The lexical–semantic organization of the mental lexicon is bound to change across the lifespan. Nevertheless, the effects of lexical–semantic factors on word processing are usually based on studies enrolling young adult cohorts. The current study aims to investigate to what extent age‐specific semantic organization predicts performance in referential word production over the lifespan, from school‐age children to older adults. In Study 1, we conducted a free semantic association task with participants from six age‐groups (ranging from 10 to 80 years (...) old) to compute measures that capture age‐specific properties of the mental lexicon across the lifespan. These measures relate to lifespan changes in the Available Richness of the mental lexicon and in the lexical–semantic Network Prototypicality of concrete words. In Study 2, we used the collected data to predict performance in a picture‐naming task on a new group of participants within the same age‐groups as for Study 1. The results show that age‐specific semantic Available Richness and Network Prototypicality affect word production speed while the semantic variables collected only in young adults do not. A richer and more prototypical semantic network across subjects from a given age‐group is associated with faster word production speed. The current results indicate that age‐specific semantic organization is crucial to predict lexical–semantic behaviors across the lifespan. Similarly, these results also provide cues to the understanding of the lexical–semantic properties of the mental lexicon and to lexical selection in referential tasks. (shrink)

"That is no country for old men." So declared William Butler Yeats in "Sailing to Byzantium", a poem picturing "the young in each other's arms." Almost 80 years later, Cormac McCarthy titled his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men to emphasize the plight of Ed Tom Bell, an aging sheriff who retires when faced with violence, drug trafficking. and moral chaos in a small West Texas town. As the lawman of Terrell County, Texas, for over 30 years, Bell (...) has anchored his life in traditional values and common sense. But when a gruesome drug deal goes wrong, and the ruthlessly violent, amoral mercenary Anton Chigurh appears on the scene, Bell's world is shattered. On a... (shrink)

Next SectionThe principle of respect for autonomy has shaped much of the bioethics' discourse over the last 50 years, and is now most commonly used in the meaning of respecting autonomous choice. This is probably related to the influential concept of informed consent, which originated in research ethics and was soon also applied to the field of clinical medicine. But while available choices in medical research are well defined, this is rarely the case in healthcare. Consideration of ordinary medical (...) practice reveals that the focus on patient choice does not properly grasp the moral aspects involved in healthcare. Medical decisions are often portrayed as if doctors and patients in confidence confront specific decisions about examinations or treatment, yet the reality often involves many different participants, with decisions being made over time and space. Indeed, most of the decisions are never even presented to patients, as it would be unethical to suggest something that is not medically justifiable. The options patients do confront are somewhat arbitrarily constructed within the narrow framework of both what is deemed to be medically appropriate and how the healthcare system is organised practically. While the autonomy discourse has proven valuable, a failure to distinguish between the fields of medical research and clinical medicine has generated a focus on patient choice that does not reflect what is really at stake in healthcare settings. This is alarming, because the current discourse misrepresents medical practice in a way that actually contributes to bioethical self-delusion. (shrink)

On the passage spaced Archer-Hind writes: ‘It seems to me that needless difficulty has been raised over this sentence; Хαρέντως έҳων simply means “having his body in a good state,” and to this τοαύτη refers. If the body were in a healthy condition at death and at a healthy age, it would hold out longer, says Plato, against decomposition. Mr. Cope, I think, is quite correct in translating “If a man dies with his body in a vigorous state and (...) at a vigorous period of his life, a very considerable time indeed.” The following sentence συμπεσòν … χρόνον is bracketed by Schanz after Ast. I see no sufficient reason for doing so; the yap is certainly not very obvious but may be explained thus; for if a body is embalmed it remains nearly whole for an indefinite time. Hirschig brackets ώσμερ … ταριχενθέντες very superfluously. Plato says the body of a healthy man who dies in the prime of life lasts a good while; an Egyptian mummy lasts an indefinite time; even without this some parts of the human frame are almost indestructible.’. (shrink)

This essay introduces this special issue on virtue ethics in relation to military AI. It describes the current situation of military AI ethics as following that of AI ethics in general, caught between consequentialism and deontology. Virtue ethics serves as an alternative that can address some of the weaknesses of these dominant forms of ethics. The essay describes how the articles in the issue exemplify the value of virtue-related approaches for these questions, before ending with thoughts for further research.

This article considers that reasoning over archives is a joint enterprise between archivists and researchers and that both groups are increasingly using machine agents to assist them in it. It starts by considering the processing of archivists, researchers and machine agents separately. Using the different perspectives this brings to highlight different aspects of that processing, as a process of sense-making, as scholarly research activity, as practices that realise and achieve data for the drawing of further inference, it reasserts the (...) argument that archives cannot be regarded as raw data to be reasoned over, but must be seen as the result of multiple representative and interpretive acts, of iterative realisation and activation as ‘data’ potentially involving many, many additional actors. It then goes on to consider how the involvement of machine agents fits into and potentially alters this picture by providing more detail about the basis on which they currently perform such acts. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical discussion of moral, legal, and medical issues related to aging, dying, and death. One of its aims is to decide whether and when it might make sense to not resist or bring about the end of one's life. To answer this question it considers views about meaning in life and what makes life worth living. It also evaluates recent attempts to help the general public plan in advance for the end of life. It also considers (...) whether or not physician-assisted suicide is morally permissible and if it should be legalized. (shrink)

I live on a short street in a small town, Hastings‐on‐Hudson, some fifteen miles up the Hudson River from New York City. Over the past decade a number of families have moved in, with about sixteen children among them. More than a bit housebound now because of old age and watching them romping about, I try to imagine what their world will be like when they have reached my present age, some eighty years from now. But I have a (...) problem. I just can’t imagine it. The demographic changes now appearing on the horizon will force unforeseeable changes. What would it have been like in 1930, when I was born, if someone then had to project the future of aging? They could not have guessed.Some momentous changes are now emerging, and they are bound to change the aging picture. What’s being done to respond to those growing pressures? (shrink)

