In this paper, we give an axiomatization of the ordinal number system, in the style of Dedekind’s axiomatization of the natural number system. The latter is based on a structure $(N,0,s)$ consisting of a set N, a distinguished element $0\in N$ and a function $s\colon N\to N$. The structure in our axiomatization is a triple $(O,L,s)$, where O is a class, L is a class function defined on all s-closed ‘subsets’ of O, and s is a class function $s\colon O\to (...) O$. In fact, we develop the theory relative to a Grothendieck-style universe (minus the power set axiom), as a way of bringing the natural and the ordinal cases under one framework. We also establish a universal property for the ordinal number system, analogous to the well-known universal property for the natural number system. (shrink)

This essay surveys the main objections to aesthetic hedonism, the view that aesthetic value is reducible to the value of aesthetic pleasure or experience. Hedonism is the dominant view of aesthetic value, but a spate of recent criticisms has drawn its accuracy into question. I introduce some distinctions crucial to the criticisms, before using the bulk of the essay to identify and review six major lines of argument that hedonism's critics have employed against it. Whether or not these arguments suffice (...) to refute hedonism decisively, I argue that its privileged status, as the sole contender in aesthetic value theory, is detrimental to downstream research on aesthetic phenomena. The essay concludes with an overview of current work and promising avenues of inquiry into non-hedonic alternatives. (shrink)

On a widely held view in aesthetics, appreciation requires disinterested attention. George Dickie famously criticized a version of this view championed by the aesthetic attitude theorists. I revisit his criticisms and extract an overlooked challenge for accounts that seek to characterize appreciative engagement in terms of distinctive motivation: at minimum, the motivational profile such accounts propose must make a difference to how appreciative episodes unfold over time. I then develop a proposal to meet this challenge by drawing an analogy between (...) how attention is guided in appreciation and how practical action is guided in ‘striving play’—a mode of game play recently foregrounded in the philosophy of games. On the resulting account, appreciation involves an ‘inverted’ motivational structure: the appreciating agent's attention is guided by cognitive goals taken up instrumentally, for the sake of the cognitive activity that results from attending under the guidance of those goals. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Nelson Goodman’s attempt to analyse the expressiveness of artworks in semantic terms has been widely criticised. In this paper I try to show how the use of an adapted version of his concept of exemplification, as proposed by Mark Textor, can help to alleviate the worst problems with his theory of expression. More particularly I argue that the recognition of an intention, which is central to Textor’s account of exemplification, is also fundamental to our understanding of expressiveness in art. Moreover (...) I propose that the recognition of this intention depends on our interpretation of the artwork – an insight Goodman tried to capture with his assertion that our attributions of expressive properties to artworks function metaphorically. The realisation of the context-dependence of our expressive judgements about art and, hence, of the central role interpretation plays in these judgements, I contend, counts in favour of theories of expression like Goodman’s that focus on semantic concerns. (shrink)

McMahon, Jennifer A. Routledge. 2018. pp. 230. £115.

The next World Congress of Bioethics will be held in Doha, Qatar. Although this location provides opportunities to interact with a more culturally diverse audience, to advance dialogue between cultures and religions, offer opportunities for mutual learning, there are also huge moral concerns. Qatar is known for violations of human rights ‐ including the treatment of migrant workers and the rights of women ‐ corruption, criminalization of LGBTQI+ persons, and climate impact. Since these concerns are also key (bio)ethical concern we (...) call for a broad debate within the bioethics community whether organizing and attending the World Congress in Qatar is ethically problematic and how ethical concerns should be dealt with. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Route memory is frequently assessed in virtual environments. These environments can be presented in a fully controlled manner and are easy to use. Yet they lack the physical involvement that participants have when navigating real environments. For some aspects of route memory this may result in reduced performance in virtual environments. We assessed route memory performance in four different environments: real, virtual, virtual with directional information (compass), and hybrid. In the hybrid environment, participants walked the route outside on an open (...) field, while all route information (i.e., path, landmarks) was shown simultaneously on a handheld tablet computer. Results indicate that performance in the real life environment was better than in the virtual conditions for tasks relying on survey knowledge, like pointing to start and end point, and map drawing. Performance in the hybrid condition however, hardly differed from real life performance. Performance in the virtual environment did not benefit from directional information. Given these findings, the hybrid condition may offer the best of both worlds: the performance level is comparable to that of real life for route memory, yet it offers full control of visual input during route learning. (shrink)

