On 14 January 1999, the woman theologian Christina Landman published an article in the religious column, Godsdiens Aktueel, of the Afrikaans daily newspaper Beeld under the heading ‘Poligamie, ditsem!’ (Yes, for polygamy!). In the article, Landman pondered whether polygamy – which is allowed in South Africa for indigenous cultures – would not be an advantage for the Afrikaans society where extra-marital affairs were allegedly high. There was an immediate and long-running reaction to this article in the Afrikaans, as (...) well as in the English media, nationally and internationally, in the printed media, as well as on radio and television. This article will isolate themes in the responding letters of Afrikaans readers. The rejection of polygamy by Afrikaans readers rests on arguments that it is unbiblical, dehumanising to women and impractical. On the other hand, those Afrikaans readers who opt for polygamy argue that multiple-partner-relationships can save marriages from ending in divorce because of extra-marital affairs and can lighten the burden on overworked women. Contribution: This article contributes to the debate on polygamy and in particular from the Afrikaans population in South Africa whose culture and religion forbid polygamy. The discussion and findings as thematised in this article contribute to a body of knowledge not been dealt with in academic research. (shrink)

On 27 December 1994, woman theologian Christina Landman published her first contribution to the religious column Godsdiens Aktueel [Religion in Action] in the Afrikaans daily newspaper Beeld. The reaction of the Afrikaans readers of Beeld to what has been regarded by readers as ‘an alternative voice’ will be presented in this article. Although Landman is still writing for this column and has published 222 articles until 15 March 2023, in this article only the first 57 articles will be (...) considered, published over 8 years between 1994 and 2002. The content and reference of the articles and the reaction of the readers to that have changed with the developments that occurred in Landman’s life story, as well as with the changes in politics and society since the democratic elections of 1994. From 1994 to 1999, Landman invited a reactionary response from readers by addressing them as gender and political activists. However, from the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century, from 2000, Landman addressed the readership from a perspective of the healing of society. The responses of readers in the letters to Beeld, both to the accusing and to the healing Landman, will not be analysed in terms of the presumed political and religious agendas of the readers, but will be presented under themes emanating from their letters in an unmediated fashion. The ‘audience reception’, as a methodology is applied contributing to advance readers’ responses to a modern religious text.Contribution: Contributing to an academic body of research, data gathered from 57 sources over 8 years, represent voices varying in race, gender and religious affiliation, providing for a minority of readers to be liberated through her voice. Audience reception’, as a methodology, enhances the academic debate on the development of thought in a specific culture-religious dialogue. (shrink)

This book attempts to understand regret, an emotion that bridges the actual and the possible, the past and present. Through a wealth of sources it takes up questions of the meaning of regret and how it differs from similar experiences such as remorse and guilt; what sorts of things people most often regret; and the roots of regret in circumstances and in who we are. It takes issue with the view common both in this culture and in leading theories of (...) decision that regret is irrational and dysfunctional - specifying the surprising benefits of regret, its great and good sense. (shrink)

In this paper I propose and formalize a theory of the mass-count distinction in which the denotations of count nouns are built from non-overlapping generators, while the denotations of mass nouns are built from overlapping generators. Counting is counting of generators, and it will follow that counting is only correct on count denotations.I will show that the theory allows two kinds of mass nouns: mess mass nouns with denotations built from overlapping minimal generators, and neat mass nouns with denotations built (...) from overlapping generators, where the overlap is not located in the minimal generators. Prototypical mass nouns like meat and mud are of the first kind. I will argue that mass nouns like furniture and kitchenware are of the second type.I will discuss several phenomena—all involving one way or the other explicitly or implicitly individual classifiers like stuks in Dutch—that show that both distinctions mass/count and mess/neat are linguistically robust. I will show in particular that nouns like kitchenware pattern in various ways like count nouns, and not like mess mass nouns, and that these ways naturally involve the neat structure of their denotation. I will also show that they are real mass nouns: they can involve measures in the way mess mass nouns can and count nouns cannot.I will discuss grinding interpretations of count nouns, here rebaptized fission interpretations, and argue that these interpretations differ in crucial ways from the interpretations of lexical mass nouns. The paper will end with a foundational problem raised by fission interpretations, and in the course of this, atomless interpretation domains will re-enter the scene through the back door. (shrink)