Age rationing is a central issue in the health care priority‐setting literature, but it has become ever more salient in the light of the Covid‐19 outbreak, where health authorities in several countries have given higher priority to younger over older patients. But how is age rationing different under outbreak circumstances than under normal circumstances, and what does this difference imply for ethical theories? This is the topic of this paper. The paper argues that outbreaks such as that of Covid‐19 (...) involve special circumstances that change how age should influence our prioritization decisions, and that while this shift in circumstances poses a problem for consequentialist views such as utilitarianism and age‐weighted consequentialism, contractualism is better equipped to cope with it. The paper then offers a contractualist prudential account of age rationing under outbreak circumstances. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate whether timing in monolingual acquisition interacts with age of onset and input effects in child bilingualism. Six different morpho-syntactic and semantic phenomena acquired early, late or very late are considered, with their timing in L1 acquisition varying between age 3 (subject-verb agreement) and after age 6 (case marking). Data from simultaneous bilingual children (2L1) whose mean age of onset to German was three months are compared with data from early second language learners of German (eL2) (...) whose mean age of onset to German was 35 months as well as with data from monolingual children. To explore change over time, children were tested twice at the ages of 4;4 years and 5;8 years. The main findings were that 2L1 children had an advantage over their eL2 peers in early acquired phenomena, which disappeared with time, whereas in late acquired phenomena 2L1 and eL2 children did not differ. Moreover, 2L1 children performed like monolingual children in early acquired phenomena but had a disadvantage in the late acquired phenomena with the amount of delay decreasing with time. We conclude that age of onset effects are modulated by effects of timing in monolingual acquisition. Contrary to expectation, input in terms of language dominance, measured as the dominant language used at home, did not affect simultaneous bilingual children’s performance in any of the phenomena. We discuss the implications of our findings for the hypothesis that acquisition of late phenomena is determined by input alone and suggest an alternative concept: the learner’s internal need for time to master a phenomenon, which is determined by its complexity and cross-linguistic robustness. (shrink)

The own-age bias (OAB) refers to recognition memory being more accurate for people of our own-age than other-age groups (e.g., Wright and Stroud, 2002). This paper investigated whether the OAB effect is present during construction of human faces (also known as facial composites, often for forensic/police use). In doing so, it adds to our understanding of factors influencing both facial memory across the life span as well as performance of facial composites. Participant-witnesses were grouped into younger(19-35) and older(51-80) adults, and (...) each constructed a single composite from memory of an own- or cross-age target face using the feature-based composite system PRO-fit. They also completed the 40-item Glasgow Face Matching Test (GFMT; Burton, White and McNeill, 2010). A separate group of participants who were familiar with the relevant identities attempted to name the resulting composites. Correct naming of the composites revealed the presence of an OAB for older adults, who constructed more-identifiable composites of own-age than cross-age faces. For younger adults, age of target face did not influence correct naming and their composites we named at the same level as those constructed by older adults for younger targets. Also, there was no reliable correlation between face perception ability and composite construction. (shrink)

The term "creative aging," in the broadest sense, describes an aging policy idea that focuses on highlighting the creativity of older adults in order to prepare individuals and communities to manage old age. Programs focus on the evolution of creativity over the lifespan and aim to provide meaningful participatory engagement, especially through the arts.

"I begin to discern the profile of my death." This sentence from Marguerite Yourcenar's novel Memoirs of Hadrian has stuck with me over the decades. In checking the quote, I learned that this sentence from an early draft caught the novelist's attention, and encouraged her to write the book from perspective of the dying Roman emperor. Something of this magic – finding, in one's earlier thoughts, a key that unlocks a story – is at work in F.M. Kamm's Almost (...) Over, a book constructed as a series of rigorous conversations with her own work, that of fellow American philosophers over the past 50 years, and with public policy, aimed at bringing the profile of death into view, considering how mortality shapes the... (shrink)

_Objective:_ Recent research has indicated that sub-clinical narcissism may be related to positive outcomes in respect of mental and physical health, and is positively related to an extended lifespan. Research has also indicated narcissism levels may decline over the lifespan of an individual. The aims of the present study were to investigate these issues, exploring age-related differences in levels and outcomes of narcissism. Specifically, narcissism’s relationship with loneliness, a deleterious but pervasive state among older-age individuals, was assessed. _Methods:_ A (...) total of 100 middle-aged ( M AGE = 48.07; SD = 5.27; 53% female) and 100 older-aged participants ( M AGE = 70.89; SD = 5.97; 51% female) completed the 40-item Narcissistic Personality Inventory and the UCLA Loneliness Scale, Version 3. _Results:_ Older-age participants had significantly lower levels of narcissism, and significantly higher levels of loneliness than middle-aged participants. Age and narcissism significantly predicted self-reported loneliness levels, with narcissism moderating the relationship between age and loneliness. _Conclusion:_ This study supports existing work, indicating that a degree of narcissism is of benefit to psychological functioning in respect of age-related loneliness, and is found to be a protective factor in mental health. (shrink)

Inflamm‐aging is a relatively new terminology used to describe the age‐related increase in the systemic pro‐inflammatory status of humans. Here, we represent inflamm‐aging as a breakdown in the multi‐shell cytokine network, in which stem cells and stromal fibroblasts (referred to as the stem cell niche) become pro‐inflammatory cytokine over‐expressing cells due to the accumulation of DNA damage. Inflamm‐aging self‐propagates owing to the capability of pro‐inflammatory cytokines to ignite the DNA‐damage response in other cells surrounding DNA‐damaged cells. Macrophages, the major (...) cellular player in inflamm‐aging, amplify the phenomenon, by broadcasting pro‐inflammatory signals at both local and systemic levels. On the basis of this, we propose that inflamm‐aging is a major contributor to the increase in cancer incidence and progression in aged people. Breast cancer will be presented as a paradigmatic example for this relationship. (shrink)