Spatial relations are central to geometrical thinking. With respect to the classical elementary geometry of Euclid’s Elements, a distinction between co-exact, or qualitative, and exact, or metric, spatial relations has recently been advanced as fundamental. We tested the universality of intuitions of these relations in a group of Senegalese and Dutch participants. Participants performed an odd-one-out task with stimuli that in all but one case display a particular spatial relation between geometric objects. As the exact/co-exact distinction is closely related to (...) Kosslyn’s categorical/coordinate distinction, a set of stimuli for testing all four types was used. Results suggest that intuitions of all spatial relations tested are universal. Yet, culture has an important effect on performance: Dutch participants outperformed Senegalese participants and stimulus layouts affect the categorical and coordinate processing in different ways for the two groups. Differences in level of education within the Senegalese participants did not affect performance. (shrink)

The book in front of you is the first international academic volume on the legal, philosophical and economic aspects of the rise of 3D printing. In recent years 3D printing has become a hot topic. Some claim that it will revolutionize production and mass consumption, enabling consumers to print anything from clothing, automobile parts and guns to various foods, medication and spare parts for their home appliances. This may significantly reduce our environmental footprint, but also offers potential for innovation and (...) creativity. At the same time 3D printing raises social, ethical, regulatory and legal questions. If individuals can print anything they want, how does this affect existing systems of intellectual property rights? What are the societal consequences of the various types of products one can print with a 3D printer, for example weapons? Should all aspects of 3D printing be regulated, and if so, how and to what ends? How will businesses (have to) change their way of working and their revenue model in light of the shift to printing-on-demand? How will the role of product designers change in a world where everyone has the potential to design their own products? These and other questions are addressed in high quality and in-depth contributions by academics and experts, bringing together a wide variety of academic discussions on 3D printing from different disciplines as well as presenting new views, broadening the discussion beyond the merely technical dimension of 3D printing. Bibi van den Berg is Associate Professor at eLaw, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Simone van der Hof is Full Professor at eLaw in Leiden and Eleni Kosta is Associate Professor at TILT, the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. (shrink)

In this position paper, we describe a number of methodological and philosophical challenges that arose within our interdisciplinary Digital Humanities project CatVis, which is a collaboration between applied geometric algorithms and visualization researchers, data scientists working at OCLC, and philosophers who have a strong interest in the methodological foundations of visualization research. The challenges we describe concern aspects of one single epistemic need: that of methodologically securing (an increase in) trust in visualizations. We discuss the lack of ground truths in (...) the (digital) humanities and argue that trust in visualizations requires that we evaluate visualizations on the basis of ground truths that humanities scholars themselves create. We further argue that trust in visualizations requires that a visualization provides provable guarantees on the faithfulness of the visual representation and that we must clearly communicate to the users which part of the visualization can be trusted and how much. Finally, we discuss transparency and accessibility in visualization research and provide measures for securing transparency and accessibility. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