ABSTRACTNon‐governmental aid programs are an important source of health care for many people in the developing world. Despite the central role non‐governmental organizations play in the delivery of these vital services, for the most part they either lack formal systems of accountability to their recipients altogether, or have only very weak requirements in this regard. This is because most NGOs are both self‐mandating and self‐regulating. What is needed in terms of accountability is some means by which all the relevant stakeholders (...) can have their interests represented and considered. An ideally accountable decision‐making process for NGOs should identify acceptable justifications and rule out unacceptable ones. Thus, the point of this paper is to evaluate three prominent types of justification given for decisions taken at the Dutch headquarters of Médecins sans Frontières. They are: population health justifications, mandate‐based justifications and advocacy‐based justifications. The central question at issue is whether these justifications are sufficiently robust to answer the concerns and objections that various stakeholders may have. I am particularly concerned with the legitimacy these justifications have in the eyes of project beneficiaries. I argue that special responsibilities to certain communities can arise out of long‐term engagement with them, but that this type of priority needs to be constrained such that it does not exclude other potential beneficiaries to an undesirable extent. Finally, I suggest several new institutional mechanisms that would enhance the overall equity of decisions and so would ultimately contribute to the legitimacy of the organization as a whole. (shrink)

Offender populations experience their incarceration through different lenses and often as a spiritual journey of suffering. During 2017 and 2018 a study was conducted by the authors with 30 men serving long-term sentences in Correctional Centre A, Zonderwater Management Area in the Gauteng province of South Africa. Following interviews and focus group sessions, the authors report on participants’ representations on how their (re)constructed views of God assist them to find meaning in suffering while incarcerated. Narrative inquiry as a philosophical framework (...) was applied, which presupposes equality between the researcher and the participant, the unmediated representation of words as data, the researcher as auto-ethnographer and respectful submission to subjectivity. Participants’ views of God are thematised according to sets of God-images, firstly, as identified by Van der Ven in his book God Reinvented? ( 1998 ), adapted by the authors to suit the contents of the participants’ God talk. Secondly, the ‘God-images in Africa’ were applied. The participants’ (re)constructed God-images are divided into two categories: images that feed on the binary between divine and human (transcendence) and images that function in the dialogical spaces between divine and human where the incarcerated have internalised an external God (immanence). Binary images of God are presented by the apathetic God, retributive God, controlling God and the purifying God. However, a significant number of participants expressed their belief in God through the dialogical image of the compassionate God, and the suffering God as co-sufferer. The role of Africanness in constructing these God-images constitutes a special point of inquiry in this article, as reflected in the images of God defined by God the Great Ancestor and Divine Spirit, and God with whom a mystical union is formed. (shrink)

A well‐known typological observation is the dominance of subject‐initial word orders, SOV and SVO, across the world's languages. Recent findings from gestural language creation paradigms offer possible explanations for the prevalence of SOV. When asked to gesture transitive events with an animate agent and inanimate patient, gesturers tend to produce SOV order, regardless of their native language biases. Interestingly, when the patient is animate, gesturers shift away from SOV to use of other orders, like SVO and OSV. Two competing hypotheses (...) have been proposed for this switch: the noisy channel account (Gibson et al., 2013) and the role conflict account (Hall, Mayberry, & Ferreira, 2013). We set out to distinguish between these two hypotheses, disentangling event reversibility and patient animacy, by looking at gestural sequences for events with two inanimate participants (inanimate‐inanimate, reversible). We replicated the previous findings of a preference for SOV order when describing animate‐inanimate, irreversible events as well as a decrease in the use of SOV when presented with animate‐animate, reversible events. Accompanying the drop in SOV, in a novel condition we observed an increase in the use of SVO and OSV orders when describing events involving two animate entities. In sum, we find that the observed avoidance of SOV order in gestural language creation paradigms when the event includes an animate agent and patient is driven by the animacy of the participants rather than the reversibility of the event. We suggest that findings from gestural creation paradigms are not automatically linkable to spoken language typology. (shrink)

Obwohl die Substitutionsbehandlung nachweislich den Gesundheitszustand opiatabhängiger Patienten verbessern und die Beschaffungskriminalität reduzieren kann, bestehen enge gesetzliche Regelungen, die die Therapiefreiheit der behandelnden Ärzte stark begrenzen: So werden durch das Betäubungsmittelgesetz und die zugehörigen Verordnungen nicht nur das Behandlungsziel (Abstinenz) sondern auch notwendige Therapiebausteine definiert, die darauf ausgerichtet sind, die Therapietreue des Patienten zu kontrollieren. Deutsche Ärzte, die die strengen Auflagen nicht strikt befolgten, wurden zu Gefängnisstrafen verurteilt. Wie der Artikel zeigt, fördern die bestehenden Gesetze eine „kontrollierende“ statt einer motivierenden (...) ärztlichen Behandlung, ohne wichtige Ziele, wie den Schutz der Allgemeinheit vor einer illegalen Verbreitung illegaler Opioide, vollständig zu erreichen. Zusammenfassend zeigt der Artikel, dass eine stärker am Wohl der Patienten ausgerichtete Substitutionsbehandlung (einschließlich notwendiger Kontrolluntersuchungen) mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit auch die Öffentlichkeit wirksamer vor den potenziellen Gefahren einer illegalen Verbreitung von gefährlichen Opioiden schützt als die Befolgung abstrakter, restriktiver gesetzlichen Normen. (shrink)

