Mole's (2008 [this issue]) argument that consciousness is a necessary concomitant of attention rests on the question of what is being attended in spatial attention. His answer is space. Some authors, including ourselves, claim that the fact that the processing of unseen objects can be modulated by spatial attention (e.g. Kentridge et al., 1999; 2004; 2008; Marzouki et al., 2007; Sumner et al., 2006) demonstrates that visual attention is not a sufficient precondition for visual awareness. Mole, however, contends that as (...) space, rather than any object that might occupy that space, is what is being attended, these experiments do not constitute evidence for a dissociation between attention and consciousness. We disagree. To understand the source of this disagreement we need to understand the various processes encompassed by the term 'attention' and to consider experimental evidence illustrating how these processes operate. We review evidence that spatial attention can be deployed with the specific goal of determining the properties of objects occupying the attended region of space. One might, for example, attend to a location with the goal of determining the colour of objects occupying that space as efficiently as possible. Mole's assumption that all that is attended in spatial attention is space is not consistent with this evidence. We conclude that attention can be directed at objects by mechanisms of so- called 'spatial attention' without those objects necessarily eliciting conscious visual experience and hence that attention is not a sufficient precondition for visual awareness. (shrink)

In the last two decades we have witnessed considerable efforts directed towards making electronic healthcare records comparable and interoperable through advances in record architectures and (bio)medical terminologies and coding systems. Deep semantic issues in general, and ontology in particular, have received some interest from the research communities. However, with the exception of work on so-called ‘controlled vocabularies’, ontology has thus far played little role in work on standardization. The prime focus has been rather the rapid population of terminologies at the (...) level of fine detail. In this paper, we argue that more efforts are needed on the side of both research and standardization to ensure that the coding systems used in electronic healthcare records enjoy a semantics that is coherent with the semantics of the record. We propose realist ontology as a method to bring about this coherence by means of a robust system of top-level ontological categories. (shrink)

De geopolitieke spanningen aan het begin van de eenentwintigste eeuw hebben een nieuwe interesse in het werk van Carl Schmitt gewekt. Dat geldt ook voor zijn benadering van het vraagstuk van de relatie tussen religie en politiek. Schmitt zoekt hierbij aansluiting bij zulke uiteenlopende en incompatibele auteurs als Juan Donoso Cortes en Thomas Hobbes. Vooral recent onderzoek heeft duidelijk gemaakt dat Schmitts juridisch-politieke denken inderdaad steunt op een aantal politiek-theologische premissen. Toch moeten we de actualiteit van zijn werk vooral zoeken (...) bij zijn politiek-filosofische probleemstelling die aanhaakt bij Thomas Hobbes. Schmitt kan ons vooral leren dat de privatisering van de religies als middel voor hun politieke neutralisering haar grenzen heeft, vooral in een democratische politieke orde. (shrink)

For Gianni Vattimo in his essay Belief , the widespread modern conviction that the longing for lucidity and religiosity are irreconcilable has today become questionable. In this article the author first discusses an actual instance of the philosophical yearning for lucidity, namely ‘cognitive melancholy'. This melancholia already appears in the sociologist Max Weber's diagnoses of the ‘disenchantment of the world' and of the separation of faith and kwowledge. The author sharpens somewhat further the dualism to which Weber pointed, and relates (...) it to Vattimo's attempt at softenung this dualism – of even abrogating it altogether by reconciling Christian religion with modernity. Some critical observations with regard of this attempt evoke the question of whether philosophical lucidity should not be pursued further than Vattimo does. In consequence of this the radical thrust of the Christian religion to which Vattimo claims to be returning can be percieved more clearly. (shrink)

