether or nota candidate was elected. (shrink)

At 18 May 2003, elections for both the Belgian House of Representatives and Senate were held within a new institutional framework: among others the constituencies were enlarged.The percentage of voters casting a preferential vote increased again, reaching the highest score ever with 66,5 %for the House and 68,0 %for the Senate. Voters can also cast a vote for several candidates figuring on the same party list, which was not done very frequently in the past. The number of preference votes on (...) one ballot increased enormously, with naw on average 2,23 for the House and 2,37 for the Senate. More candidates than ever succeeded in becoming elected out of the order of the party list, which was mostly decisive in the past.Thenew electoral laws are one reason for these changes, togethers with some political and social evolutions, such as individualism, anti-party feelings and mediatisation. (shrink)

Organizations such as the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI and the IEEE have recently formulated ethical principles and (moral) values that should be adhered to in the design and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). These include respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, fairness, transparency, explainability, and accountability. But how can we ensure and verify that an AI system actually respects these values? To help answer this question, I propose an account for determining when an AI system can be said to embody (...) certain values. This account understands embodied values as the result of design activities intended to embed those values in such systems. AI systems are here understood as a special kind of sociotechnical system that, like traditional sociotechnical systems, are composed of technical artifacts, human agents, and institutions but—in addition—contain artificial agents and certain technical norms that regulate interactions between artificial agents and other elements of the system. The specific challenges and opportunities of embedding values in AI systems are discussed, and some lessons for better embedding values in AI systems are drawn. (shrink)

How are we to appraise new technological developments that may bring revolutionary social changes? Currently this is often done by trying to predict or anticipate social consequences and to use these as a basis for moral and regulatory appraisal. Such an approach can, however, not deal with the uncertainties and unknowns that are inherent in social changes induced by technological development. An alternative approach is proposed that conceives of the introduction of new technologies into society as a social experiment. An (...) ethical framework for the acceptability of such experiments is developed based on the bioethical principles for experiments with human subjects: non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, and justice. This provides a handle for the moral and regulatory assessment of new technologies and their impact on society. (shrink)

This paper examines why fundamental freedoms are so unevenly distributed across the earth. Climato-economic theorizing proposes that humans adapt needs, stresses, and choices of goals, means, and outcomes to the livability of their habitat. The evolutionary process at work is one of collectively meeting climatic demands of cold winters or hot summers by using monetary resources. Freedom is expected to be lowest in poor populations threatened by demanding thermal climates, intermediate in populations comforted by undemanding temperate climates irrespective of income (...) per head, and highest in rich populations challenged by demanding thermal climates. This core hypothesis is supported with new survey data across 85 countries and 15 Chinese provinces and with a reinterpretative review of results of prior studies comprising 174 countries and the 50 states in the United States. Empirical support covers freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of expression and participation, freedom from discrimination, and freedom to develop and realize one's human potential. Applying the theory to projections of temperature and income for 104 countries by 2112 forecasts that (a) poor populations in Asia, perhaps except Afghans and Pakistanis, will move up the international ladder of freedom, (b) poor populations in Africa will lose, rather than gain, relative levels of freedom unless climate protection and poverty reduction prevent this from happening, and (c) several rich populations will be challenged to defend current levels of freedom against worsening climato-economic livability. (shrink)

Forty-nine commentators have reviewed the theory that needs-based stresses and freedoms are shaped differently in threatening, comforting, and challenging climato-economic habitats. Their commentaries cover the white domain, where the theory does apply (e.g., happiness, collectivism, and democracy), the gray domain, where it may or may not apply (e.g., personality traits and creativity), and the black domain, where it does not apply (e.g., human intelligence and gendered culture). This response article provides clarifications, recommendations, and expectations.

Samenvatting van de grote wijsgerige systemen van Plato tot en met Hegel, gevolgd door een kritische analyse van de metafysica als uitingsvorm van westers intellectualisme.

In "Off Track" art and philosophy are the inspiration to look differently at daily life and organizations. The book is a plea to approach the complexity of the current world with new metaphors. The author calls this "hinking around". She sees that in "square worlds" there is a need for tools to approach entrenched patterns and systems differently and to get thought processes moving. Sarai van de Boel challenges the reader to look at one's own systems from the inside with (...) a philosophical approach. In eight chapters there are eight "tracks" to follow, but it is also possible to go off the rails. More than fifty works of art by well-known and lesser-known artists and designers play a role in these traces. The author questions the essence of their works and asks philosophical questions about phenomena they evoke. With Marlene Dumas, Marinus Boezem, L.A. Raeven, Ed Atkins, Wong Ping, Kazumasa Nagai, Remy Jungerman, Otto Piene, Eiko Ishioka, Campana brothers, Ann Demeulemeester and Kara Walker. The book ends with the Art & Philosophy Strategy, a theoretical framework for the use of art and philosophy. (shrink)

Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an established method for integrating values into technical design. It has been applied to different technologies and, more recently, to artificial intelligence (AI). We argue that AI poses a number of challenges specific to VSD that require a somewhat modified VSD approach. Machine learning (ML), in particular, poses two challenges. First, humans may not understand how an AI system learns certain things. This requires paying attention to values such as transparency, explicability, and accountability. Second, ML (...) may lead to AI systems adapting in ways that ‘disembody’ the values embedded in them. To address this, we propose a threefold modified VSD approach: 1) integrating a known set of VSD principles (AI4SG) as design norms from which more specific design requirements can be derived; 2) distinguishing between values that are promoted and respected by the design to ensure outcomes that not only do no harm but also contribute to good; and 3) extending the VSD process to encompass the whole life cycle of an AI technology in order to monitor unintended value consequences and redesign as needed. We illustrate our VSD for AI approach with an example use case of a SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing app. (shrink)

There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn’t unique to the West, that it didn’t begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was "before philosophy." In Philosophy before the Greeks, Marc Van De Mieroop, an acclaimed historian of the ancient Near East, presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people had (...) a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus’s comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. Van De Mieroop uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and humans; and the rules of law, which confirmed that royal justice was founded on truth. The result is an innovative intellectual history of the ancient Near Eastern world during the many centuries in which Babylonian philosophers inspired scholars throughout the region—until the first millennium BC, when the breakdown of this cosmopolitan system enabled others, including the Greeks, to develop alternative methods of philosophical reasoning. (shrink)

As artefacts, the worlds of digital games are designed and developed to fulfil certain expressive, functional, and experiential objectives. During play, players infer these purposes and aspirations from various aspects of their engagement with the gameworld. Influenced by their sociocultural backgrounds, sensitivities, gameplay preferences, and familiarity with game conventions, players construct a subjective interpretation of the intentions with which they believe the digital game in question was created. By analogy with the narratological notion of the implied author, we call the (...) figure to which players ascribe these intentions ‘the implied designer’. In this article, we introduce the notion of the implied designer and present an initial account of how appreciators ascribe meaning to interactive, fictional gameworlds and act within them based on what they perceive to be the designer’s intentions. (shrink)

Hoewel enorm invloedrijk in Duitstalig Europa, heeft de conceptuele geschiedschrijving (Begriffsgeschichte) tot nu toe weinig aandacht in het Engels gekregen. Dit genre van intellectuele geschiedschrijving verschilt van zowel de Franse geschiedschrijving van mentalités als de Engelstalige geschiedschrijving van verhandelingen door het concept. Aan de hand van practische voorbeelden in de geschiedschrijving wordt deze vorm toegelicht door Bram Kempers, Eddy de Jongh en Rolf Reichardt.

Peterson's objection to my proposal to treat new technologies as social experiments seems straightforward. Doing so would replace the old question ‘Is technology X ethically acceptable?’ (Let us ca...

Here, we focus on the underexplored fictional relevance of videogame glitches. For this purpose, we will make use philosophical theories on fiction, as well as standard suggestions about how best to deal with unintended errors within fiction. Focusing on glitches like that of Red Dead Redemption’s "manimals", we argue that glitches, more than any kinds of mistakes in traditional, non-interactive fictions, can actually have a significant influence on the fictional worlds of the work in which they appear. In particular, we (...) will show that some glitches generate new fictional content without this content being intended by a videogame’s creators, and will offer practical ways for dealing with the inconsistencies that inevitably accompany such glitch-generated fictions. (shrink)

Bundel filosofische voordrachten over de object-kenmerken van voorwerpen van esthetisch welgevallen.

_English_ ASD VII, 5 contains the second part of Erasmus’ _Paraphrasis_ on the apostolic letters. It is the first scientific edition of these Paraphrases. _German_ ASD VII, 5 enthält der zweite Teil von Erasmus' Paraphrasis zur apostolische Briefe des Neuen Testaments. Diese ist die erste wissenschaftliche Edition dieser Parafrasen.

The ninth and last volume of the _Adagia_ (Proverbs) of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus gives an introduction in German and a critical edition of the Latin text of the _Collectanea_, an early version of the _Adagia_ that completely differs from the latter collection.

_Ordo II_ comprises the work that made Erasmus famous, namely the _Adagia_ (Proverbs) some of which were extended into essays. This first volume of the _Adages_ in the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus gives a general introduction to the _Adages_ in German, as well as a critical edition of the Latin text of the first half of the first thousand _Adages_.

The second volume of the _Adagia_ (Proverbs) of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus gives an introduction in German and a critical edition of the Latin text of the second half of the first thousand _Adages_.

_Ordo II_ comprises the work that made Erasmus famous, namely the _Adagia_ (Proverbs) some of which were extended into essays. This first volume of the _Adages_ in the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus gives a general introduction to the _Adages_ in German, as well as a critical edition of the Latin text of the first half of the first thousand _Adages_.

The second volume of the _Adagia_ (Proverbs) of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus gives an introduction in German and a critical edition of the Latin text of the second half of the first thousand _Adages_.

Part Five of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin text of Erasmus’ _Annotations to the New Testament_ presents his notes on Paul’s letters to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and to the Thessalonians 1 & 2.