Disease-mongering, or the medicalisation of aspects of daily life in an attempt to generate commercial profit for a party other than the person whose complaint is medicalised, is a newly recognized and legitimate source of concern for both consumers and deliverers of health care. The interest brought to this area by the academy has the potential to acknowledge and address the consequences of the practice. However, before disease-mongering can establish itself firmly as an area of scholarly concern, researchers must understand (...) that the critique is not just about identifying commercial intent, but also about naming the mechanism through which discourses of health, cure and self-management are positioned. In this paper, I argue that a critical reflection on the construction of disease concepts and the mongering of their cure must include discussions of the foundations of health and the clinical encounter. I identify a number of pivotal issues within these themes that should be explored in order to ensure an unambiguous and productive discussion of disease-mongering and its correlates. (shrink)

It would be hard to imagine medical care without diagnosis, so pivotal is it to how Western medicine is practiced. Diagnosis is one of medicine’s principle tools, bringing with it as it does an explanation for what ails the sick person, an idea of what the treatment options might be, a prognosis, and much more. It assigns responsibility for illness, within medicine and outside. It will determine which specialty or sub-specialty can take care of which disorders. It also explains causation, (...) pointing the finger variably at the patient for what she ought to have done, or to the gene for what one can do little about. Diagnosis structures and explains relationships as it provides the impetus for the sick.. (shrink)

The recent discovery of a manuscript has allowed historians to understand the medical routine in a hospital known as the Schneidhaus in Augsburg between the sixteenth and nineteenth century. The context of the manuscript shows that at this institution, non-academic specialists, generally members of the guild of barber-surgeons and barbers, routinely performed surgical cures of intestinal hernia, scrotal swellings, and vesical calculus. The Schneidhaus exclusively admitted patients applying for such specialised treatments and offered no other services. Such a degree of (...) specialisation within medical establishments seems to have only existed in the Holy Roman Empire at this institution founded by the Fugger family in Augsburg. We propose that the Schneidhaus was either itself a model hospital or adopted a model from another site in Europe. In this paper, we investigate the connections of the Schneidhaus to the practice of surgeons in both Italy and Spain. In Italy, a momentous new technique for identifying and removing vesical calculi was first published in 1522. Although surgical treatment was established in Italian hospitals, they tended not to specialise in such surgical treatment exclusively. Moreover, at the time of the hospital’s foundation, the Fugger shifted their economic and social focus from Venice to the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain, research in the history of medicine is complicated by outdated notions about specialised surgery, not unlike those that were recently still current regarding the Holy Roman Empire. We attempt to disprove these notions and use the exemplary textbook of one academic physician, Francisco Díaz, to approach specialized surgical practice in sixteenth-century Spain. In his work, Díaz describes the new Italian surgical method in detail and recognizes the importance of craftsman surgeons to both its development and application. However, he also argues for an expanded role for academic physicians as supervisors of craftsman surgeons’ work. All this is suggestive of a greater network of surgical professionals within which both the methods of the craft and its organisational structures were transported. As such, the Schneidhaus can be seen as a node that embodied the institutionalization of surgical practice as a European phenomenon. Further research is necessary, and we propose how this might be carried out to reveal these historical phenomena in their full complexity. (shrink)

Centering Women of Color in Academic Counterspaces offers a rich multidimensional account of teaching, learning, and classroom dynamics among diverse students in a classroom counterspace centered on women of color. This book provides insights into learning outcomes, the process of transformational learning, and some of the challenges related to covering social justice topics like oppression, intersectionality, identity, beauty, body image, and inclusive leadership in a college classroom.

Conflict adaptation reflects the increase in cognitive control after previous conflict between task-relevant and task-irrelevant information. Tonic arousal elicited by emotional words e...