In the past few years in the Netherlands and other multi-ethnic democratic states we hear sharp political and intellectual criticism on the philosophical idea of a ‘multicultural society’. In this article, the author questions the criticism of several liberal and conservative political philosophers, who in their approach give attention to the genealogy of multiculturalism. While a liberal as Brian Barry sees multiculturalism as a regression, the conservative Roger Scruton on the other hand considers this political and intellectual phenomenon as a (...) bridge too far, a symptom of the disintegration of the modern nation. The author argues that these criticisms are forcing us to abandon a form of multiculturalism that considers ‘toleration’ as the highest principle. The ‘toleration-multiculturalist’ gets entangled in inconsistencies and moral paradoxes, as soon as he wants to determine his position towards intolerant and immodest variations of the Volksgeist, the cultural homogeneity and identity. The underlying problem in the discussion among liberals, conservatives and multiculturalists is the ontological vulnerability of cultures. This vulnerability has to do with the fact that cultures, traditions and identities are dependant on the constructive work of autonomous interpreters. Therefore a permanent dialogue with the past is necessary. While nationalists and multiculturalists are inclined to eliminate this vulnerability by fixating and immunizing the cultural and national identity, the liberals are neutralizing the cultural loyalties of people through the privatisation of identities. In contrast to these positions the author pleads for a form of democracy in which the rituals of democracy mediate the permanent dissensus about the meaning of nevertheless being a national community. (shrink)

There are two basic positions where tolerance as political strategy and moral viewpoint is rejected or made redundant. We are hostile to tolerance when we hold that we are defending an objective truth—religious or secular—which should also be defended and maintained by means of political and legal power. And tolerance become superfluous also when the affirmation of plurality becomes total, and tolerance identical to a vive la difference. As recent developments in my own country—the Netherlands—have demonstrated, the political outcome of (...) this last position is remarkably enough not necessarily an all-inclusive relativistic tolerance. It may just as well be one of intolerance towards ‘believers’ of all kinds, in short: tolerance becomes polemical and belligerent. Turning to religious fundamentalism or ultra-orthodoxy could then become a possible reaction to this relativistic and subjectivist position, as demonstrated in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel The Penitent. Between these two positions of hostility or indifference towards tolerance, we can situate that democratic attitude which may rightly be called ‘tolerance’. As ethical position, the tolerant citizen accepts the democratic disjunction between my truth and the symmetrical justice between citizens. As political strategy, a tolerant democratic regime is based upon a political act of exclusion of what I will here call ‘political fundamentalism’. (shrink)

The harmful impact of an adverse event ripples beyond injured patients and their families to affect physicians, nurses, and other health care staff that are involved. These “Second Victims” may experience intense feelings of anxiety, guilt, and fear. They may doubt their clinical competence or ability to continue working at all. Some go on to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.Medical institutions long ignored this problem, preferring to believe that adverse events, or “errors,” occur due to incompetence — the unfortunate (...) work of a few “bad” practitioners who deserve, if anything, a reprimand for their negligence. Study after study has rejected this attribution and shown that adverse events in health care stem primarily from systemic flaws, not “bad apples.” Devastating errors, in other words, can, do, and always will happen in the care of competent, well-trained, and caring practitioners. (shrink)

I. The Seduction of Immanence The vocabulary of humanism—in which concepts such as “man,” “humane,” and “humanity” figure prominently—has always been contentious. The sarcasm of the nineteenth-century Catholic conservative thinker Joseph de Maistre with regard to the abstraction-tainted works of revolutionary thinkers, has become famous: “In my life I have met Frenchmen, Italians, and Russians, but Man, I solemnly declare, I have never met before; perhaps he exists, but not to my personal knowledge.”1These concepts acquire a practical, political, and even (...) polemical meaning when acted upon in the name of man, human rights, and finally humanity against “inhuman” practices…. (shrink)