In this paper I describe a future in which persons in advanced old age are cared for entirely by robots and suggest that this would be a dystopia, which we would be well advised to avoid if we can. Paying attention to the objective elements of welfare rather than to people’s happiness reveals the central importance of respect and recognition, which robots cannot provide, to the practice of aged care. A realistic appreciation of the current economics of the aged care (...) sector suggests that the introduction of robots into an aged care setting will most likely threaten rather than enhance these goods. I argue that, as a result, the development of robotics is likely to transform aged care in accordance with a trajectory of development that leads towards this dystopian future even when this is not the intention of the engineers working to develop robots for aged care. While an argument can be made for the use of robots in aged care where the people being cared for have chosen to allow robots in this role, I suggest that over-emphasising this possibility risks rendering it a self-fulfilling prophecy, depriving those being cared for of valuable social recognition, and failing to provide respect for older persons by allowing the options available to them to be shaped by the design choices of others. (shrink)

The objective list account of wellbeing is usually taken to say that the same set of goods is relevant to wellbeing for any person, regardless of age. Coupled with reasonable assumptions about how goods are distributed over the lifespan, that leads to a picture of wellbeing as higher in midlife and lower in childhood and old age. I argue that a stage-relativized objective list theory is more plausible, after exploring several ways to understand the concept of a life stage. (...) On the stage-relativized view, lists of goods that define wellbeing vary in the sense that there are shifting thresholds and subcategories relevant to different stages of life, but also because there are goods that count at one stage and count less or not at all at others. After exploring the list of goods for old age, I argue that the old age form of wellbeing can be welcomed even if the goods it offers are not superior to midlife goods. (shrink)

In this paper I want to raise an extremely ancient philosophical problem: the problem of the nature of philosophy itself. But I do not want to answer this question in the abstract, since it is never asked in the abstract. ‘What is philosophy?’ always means ‘What is philosophy for us here and now?’ It is with philosophy ‘here and now’ that I am concerned. Now this ‘here and now’ can be defined in many different ways; the definition I have chosen, (...) with some arbitrariness, is taken over from Heidegger and Ellul. Philosophy ‘here and now’, as I shall read this, means ‘philosophy in a technological age’. The question I want to raise, therefore, can be formulated as the question whether philosophy is possible in a technological age and, if so, under what conditions. (shrink)

"Those who would know Kierkegaard, the intesely religious humorist, the irrepressibly witty critic of his age and ours, can do no better than to begin with this book. [In it] we find the heart of Kierkagaard. It is not innocuous, not genteel, not comfortable. He does not invite the reader to realx and have a little laugh with him at the expense of other people or at his own foibles. Kierkegaard deliberately challenges the reader's whole existence. "Nor does he merely (...) challenge our existence; he also questions some ideas that had become well entrenched in his time and that are even more characteristic of the present age. Kierkegaard insists, for example, that Christianity was from the start essentially authoritarian--not just that the Catholic Church was, or that Calvin was, or Luther, or, regrettably, most of the Christian churches, but that Christ was--and is. Indeed, though Kierkegaard was, and wished to be, an individual, and even said that on his tombstone he would like no other epitaph than 'That Individual,' his protest against his age was centered in his lament over the loss of authority." --Walter Kaufman, in the Introduction. (shrink)

"Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false belief. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it irrelevant to many (...) people whether they believe true things or not? In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively."–Publisher’s description. (shrink)

Ageing brings together biological, personal, and social horizons. Attempts to reduce it or to privilege one of these dimensions over the others fail to fully capture the phenomenon. The temporality of ageing presents an irreducible complexity. It is the inextricable intertwinement of three temporalities, three rhythms on different scales: biological time, personal-narrative time, and historical time. In all these dimensions something is of crucial concern: time and temporality. Yet, many philosophers who have thought about time (even those who take (...) seriously the lived experience of temporality) have paid little attention to ageing. Drawing from Heidegger, Scheler, and Schutz, this paper argues that ageing is an irreducible complex of different temporalities where one encounters the historicity of the world through a process of losing touch with it. (shrink)

In April 2021, longing to learn first-hand about ageing philosophically, Valery Vino reached out to the legendary Arnold Berleant (who was 89 at the time of writing), to see whether he might be interested in recording a dialogue to this theme, with a companion of his choice. Berleant selected his ideal collaborator Michael Alpert, book designer and collector, poet, senior, and treasured friend. Over the following six months, a rich tapestry of leisurely reading, contemplation and discussion unfolded, culminating in (...) an unrehearsed, free-flowing conversation about ageing, which has been recorded, lightly edited and offered here for readers to share. (shrink)

BÄCKSTRÖM B, ASPLUND K and SUNDIN K.Nursing Inquiry2010;17: 257–268 The meaning of middle‐aged female spouses’ lived experience of the relationship with a partner who has suffered a stroke, during the first year postdischargeStroke consequences present a great long‐term challenge to the spouses of the stroke sufferer. A longitudinal study with a phenomenological hermeneutic approach was used to illuminate the meanings of middle‐aged female spouses’ lived experience of their relationship with a partner who has suffered a stroke, during the first year (...) postdischarge. Four middle‐aged female spouses of stroke sufferers participated in the study. Narrative interviews were conducted 1, 6 and 12 month postdischarge (total of 12 interviews), audio‐taped and transcribed verbatim to a text and interpreted by a phenomenological hermeneutic method inspired by Ricoeur. The findings showed a process over time during which spouses come to know, recognize and acknowledge the residual changes in their partners’ cognitive and emotional conditions and the impact on their relationship. Spouses showed grief due to the loss of the marital relationship they once had and anxiety that they would not be able to continue in an undesired relationship in the future. Even if the partner is still alive, there is a loss to grieve and to be understood, an important meaning of the transition process in the relationship during the first year after the partner's discharge. (shrink)