In his 1963 response to an open letter from eight white religious leaders chastising his involvement in Birmingham, Martin Luther King, Jr. explained that civil rights activists’ blatant breaking of some laws while obeying others was the result of two types of laws: just laws and unjust laws. Civil rights activists believed they had a legal responsibility to obey just laws and a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Today, new civil rights struggles continue to challenge unjust laws that shred (...) the fabric of democracy that America espouses. Drawing upon both the Civil Rights Movement and the contemporary Movement for Black Lives, this article argues that unjust laws and practices must be broken and challenged before a just society is established. It identifies four ethical strategies for social activism: collective work and responsibility, strategic timing and economic disconnection, political mobilization, and faithful perseverance. (shrink)

This article focuses on both daily forms of weakness of will as discussed in the philosophical debate and psychopathological phenomena as impairments of decision making. We argue that both descriptions of dysfunctional decision making can be organized within a common theoretical framework that divides the decision making process in three different stages: option generation, option selection, and action initiation. We first discuss our theoretical framework, focusing on option generation as an aspect that has been neglected by previous models. In the (...) main body of this article, we review how both philosophy and neuropsychiatry have provided accounts of dysfunction in each decision-making stage, as well as where these accounts can be integrated. Also, the neural underpinnings of dysfunction in the three different stages are discussed. We conclude by discussing advantages and limitations of our integrative approach. (shrink)

Much of the time, human beings seem to rely on habits. Habits are learned behaviours directly elicited by context cues, and insensitive to short-term changes in goals: therefore they are sometimes irrational. But even where habitual responses are rational, it can seem as if they are nevertheless not done for reasons. For, on a common understanding of habitual behaviour, agents’ intentions do not play any role in the coming about of such responses. This paper discusses under what conditions we can (...) say that habitual responses are, after all, done for reasons. We show how the idea that habitual behaviour cannot be understood as ‘acting for reasons’ stems from a widely but often implicitly held theoretical framework: the causal theory of action. We then propose an alternative, Anscombean understanding of intentional action, which can account for habitual responses being done for reasons. (shrink)

A large body of information and opinion related to COVID-19 is being shared via social media platforms. Recent reports have raised concerns about the reliability and verifiability of said information being disseminated and the way systems, processes and design of the platforms facilitates such spread. This, alongside other areas of concern, has resulted in several social media platforms taking steps towards tackling the spread of mis- and dis-information. Here we discuss approaches to online public health messaging from a range of (...) sources during COVID-19, with a focus on official and non-official sources in the United Kingdom. We highlight issues for ongoing public health decisions, and the potential impact for the future course of the pandemic. (shrink)

What attitude does someone manifesting implicit bias really have? According to the default representationalist picture, implicit bias involves having conflicting attitudes (explicit versus implicit) with respect to the topic at hand. In opposition to this orthodoxy, dispositionalists argue that attitudes should be understood as higher-level dispositional features of the person as a whole. Following this metaphysical view, the discordance characteristic of implicit bias shows that someone’s attitude regarding the topic at hand is not-fully-manifested or ‘in-between’. However, so far few representationalists (...) have been convinced by dispositionalist arguments, largely because dispositionalism cannot provide explanations in terms of underlying processes. We argue that if dispositionalism wants to be a genuine contender, it should make clear what it has to offer in terms of understanding of implicit bias. As a concrete proposal, we combine dispositionalist metaphysics with the idea that our normative practices of attitude ascription partly determine what it means to have an attitude. We show that such regulative dispositionalism can account for two prominent normative features of implicit bias. We conclude by suggesting that in order to engage in a meaningful debate with representationalism, dispositionalists might have to put the question ‘what counts as a good explanation?’ back on the table. (shrink)

Building on the strengths of the first edition, this accessible and user-friendly textbook explores the strategies of comparative research in political science. It begins by examining different methods, then highlights some of the big issues in comparative politics using a wealth of topical examples before discussing the new challenges in the area. Thoroughly revised throughout with the addition of extensive new material, this edition is also supplemented by the availability online of the author's datasets. The book is designed to make (...) a complex subject easier and more accessible for students, and contains: * briefing boxes explaining key concepts and ideas * suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter * a glossary of terms. (shrink)