With technological possibilities in healthcare steadily increasing, more tools for digital cognitive rehabilitation become available. Acceptance of such technological advances is crucial for successful implementation. Therefore, we examined technology acceptance specifically for this form of rehabilitation in a sample of healthcare providers involved in cognitive rehabilitation. An adjusted version of the Technology Acceptance Model questionnaire was used, including the subscales for perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, and intention to use, which all contribute to actual use of a (...) specific technology. Results indicate a generally favorable attitude toward the use of digital cognitive rehabilitation and positive responses toward the TAM constructs. Only for subjective norm, a neutral mean response was found, indicating that this could pose a potential obstacle toward implementation. Potential differences between subgroups of different age, gender, and professional background were assessed. Age and gender did not affect the attitude toward digital cognitive rehabilitation. Occupational therapists showed lower scores than healthcare psychologists and physiatrists with regard to perceived usefulness, possibly linked to a difference in operational and managerial tasks. The findings of his study stimulate further implementation of digital cognitive rehabilitation, where the role of subjective norms should be specifically considered. (shrink)

In 1995, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (born 1942) published the first volume of what would later develop into a series of political-philosophical studies under the title Homo Sacer. The series began with Homo Sacer: Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life) and was concluded in 2014 with L’uso dei corpi (The Use of Bodies). Now that the project has been completed, we aim to make a first attempt at an evaluation in this (...) special issue. [In Dutch: Van de Italiaanse filosoof Giorgio Agamben (1942) verscheen in 1995 het eerste deel van wat onder de noemer Homo sacer zou uitgroeien tot een reeks politiek-filosofische studies. De reeks werd geopend met Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Homo sacer. De soevereine macht en het naakte leven) en in 2014 afgesloten met L’uso dei corpi (Het gebruik van lichamen). Nu het project is afgerond willen wij in dit themanummer een poging doen tot een eerste evaluatie.]. (shrink)

This study investigated the relationship between the development of students? self-regulated learning and students? perceptions of the learning environment in terms of autonomy support, the emphasis on relevance and collaborative learning. In addition, we compared innovative learning environments that aim to enhance self-regulated learning with traditional learning environments. Questionnaires for measuring self-regulated learning and perceptions of the learning environment were administered by 648 students. Self-regulated learning was measured at the start of secondary education and again half way through the first (...) year. The results point to the importance of how students perceive the learning environment for self-regulated learning. There was a positive relationship between autonomy support and relevance and self-regulated learning. Furthermore, students in innovative environments perceived more autonomy support, more emphasis on relevance and more collaborative learning than those in traditional environments. Students in innovative environments, however, reported no more self-regulated learning than students in traditional environments. (shrink)

The cognitive processing of spatial relations in Euclidean diagrams is central to the diagram-based geometric practice of Euclid's Elements. In this study, we investigate this processing through two dichotomies among spatial relations—metric vs topological and exact vs co-exact—introduced by Manders in his seminal epistemological analysis of Euclid's geometric practice. To this end, we carried out a two-part experiment where participants were asked to judge spatial relations in Euclidean diagrams in a visual half field task design. In the first part, we (...) tested whether the processing of metric vs topological relations yielded the same hemispheric specialization as the processing of coordinate vs categorical relations. In the second part, we investigated the specific performance patterns for the processing of five pairs of exact/co-exact relations, where stimuli for the co-exact relations were divided into three categories depending on their distance from the exact case. Regarding the processing of metric vs topological relations, hemispheric differences were found for only a few of the stimuli used, which may indicate that other processing mechanisms might be at play. Regarding the processing of exact vs co-exact relations, results show that the level of agreement among participants in judging co-exact relations decreases with the distance from the exact case, and this for the five pairs of exact/co-exact relations tested. The philosophical implications of these empirical findings for the epistemological analysis of Euclid's diagram-based geometric practice are spelled out and discussed. (shrink)

Health authorities increasingly request that general practitioners use information and communication technologies such as electronic patient records for accountability purposes. This article deals with the use of EPRs among general practitioners in Britain. It examines two ways in which GPs use the EPR for accountability purposes. One way is to generate audit reports on the basis of the information that has been entered into the record. The other is to let the computer intervene in the clinical process through prompts. The (...) article argues that GPs' ambivalence toward using the EPR makes them active in finding ways that turn the EPR into a meaningful tool for them, that is, a tool that helps them provide what they see as good care. The article's main contribution is to show how accountability and autonomy are coproduced; less professional autonomy does not follow from more requests to document one's work. Instead, new forms of autonomy are produced in the sociotechnical network that is made up by health policy and local engagements with patients and technology. (shrink)