In 1810, after establishing a reputation as Europe's most prolific philosopher, F. W. J. Schelling embarked on his most ambitious project, The Ages of the World. For over a decade he produced multiple drafts of the work before finally conceding its failure, a "failure" in which Heidegger, Jaspers, Voegelin, and many others have discerned a pivotal moment in the history of philosophy. Slavoj Zizek calls this text the "vanishing mediator," the project that, even while withheld and concealed from view, (...) connects the epoch of classical metaphysics that stretches from Plato to Hegel with the post-metaphysical thinking that began with Marx and Kierkegaard. Although drafts of the second and third versions from 1813 and 1815 have long been available in English, this translation by Joseph P. Lawrence is the first of the initial 1811 text. In his introductory essay, Lawrence argues for the importance of this first version of the work as the one that reveals the full sweep of Schelling's intended project, and he explains its significance for concerns in modern science, history, and religion. (shrink)

This book challenges the hegemonic view that economic calculation represents the ultimate rationality. The West legitimises its global dominance by the claim to be a rational, democratic, science-based and progressive civilisation. Yet, over the past decades, the dogma of economic rationality has become an ideological black hole whose gravitational pull allows no public debate or policy to escape. Political leaders of all creeds are held in its orbit and public language is saturated by it. This dogma has pervaded all (...) spheres of life, ushering the age of post-rationality, especially in English speaking countries. The authors discuss several aspects of post-rational global capitalism still dominated by the Anglosphere: hyper-competition, hyper-consumption, inequality, volatile global financial markets, environmental degradation and the unforeseen effects of the internet-mediated communication revolution. The book concludes by discussing some utopian and dystopian future scenarios and asking whether the West can transcend its crisis of rationality. (shrink)

Individual soccer performance is notoriously difficult to measure due to the many contributing sub-variables and the variety of contexts within which skills must be utilised. Furthermore, performance differs across rather specialised playing positions. In research, soccer performance is often measured using combinations of, or even single, sub-variables. All too often these variables have not been validated against actual performance. Another approach is the use of proxies. In sports research, the age of athletes when winning championship medals has been used as (...) a proxy for determining their age of peak performance. In soccer, studies have used the average age of players in top European leagues or in the Champions League to determine the age of individual peak performance. Such approaches have methodological shortcomings and may underestimate the peak. We explore the use of a new proxy, the age at nomination for major individual awards, to determine the average age at peak individual soccer performance. A total of 1,981 players nominated for major awards from 1956 to 2019 were included, and a subset of 653 retired players was extracted, thus including players’ complete careers. Players’ average ages at nomination, at their first nomination, and at their last ever nomination were calculated, and differences across playing positions were calculated together with changes over time in the average age at peak. Based on our proxy, the age of individual peak soccer performance occurs around 27–28 years, varying across playing positions from 26 to 31 years. A player’s first peak, on average, seems to coincide with known peaks of physiological variables; their last-ever peak occurs long after physiological performance has started to decline, indicating that the decline can be compensated for by other variables. The peak age is higher than previously reported for soccer; however, it is similar to those in other team ball sports. The average age at peak performance has increased over time, especially in the last decade. Our approach of using proxies for unearthing information about hidden features of otherwise immeasurable complex performance appears to be viable, and such proxies may be used to validate sub-variables that measure complex behaviour. (shrink)

Background The ideal basis of age estimation is considered to be a combination of clinical, skeletal and dental examinations. It is not easy to determine how forensic physicians take account of evidence-based data obtained from medical journals in their medical decision-making. The question of what is an ethically acceptable probability that adolescents are incorrectly considered to be over 18 has not been answered. Methods In a retrospective study over 1 year (2007), 498 files (for 141 female subjects and (...) 357 male subjects) regarding age assessment requested by the public prosecutor's office for purposes of criminal or asylum proceedings were reviewed. Chronological age was estimated from a combination of physical examination, radiographic examination of the left hand and determination of dental status. Results Estimates of chronological age in 498 subjects claiming to be 9–14 years old were incompatible with the alleged age in 356 (71%) when made by the forensic physician but in only 17 (3%) when based on data from published studies on age estimation in adolescents. Conclusions The present study suggests that in most cases the forensic physician ignores the adolescent's word. Medical mission and ethics imply a need to listen to the claims of persons in custody, whatever the risk of false claims. This situation should prompt forensic physicians to keep up with published data on estimating the age of adolescents. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Dutch Euthanasia Act applies to patients 12 years and older, which makes euthanasia for minors younger than 12 legally impossible. The issue under discussion specifically regards the capacity of minors to request euthanasia.ObjectiveGain insight in paediatric experts’ views about which criteria are important to assess capacity, from what age minors can meet those criteria, what an assessment procedure should look like and what role parents should have.MethodsA Delphi study with 16 experts (paediatricians, paediatric nurses and paediatric psychologists) who work (...) in Children Comfort Teams in Dutch academic hospitals. The questionnaire contained statements concerning criteria for capacity and procedural criteria. Consensus was defined as ≥80% agreement.ResultsThe experts agreed that five criteria for capacity, found in a previous literature study, are all important. They agreed that some children between ages 9 and 11 could meet all the criteria. Consensus was reached for the statements that the entire medical team should be involved in the decision making and that a second independent expert must assess the case. Experts agreed that the parents’ opinion is relevant and should always be taken into account, but it need not be decisive.ConclusionThis study shows that the age limit of 12 years in the Dutch Euthanasia Act is too strong according to paediatric experts. Letting go of the age limit or lowering the age limit combined with adequate capacity assessment for minors younger than 12 are options that should be discussed further. (shrink)