Recent studies of scientific interaction based on agent-based models suggest that a crucial factor conducive to efficient inquiry is what Zollman has dubbed ‘transient diversity’. It signifies a process in which a community engages in parallel exploration of rivaling theories lasting sufficiently long for the community to identify the best theory and to converge on it. But what exactly generates transient diversity? And is transient diversity a decisive factor when it comes to the efficiency of inquiry? In this paper we (...) examine the impact of different conditions on the efficiency of inquiry, as well as the relation between diversity and efficiency. This includes certain diversity-generating mechanisms previously proposed in the literature, as well as some factors that have so far been neglected. This study is obtained via an argumentation-based ABM. Our results suggest that cautious decision-making does not always have a significant impact on the efficiency of inquiry while different evaluations underlying theory-choice and different social networks do. Moreover, we find a correlation between diversity and a successful performance of agents only under specific conditions, which indicates that transient diversity is sometimes not the primary factor responsible for efficiency. Altogether, when comparing our results to those obtained by structurally different ABMs based on Zollman’s work, the impact of specific factors on efficiency of inquiry, as well as the role of transient diversity in achieving efficiency, appear to be highly dependent on the underlying model. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In Treatise 1.4.4, on behalf of modern philosophers, Hume described a causal argument that shows that our impressions of secondary qualities do not resemble qualities of objects themselves. However, in their respective arguments, Hume’s philosophical predecessors did not argue causally, but appealed to contrary qualities. I argue that Hume’s presentation was not simply a “gratuitous” stylistic difference, but an important correction of his predecessors in light of his own philosophical discoveries. -/- RÉSUMÉ : Dans le Traité 1.4.4, Hume a (...) présenté au nom des philosophes modernes un argument causal qui démontre que nos impressions des qualités secondaires ne ressemblent pas aux qualités des objets eux-mêmes. Les prédécesseurs de Hume n’ont pourtant pas employé d’argument causal, mais l’argument des qualités contraires. Je soutiens que la présentation qu’en a fait Hume n’est pas simplement à mettre au compte d’une différence stylistique «gratuite» mais est une correction importante dans la foulée de ses propres découvertes philosophiques. (shrink)

Traditionally, self-control is conceptualized in terms of internal processes such as willpower or motivational mechanisms. These processes supposedly explain how agents manage to exercise self-control or, in other words, how they act on the basis of their best judgment in the face of conflicting motivation. Against the mainstream view that self-control is a mechanism or set of mechanisms realized in the brain, several authors have recently argued for the inclusion of situated factors in our understanding of self-control. In this paper, (...) we review such recent attempts from the perspective of situated accounts of cognition and argue that even though these accounts integrate situational features, they ultimately still rely on an orthodox, neurocentric view of self-control. Instead, we will argue that in order to develop a really situated account it is necessary to radically rethink what self-control is. Building on recent work on extended skill, we will develop an outline of a really situated account of self-control. (shrink)

The comorbidity of personality disorders and mental disorders is commonly understood through three types of theoretical models: either a) personality disorders precede mental disorders, b) mental disorders precede personality disorders, c) mental disorders and personality disorders share common etiological grounds. Although these hypotheses differ with respect to their idea of causal direction, they all imply a latent variable perspective, in which it is assumed that either personality and mental disorders are latent variables that have certain causal relations [models a) and (...) b)]; or that, as in model c), the common etiology is in fact a latent variable that causes symptomatology of both personality and mental disorders. We aim to provide another perspective on the comorbidity between personality and mental disorders, namely a network perspective. To this end, we investigated Major Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder and hypothesized that symptoms of BPD and MD could interact with one another rather than being caused by a latent variable. To illustrate this theoretical network conceptualization of the comorbidity of BPD and MD we analyzed a cross-sectional clinical dataset of 376 patients who were asked to complete the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Disorders and the Beck Depression Inventory II. The results identify direct associations between symptoms of MD and BPD. If we take the links in this empirical network to be ‘substantive', this suggests a radical shift of our current conceptualization of the comorbidity of mental disorders and personality disorders. (shrink)

This is an article about bodily pleasures, words and some of the relations between them. It is a turn in a conversation between the author (‘me’) and Marilyn Strathern (‘Strathern’). It talks theory, but not in general. Instead, this theory gets situated in traditions; specified; in relation to concerns; and exemplified with stories to do with the term lekker. This article is in English, but lekker is not an English term. It is Dutch. The stories come from long-term field work (...) in various sites and situations close to home for the author, who is also Dutch. They were driven by a concern with fostering bodily pleasures in contexts such as nursing homes and dieting practices where nutrients and calories are granted more importance. The difficulties of translating lekker (tasty? pleasant? delicious? fun? nice?) are used as a set of intellectual resources. In contrast to Strathern, the author insists on the fleshy particularities of the practices where lekker is spoken. Along with Strathern, the author seeks to escape nature/culture divides. Inspired by Strathern, the author follows lekker around merographically – that is, along iterative trails and between sites and situations that are connected, but only partially so. In homage to Strathern, finally, the author plays with the question of who the collective subject of anthropological theory – we – might be, and who belongs to the others that form its object – they. (shrink)