Die verstärkte Aufmerksamkeit, die Dingen und Artefakten neuerdings entgegengebracht wird, hat in der Folge dazu geführt, dass immer häufiger auch die Architekturen von Schulgebäuden auf ihre Effekte hin befragt werden. Dabei zeigt sich jedoch, dass es theoretisch wenig befriedigend ist, diese lediglich als sog. »dritte Erzieher« zu betrachten. Um deren Wirkungen zu erklären, werden häufig Anleihen bei ästhetischen Modellen gemacht. Diese Form der Interpretation versuchen wir in unserem Beitrag zu problematisieren, indem wir die ästhetischen Positionen Martin Seels und Jacques Rancières (...) einander gegenüberstellen und diskutieren. Wie sich Schularchitekturen künftig interpretieren lassen, ohne von schlichten Wirkungsannahmen auszugehen und ohne die Gruppe ihrer »Benutzer« zu unterschlagen, zeigen wir abschließend an ausgewählten Beispielen. (shrink)

Dem hier präsentierten Band liegt die These zugrunde, daß die Anfänge der Praxis, kunstprogrammatische Texte als Manifest zu bezeichnen, und die anschließende Hoch-konjunktur in der avantgardistischen Nomenklatur vor dem Hintergrund der problematisch gewordenen Intentionalität im Dreieck Künstler, Kunstwerk und Publikum gesehen werden muß. Den Beleg dafür tritt der vorliegende Band von drei Ansätzen aus an: Interpretation, Funktionalität und Strategie. Dabei wird ein Korpus aus verschiedenen Kunstsparten behandelt, das von literarischen Deklarationen der russischen Moderne ab 1893 bis zu postmodernen Manifesten reicht, (...) mit einem besonderen Schwerpunkt auf den Manifesten der historischen Avantgarde. Damit ist das vorliegende Buch auch als ein Beitrag zur Historiographie der Bezeichnung von Texten der Avantgarde als Manifeste, der Rolle von Manifesten in der Avantgarde und letztlich auch der Textproduktion der Avantgarde insgesamt zu verstehen. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 26 Heft: 1 Seiten: 57-72.

This paper analyzes Immanuel Kant’s views on mechanical explanation on the basis of Christian Wolff’s idea of scientific demonstration. Kant takes mechanical explanations to explain properties of wholes in terms of their parts. I reconstruct the nature of such explanations by showing how part-whole conceptualizations in Wolff’s logic and metaphysics shape the ideal of a proper and explanatory scientific demonstration. This logico-philosophical background elucidates why Kant construes mechanical explanations as ideal explanations of nature.

Despite the reported limited success of conventional treatments and growing evidence of the effectiveness of adult bariatric surgery, weight loss operations for (morbidly) obese children and adolescents are still considered to be controversial by health care professionals and lay people alike. This paper describes an explorative, qualitative study involving obesity specialists, morbidly obese adolescents, and parents and identifies attitudes and normative beliefs regarding pediatric bariatric surgery. Views on the etiology of obesity—whether it should be considered primarily a medical condition or (...) more a psychosocial problem—seem to affect the specialists’ normative opinions concerning the acceptability of bariatric procedures as a treatment option, the parents’ feelings regarding both being able to influence their child’s health and their child being able to control their own condition, and the adolescents’ sense of competence and motivation for treatment. Moreover, parents and adolescents who saw obesity as something that they could influence themselves were more in favor of non-surgical treatment and vice versa. Conflicting attitudes and normative views—e.g., with regard to concepts of disease, personal influence on health, motivation, and the possibility of a careful informed consent procedure—play an important role in the acceptability of bariatric surgery for childhood obesity. (shrink)