Le catalogue est une forme de base de la littérature grecque. Elle se trouve, pour nous, la première fois chez Hésiode , se recristallise, en prose, dans l’opposition à la forme sérielle qu’Aristote oppose aux formes bouclées des périodes en prose. Or, on peut suivre sa tradition jusque dans l’antiquité dite tardive. Les Vies de philosophes et de sophistes de l’historien Eunape de Sardes peuvent l’illustrer que cette continuité est toujours comprise comme un recours aux catalogues hésiodiques ou autres de (...) l’époque archaïque. Nous procédons selon trois critères : premièrement, la tendance hésiodique de cacher un récit dans une énumération prétendument sobre se retrouve dans la suite de vies, qui se transforment peu à peu en histoire cohérente; deuxièmement le style sériel de la prose hérodotéenne ou d’Hypéride, lui-même héritier de la forme catalogique, se retrouve chez Eunape; troisièmement Eunape évoque comme modèle le Catalogue des femmes et présente son histoire comme une suite du catalogue des âges tel qu’il le lit dans Les Travaux et les Jours d’Hésiode.The Iron Age is over: Eunap of Sardes and the ‘Catalogic’ Pattern. In Greek literature, the catalogue is a basic pattern of epic song from the work of Hesiod onwards. Aristotle recognises this pattern by distinguishing a serial prose-style, as distinguished from a rounded prose-style, and this special pattern continues to be used even in what is called “late” Antiquity. That the writers were fairly aware of both the pattern and its origin, can be demonstrated by analysing “The Lives of Philosophers and Sophists” by Eunap of Sardes . Our study uses three criteria: firstly, the same Hesiodic tendency to conceal a story under what is presented as a mere list or enumeration, can be found in Eunap’s catalogue of Lives, which transform themselves slowly into a history of 4th century neoplatonistic philosophy; secondly, Eunap uses the same serial prose-style as do Herodotus or Hypereides, the heirs of the catalogic pattern; thirdly, Eunap himself mentions the “Catalogue of Women” as a possible model, and presents his history as a continuation of Hesiod’s catalogue of Ages in “Works and Days”. (shrink)

This volume-"Selected Contemporary Challenges of Aging Policy"-is the most international of all published monographs from the series "Czech-Polish-Slovak Studies in Andragogy and Social Gerontology." Among the scholars trying to grasp the nuances and trends of social policy, there are diverse perspectives, resulting not only from the extensive knowledge of the authors on the systematic approach to the issue of supporting older people but also from the grounds of the represented social gerontology schools. In the texts of Volume VII interesting are (...) both distinct and coherent elements presenting the role of local, regional and global policies in the prism of the countries from which the authors originate: the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Italy, Turkey, and the United States. The chapters show a wealth of methodological approaches to the perception of social policy and its tools. In the texts there are issues related to the idea of active ageing, discrimination against older people in the workplace, comparability of solutions friendly to employment of older adults in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia as well as focused on the importance of educational forms determining an active life in old age. This monograph also attempted to answer the question regarding how to transfer the idea of intergenerational learning into the realm of practice. This issue complements the chapter on the implementation of intergenerational programs in institutions providing long-term care support. The book also outlines a public policy on ageing in the perspective of the changes over the last few decades and the case demonstrating solutions to accelerate self-reliance as a key to active ageing. We hope that seventh volume of our series will be an intellectual stimulus for further international research on change in social policy and will contribute to the dissemination of best practices as well as contribute to positive social change. (shrink)

The ‘dignity and worth of the human person’ emphasised in international human rights instruments resonate strongly in relation to the world’s ageing population, which is projected to be the fastest growing population group in the world and often among the most vulnerable. While elderly persons as a group are heterogeneous and their socio-economic life situation varies significantly between individuals, the need for universal support mechanisms such as non-contributory old-age benefits have been recognised by many states, and currently, over 100 (...) countries around the world provide some form of social pension targeted towards the elderly populations. This article appraises a sample of these old-age pension schemes from the perspective of the right to social security, with particular emphasis on the dignity and worth of the human person as espoused within the international human rights regime. (shrink)

Essays by notable writers--including journalists, scientists, poets, and others--add depth to the stunning images in a collection of photographs that were captured as the photographer hiked the Ice Age National Scenic Trail over the course of the four seasons. Original.

During the Dark Ages, the progress of Western civilization virtually stopped. The knowledge gained by the scholars of the classical age was lost; for nearly 600 years, life was governed by superstitions and fears fueled by ignorance. In this outspoken and forthright book, Lee McIntyre argues that today we are in a new Dark Age--that we are as ignorant of the causes of human behavior as people centuries ago were of the causes of such natural phenomena as disease, famine, and (...) eclipses. We are no further along in our understanding of what causes war, crime, and poverty--and how to end them--than our ancestors. We need, McIntyre says, another scientific revolution; we need the courage to apply a more rigorous methodology to human behavior, to go where the empirical evidence leads us--even if it threatens our cherished religious or political beliefs about human autonomy, race, class, and gender.Resistance to knowledge has always arisen against scientific advance. Today's academics--economists, psychologists, philosophers, and others in the social sciences--stand in the way of a science of human behavior just as clerics attempted to block the Copernican revolution in the 1600s. A scientific approach to social science would test hypotheses against the evidence rather than find and use evidence only to affirm a particular theory, as is often the practice in today's social sciences. Drawing lessons from Galileo's conflict with the Catholic church and current debates over the teaching of "creation science," McIntyre argues that what we need most to establish a science of human behavior is the scientific attitude--the willingness to hear what the evidence tells us even if it clashes with religious or political pieties--and the resolve to apply our findings to the creation of a better society. (shrink)

For families all over the world, going through a pandemic has presented a number of challenges. In particular, social distancing measures involving the closure of schools and day care centers, as well as increasing work hours at home, made parents face very demanding situations. However, we know little about whether parents’ burnout levels are influenced by the age of their children. This study sought to determine whether levels of parental burnout are higher in families with at least one child (...) under the age of four than in families with older children. The second goal was to explore whether having children under 4 years of age moderates the relationship between parental cooperation and PB. A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 651 participants since May 18th until August 27th, 2020. The main results showed that child age is a predictor of PB. Besides, having a child aged 0–4 years old moderates the relationship between parental cooperation and PB. Finally, it was found that in cases where there was at least one child under 4 years of age in the family, with one of the partners who worked remotely, the respondent’s PB rose by 7.9 points. The implications of these results with respect to the consideration of children’s ages in the different parental scenarios were discussed. (shrink)