Decisions related to animal welfare standards depend on farmer’s multiple goals and values and are constrained by a wide range of external and internal forces. The aim of this paper is twofold, i.e., to develop a theoretical framework for farmers’ AW decisions that incorporates farmers’ goals, use and non-use values and to present an approach to empirically implement the theoretical framework. The farmer as a head of the farm household makes choices regarding production to maximize the utility of the household. (...) The overall utility of the farmer is determined by his multiple objectives. For the analysis of multi-objective problems, the multiple criteria decision - making paradigm provides an appropriate theoretical framework. However, theories from the field of social-psychology are needed to facilitate the identification of all relevant aspects in the decision making. The practical use of the conceptual framework is demonstrated using a simple numerical application of a multi-objective programming model. Two workshops were devoted to examining the scientific consistency and the practical usefulness of the approach. Implementing this approach will increase knowledge of the main factors and barriers that determine farmers’ decisions with regard to AW standards. This knowledge is relevant during the development of new AW concepts that aims to supply products that comply with above-legal AW standards for middle-market segments. (shrink)

In the Netherlands, the traditional and famous ‘culture of tolerance’ in the past few years surprisingly became associated with the laxity, half-heartedness, even negligence and indifference with regard to serious problems in a multi-ethnic society. For the time being, a polemical use of the term dominates: tolerance as an aspect of our western ‘superiority’ against barbaric fundamentalism. To regain some grip on the – at least in the Netherlands – apparently ‘hollow’, even politically and morally dubious concept of tolerance, the (...) author returns to the genealogical ‘founding forge’ of the term, the civil war fought in the name of religion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. He demonstrates that tolerance was a key-category in a tiring, centuries-old process during which a ‘Gordian knot’ – the congruence of political power and religious faith – was being abandoned. The historical case-study of the dissident preacher John Bunyan and the early Quakers in seventeenth-century England shows, that during the Age of religious Discord political, social and religious themes are inseparably intertwined, not only from the point of view of the defenders of the status quo, but also from the standpoint of the religious dissidents and their ‘illegal’ preaching. In the intellectual history one can witness the birth of the early-modern concept of a minimal, political concept of tolerance. In a negative sense, this was a departure from attempts to uphold or restore the unity of ‘true faith’ by political coercion. In a positive sense it implied the sufferance of dissident faith and religious practices by a political power ‘in order to prevent the worse from happening’. In this process, political power became more and more an autonomous institution, above society. This minimal, political concept of tolerance has been surpassed by the state-sanctioned, juridical freedom of religion. This implies the democratic disjunction of truth and justice, that is, the recognition of an equal, reciprocal right of everyone to live and articulate his or her own truth. This legislation must be supported by a civic and social culture in which tolerance as an ethical virtue is being practiced and cherished. The most exacting form of tolerance is an attitude which tries to overcome the democratic disjunction of truth and justice, in the direction of an ‘oikoumene of religions’ or a ‘fusion of horizons’. But this subtle attitude can easily slip into an ‘idolatry of difference’ and a laissez faire-tolerance, as seemed to have happened in the Netherlands. In the final parts of this introductory essay the author presents the four articles in this thematic edition of Bijdragen: studies on Cusanus, Spinoza and Leibniz regarding tolerance, and an essay on the problems of dealing with alterity. The author concludes with the contemporary dilemma of tolerance. Should the future form of tolerance be based on universalism accompanied with the political neutralization and privatization of religion, nation, culture? Or should tolerance in a globalizing world be fed from particular traditions and sources? (shrink)

This volume is a critical edition of the ten-year correspondence between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of Europe’s most influential early modern thinkers, and Bartholomew Des Bosses, a Jesuit theologian who was keen to bring together Leibniz’s philosophy and the Aristotelian philosophy and religious doctrines accepted by his order. The letters offer crucial insights into Leibniz’s final metaphysics and into the intellectual life of the eighteenth century. Brandon C. Look and Donald Rutherford present seventy-one of Leibniz’s and Des Bosses’s letters in (...) the original Latin and in careful English translation. Few of the letters have been translated into English before. The editors also provide extensive annotations, deletions, and marginalia from Leibniz’s various drafts, and a substantial introduction setting the context for the correspondence and analyzing the main philosophical issues. (shrink)