우주의 기원에 대한 질문은 인류가 학문적인 사고를 시작한 이래 끊임없이 제기되어 왔다. 최근에도 자연과학과 측정 기술의 발달로 새로운 물리학적 통찰에 기반을 둔 빅뱅이론을 바탕으로 초끈이론, 다중우주에 이르기까지 끊임없이 확장되어 가고 있다. 이러한 발전을 토대로 신학과 과학은 긍정적으로 상호 작용할 수 있는 가능성을 찾을 수 있을까? 이를 찾으려는 시도가 일련의 과학자와 신학자들 사이에서 지속적으로 일어나고 있다. ‘무로부터의창조’ 교리를 자연 과학의 놀라운 성과들을 통해 충분히 이해 가능하도록 만들려는 시도가 다양한 방식으로 이루어져 왔다. 그렇지만 이 주제에 대한 논쟁이 현대 사회에서만 벌어졌던 것은 아니다. (...) 중세 시대에, 더 정확히 말하면 스콜라 철학의 융성기였던 13세기에 ‘세계의 영원성’에 대한 첨예한 논쟁이 벌어졌다. 라틴 아베로에스주의자들은 아리스토텔레스의 저술에 나타나는 이론을 근거로 ‘이 세계는 시작이 없이 영원히 존재했다’는 주장을여러 대학의 인문학부에서 강의함으로써 큰 혼란을 야기했다. 이러한 주장은 창세기에 나오는 내용을 바탕으로 ‘시간 안에서의 창조’를 믿고 있던 보나벤투라와 보수적 아우구스티누스주의자라 불리는 신학자들은 받아들이기 힘든 것이었다. 그들은 자신들이 믿고 있던 ‘시간 안에서의 창조’가 이성적으로 증명될 수 있다고 확신했다. 이와는 달리 토마스 아퀴나스는 이미 초기 작품들에서부터 ‘세계의 영원성’이라는 문제를 계속해서 다루면서 앞서 언급한양쪽 진영을 모두 논박했다. 철학자들이 세계의 영원함을 증명한다고 제시한 어떠한 논증도 결정적인 것이 못된다고 주장했다. 그렇지만 그는 또한 보수적 신학자들처럼 세계의 영원성에 대한 부정이 철학적으로 증명될 것이라고 생각하지도 않았다. 중세 시대의 ‘세계 영원성’ 논쟁 안에서는 현대 과학과 신학 사이의 대화에서 취하고 있는 다양한 입장들이 유사한 방식으로 나타난다. 따라서 중세 시대에 각 진영들이 서로에게 가하는 비판에대해 면밀히 검토함으로써 현대의 유사한 입장들이 부딪치게 되는어려움을 해결하기 위한 단서를 발견할 수 있을 것이다. 특히 중세사상가들이 계속해서 사용하는 다양한 구분들은 현대 과학자와 신학자들이 논쟁에서 사용하고 있는 개념들을 깊이 있게 성찰하는계기를 마련해 줄 것이다. 이를 통해 ‘이성과 신앙이 과연 조화될수 있는가’에 대해서도 성찰해 보고자 한다. (shrink)

Previous work has shown that memory performance in older adults is affected by activation of a stereotype of age-related memory decline. In the present experiment, we examined whether stereotype threat would affect metamemory in older adults; that is, whether under stereotype threat they make poorer judgments about what they could remember. We tested older adults (MAge= 66.18 years) on a task in which participants viewed words paired with point values and “bet” on whether they could later recall each word. If (...) they bet on and recalled a word, they gained those points, but if they bet on and failed to recall a word, they lost those points. Thus, this task required participants to monitor how much they could remember and prioritize high value items. Participants performed this task over six lists of items either under stereotype threat about age-related memory decline or not under stereotype threat. Participants from both groups performed similarly on initial lists, but on later lists, participants under stereotype threat showed impaired performance as indicated by a lower average point score and a lower average gamma coefficient. The results suggest that a modest effect of stereotype threat on recall combined with a modest effect on metacognitive judgments to result in a performance deficit. This pattern of results may reflect an effect of stereotype threat on executive control reducing the ability to strategically use memory. (shrink)

Epigenetic control of gene expression by chromatin remodeling is critical for adult stem cell function. A decline in stem cell function is observed during aging, which is accompanied by changes in the chromatin structure that are currently unexplained. Here, we hypothesize that these epigenetic changes originate from the limited cellular capability to inherit epigenetic information. We suggest that spontaneous loss of histone modification, due to fluctuations over short time scales, gives rise to long‐term changes in DNA methylation and, accordingly, (...) in gene expression. These changes are assumed to impair stem cell function and, thus, to contribute to aging. We discuss cell replication as a major source of fluctuations in histone modification patterns. Gene silencing by our proposed mechanism can be interpreted as a manifestation of the conflict between the stem cell plasticity required for tissue regeneration and the permanent silencing of potentially deleterious genomic sequences. (shrink)

Older adults prefer positive over negative information in a lab setting, compared to young adults. The extent to which OA avoid negative events or information relevant for their health and safety is not clear. We first investigated age differences in preferences for fear-enhancing vs. fear-reducing news articles during the Ebola Outbreak of 2014. We were able to collect data from 15 YA and 13 OA during this acute health event. Compared to YA, OA were more likely to read the (...) fear-enhancing article, select hand-sanitizer over lip balm, and reported greater fear of Ebola. We further investigated our research question during the COVID-19 pandemic with 164 YA and 171 OA. Participants responded to an online survey about the COVID-19 pandemic across 13 days during the initial peak of the pandemic in the United States. Both YA and OA preferred to read positive over negative news about the coronavirus, but OA were even more likely than YA to prefer the positive news article. No age differences in the fear of contraction were found, but OA engaged in more health-protective behaviors compared to YA. Although OA may not always report greater fear than YA or seek out negative information related to a health concern, they still engage in protective health behaviors. Thus, although positivity effects were observed in attention and emotional reports, OA still modified their behaviors more than YA, suggesting that positivity effects did not hamper OA ability to respond to a health crisis. (shrink)

Over the last decades, educational programs involving age simulation suits emerged with the ambition to further the understanding of age-related loss experiences, enhance empathy and reduce negative attitudes toward older adults in healthcare settings and in younger age groups at large. However, the impact of such “instant aging” interventions on individuals’ personal views on aging have not been studied yet. The aim of the current study is to address possible effects of ASS interventions on multiple outcomes related to views (...) on aging, i.e., aging-related cognitions, awareness of age-related change and age stereotypes. Moreover, we explore effects on broader constructs with relevance to aging, i.e., perceived obsolescence, risk perceptions, as well as desired support through technology. In a within-subjects design, N = 40 participants went through a series of established geriatric assessments with and without an ASS. Views on aging constructs were assessed in standardized questionnaires before and after the ASS intervention. Changes in aging-related cognitions were observed, with more negative expectations regarding social integration and continuous development after wearing the ASS. AARC and age stereotypes did not change from pre- to post-assessment, but participants reported an increased susceptibility to age-associated impairments and stronger feelings of obsolescence. Those participants who exhibited higher difficulties in geriatric assessments while wearing the suit reported higher openness to be supported by intelligent assistive devices or robots afterwards. We conclude that ASS interventions should only be combined with education on losses and gains during the aging process to prevent negative effects on individual views on aging. On the other hand, potentials regarding technology acceptance and formation of intentions to engage in prevention and health behaviors among middle-aged to young-old adults are discussed. (shrink)

The concept of innovation has entered a turbulent age. On the one hand, it is uncritically understood as ‘technological innovation’ and ‘commercialized innovation.’ On the other hand, ongoing research under the heading responsible research and innovation suggests that current global issues require innovation to go beyond its usual intent of generating commercial value. However, little thought goes into what innovation means conceptually. Although there is a focus on enabling outcomes of innovation processes to become more responsible and desirable, the technological (...) and commercial nature of these processes is rarely questioned. For these reasons, this paper poses the following research question: what concept of innovation is implicitly taken up by the RRI discourse and what implications does this concept have for the societal purpose of RRI? As a first step, we analyze the extent to which the concept of innovation in the RRI literature is uncritically presupposed to be technological. Subsequently, we examine the diverse meanings innovation has had over time and argue that while innovation originally had a political connotation it is only recently restricted to the meaning of technological innovation. We go on to show that even though the concept of technological innovation can contribute to the societal purpose of RRI, this requires certain conditions that are difficult to guarantee. Consequentially, we argue that future research should explore alternative understandings of innovation that better enable the overall feasibility of the emerging frameworks of RRI. (shrink)

Although'Otherness' is an extremely common phenomenon in every society, related research is still at its beginnings.'Otherness' in the Middle Ages is a versatile and complex theme that covers a great number of different aspects, facets, and approaches: from non-human monsters and cultural strangers from remote places up to foreigners from another country or another town; it can refer to ethnic, cultural, political, social, sexual, or religious'Otherness', inside or outside one's own community. In any case, however,'Otherness' is a subjective phenomenon depending (...) on personal views and ascriptions, an issue of'imagination' and experience rather than'reality'. There is neither one single model of alterity nor is'Otherness' a stable phenomenon, but it changes over time and according to the cultural context. All this calls for methodological reflection and needs thorough investigation.00The methodological introduction and the 18 contributions of this volume demonstrate the great diversity of the theme and its different manifestations and perspectives. They tackle the problem from distinct angles and disciplines (history, art history, archaeology, literary history, and philology) in a wide chronological and thematic frame, using different methodological approaches, dealing with different areas (from Northern and Southern Europe to Byzantium and India), perspectives (including law, social order, the past, a sea), and diverse kinds of sources. They examine all kinds of'Otherness' mentioned above, highlight demarcation and rejection, aversion or acceptance, assimilation and integration, thus relativizing a strict dichotomy between'the Self' and'the Other' or between inside and outside. This volume is so far the most comprehensive attempt to tackle the huge problem of'Otherness' in the Middle Ages. (shrink)

_Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism_ provides rich new insights into the history of political thought and clinical knowledge. In these chapters, internationally renowned historians and cultural theorists discuss landmark debates about the uses and abuses of ‘the talking cure’ and map the diverse psychologies and therapeutic practices that have featured in and against tyrannical, modern regimes. These essays show both how the Freudian movement responded to and was transformed by the rise of fascism and communism, the Second World War, (...) and the Cold War, and how powerful new ideas about aggression, destructiveness, control, obedience and psychological freedom were taken up in the investigation of politics. They identify important intersections between clinical debate, political analysis, and theories of minds and groups, and trace influential ideas about totalitarianism that took root in modern culture after 1918, and still resonate in the twenty-first century. At the same time, they suggest how the emergent discourses of ‘totalitarian’ society were permeated by visions of the unconscious. Topics include: the psychoanalytic theorizations of anti-Semitism; the psychological origins and impact of Nazism; the post-war struggle to rebuild liberal democracy; state-funded experiments in mind control in Cold War America; coercive ‘re-education’ programmes in Eastern Europe, and the role of psychoanalysis in the politics of decolonization. A concluding trio of chapters argues, in various ways, for the continuing relevance of psychoanalysis, and of these mid-century debates over the psychology of power, submission and freedom in modern mass society. Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism will prove compelling for both specialists and readers with a general interest in modern psychology, politics, culture and society, and in psychoanalysis. The material is relevant for academics and post-graduate students in the human, social and political sciences, the clinical professions, the historical profession and the humanities more widely. (shrink)

In “Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big Tech Companies” (Saura García in Phil Technol 37(3):1–18, 2024a) I analysed the concept of datafeudalism and its implications for the proper functioning of democracy. In this article, I put forward the hypothesis that big digital companies are exercising domination over the current social context and its different functional spheres, such as politics and democracy, and critique the negative implications that datafeudalism is having for the proper functioning of modern democratic systems. (...) In this regard, Wörsdörfer (Phil Technol 37(3):1–5, 2024) has offered a critical commentary on the content in question. In particular, he focuses his discourse on the concept of the digital panopticon and its link with datafeudalism. The following replay present a reasoned response to these questions. (shrink)

"What do grown children owe their parents?" Over two decades ago philosopher Jane English asked this question and came up with the startling answer: nothing (English 1979). English joins many contemporary philosophers in rejecting the once-traditional view that grown children owe their parents some kind of fitting repayment for past services rendered. The problem with the traditional view, as argued by many, is, first, that parents have duties to provide fairly significant services to their growing children, and persons do (...) not owe repayment for others' mere performance of duty; second, even where parents go above and beyond duty in their loving and generous rearing of their children, the benefits are bestowed, at least on young children, without their voluntary acceptance and consent, and so, again, fail to generate any obligation of subsequent repayment on their part (see Blustein 1982: 182-3). Moreover, the entire idiom of obligation and repayment, in English's 1 words, "tends to obscure, or even to undermine, the love that is the correct ground of filial obligation" (352). English's alternative, however -- that children strictly "owe" their parents nothing except what flows naturally from whatever love and affection exist between them -- also strikes many as problematic. Christina Hoff Sommers offers examples of what seem to be clearly delinquent adult children, who simply don't "feel" like sharing their lives with their aging parents, or providing any emotional or financial support to them, and so don't (Sommers 1986: 440-41). Sommers points out that we need some talk of obligations in order to fill in the cracks in human relationships where love and affection fail: "The ideal relationship cannot be 'duty-free,' if only because sentimental ties may come unraveled, often leaving one of the parties at a material disadvantage'" (450-51). Sommers proposes as her alternative to English that legitimate duties arise out of special relationships defined by social roles: being a father or mother, a son or a daughter, "is socially as well as biologically prescriptive; it not only defines what one is; it also defines who one is and what one owes" (447).. (shrink)

Are there any prima facie reasons that democracies might have for disenfranchising older citizens? This question reflects increasingly salient, but often incompletely theorized complaints that members of democratic publics advance about older citizens’ electoral influence. Rather than rejecting these complaints out of hand, we explore whether, suitably reconstructed, they withstand democratic scrutiny. More specifically, we examine whether the account of political equality that seems to most fittingly capture the logic of these complaints – namely, equal opportunity of political influence (...) class='Hi'>over electoral outcomes – can justify disenfranchising older citizens. We conclude that equal opportunity of influence cannot ground a blanket disenfranchisement of older people and that, taken in conjunction with other general considerations that apply to all sound electoral policies, partial disenfranchisement proposals (i.e. proposals for reducing the electoral influence of older citizens via age-weighted voting) are both quasi-inapplicable and practically unrobust across a relevant range of political contexts. (shrink)

Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), an influential life-span theory, suggests that older adults prefer persuasive messages that appeal to emotionally-meaningful goals over messages that appeal to knowledge-related goals, whereas younger adults do not show this preference. A mixed-factorial experiment was conducted to test whether older adults (≥65 years) differ from younger adults (25–45 years) in their preference for emotionally-meaningful appeals over knowledge-related appeals, when appeals are clearly developed in line with SST. For older adults we found the expected preference (...) for emotionally-meaningful appeals for cancer centers but not for grocery stores and travel organizations. As expected, in most cases, younger adults did not show a preference. Implications for SST-based communication research and for practice are discussed. (shrink)

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) required healthcare providers in the United States to adopt and demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs) by January 1, 2014. In many ways, EHRs mark a notable improvement over paper medical records as they are more easily accessible and allow for electronic searching and sharing of medical history. However, as EHRs have become mandated by ARRA, many nurses now rely upon computers far more heavily during nurse–patient interactions, thereby (...) decreasing the level of direct interpersonal communication between the two. There is evidence that eye contact between nurses and patients positively affects patient satisfaction. Above and beyond the issue of patient satisfaction is the more basic ethical issue of respecting the patient as a person. The author argues that the templates used in electronic health systems have the possibility of eroding the respect for humanity that is the hallmark of nurse–patient relationships, as signalled by the American Nurses Association’s first principle in their Code of Ethics. Using concepts from philosophers Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas, the author provides guidance as to what an ethical interaction between nurse and patient should look like in an age of EHRs. (shrink)

This study will explore the Enlightenment conception of the individual of reason, its attempted formulations in actor biographies, and its ultimate denial by the reality of human identity as multiple, fluid, and dialogical. Such fluidity sought to overcome the marginal status of the stage player through the embodiment of rational models of personality. Some stage celebrities, most notably David Garrick, were offering themselves as public models of identity for the new age of reasoned discourse. This involved the presentation before the (...) public of stage performers as fully realized individuals. However, the unavoidable problem was that presenting an individual, even a renowned stage star, as a living paradigm of the enlightened person of reason would prove elusive. Aside from the inherent contradiction of locating any perfected stereotype in an actual person, the qualities making an individual in full conformity to his or her “reason” did not match the particular cultural qualities demanded for a successful eighteenth-century middle-class Englishman or Englishwoman. Nonetheless, by the last quarter of the eighteenth century, significant advances were made both within the particular profession of acting and before the onstage and offstage public. The acting profession was moving quickly and for the first time in England away from its marginalized status to offer respected agents for cultural change. The new genre of actor biographies as well contributed to this more fully realized formulation of the modern individual. (shrink)