"Wie kommt es, dass sich der Flagship-Store eines Technikkonzerns präsentiert wie eine öffentliche Kunsthalle, während die Dependance des Louvre in Nord-Pas-de-Calais wirkt, als würde man eine iPad-Benutzeroberfläche betreten? Der Beitrag liefert eine Analyse des Louvre Lens und beleuchtet das Projekt in Hinblick auf seine verblüffenden ästhetischen Familienähnlichkeiten in Materialsprache, Struktur und Atmosphäre zu neueren Apple Stores. Dabei wird versucht, die kulturellen und mentalitätsgeschichtlichen Codes zu entziffern und zu plausibilisieren, dass sich hier eine Epistemologie entfaltet, die die Welt als simultan präsentes (...) Symbolsystem begreift. How is it that the flagship store of a technology company presents itself as a public arthall, while the branch of the Louvre in Nord-Pas-de-Calais looks like the user interface of an iPad? The paper provides an analysis of the Louvre Lens and illuminates the project in terms of its stunning aesthetic similarities in material language, structure and atmosphere to recent Apple Stores. Furthermore, it attempts to decipher the cultural and mental-historical codes and argues that an epistemology is developing here which comprehends the world as a simultaneous symbolic system. ". (shrink)

Research skills are important for university graduates, but little is known about undergraduates’ motivation for research. In this study, self-efficacy beliefs and intrinsic motivation for several research activities were measured three times during an undergraduate research project. In order to promote self-efficacy for writing and collaboration, a collaboration script was developed and tested on half of the students. Twelve students were interviewed three times to gather in-depth information about motivational and self-efficacy beliefs. All measures except intrinsic motivation for research increased (...) significantly during the project. Interview results suggest that enactive mastery and positive social interdependence promoted self-efficacy. Feelings of relatedness seemed to promote intrinsic motivation for writing. Lack of autonomy and low perceived relevance may explain why motivation for research remained stable. The script had no impact on self-efficacy beliefs. Relatedness,... (shrink)

Inspired by Bas van Fraassen’s Stance Empiricism, Anjan Chakravartty has developed a pluralistic account of what he calls epistemic stances towards scientific ontology. In this paper, I examine whether Chakravartty’s stance pluralism can exclude epistemic stances that licence pseudo-scientific practices like those found in Scientology. I argue that it cannot. Chakravartty’s stance pluralism is therefore prone to a form of debilitating relativism. I consequently argue that we need (1) some ground or constraint in relation to which epistemic stances can be (...) ranked by degrees, and (2) some way to demarcate science from pseudo-science so that we know what epistemic stances are about. Regarding (1), I argue that empirical detectability can serve as the ground in relation to which epistemic stances are ranked by degrees. Regarding (2), I argue for ranking sciences on a continuum according to established institutional criteria, rather than attempting to draw a strict demarcation. (shrink)

Unconsented episiotomies and other procedures during labour are commonly reported by women in several countries, and often highlighted in birth activism. Yet, forced caesarean sections aside, the ethics of consent during labour has received little attention. Focusing on episiotomies, this paper addresses whether and how consent in labour should be obtained. We briefly review the rationale for informed consent, distinguishing its intrinsic and instrumental relevance for respecting autonomy. We also emphasise two non-explicit ways of giving consent: implied and opt-out consent. (...) We then discuss challenges and opportunities for obtaining consent in labour and birth, given its unique position in medicine.We argue that consent for procedures in labour is always necessary, but this consent does not always have to be fully informed or explicit. We recommend an individualised approach where the antenatal period is used to exchange information and explore values and preferences with respect to the relevant procedures. Explicit consent should always be sought at the point of intervening, unless women antenatally insist otherwise. We caution against implied consent. However, if a woman does not give a conclusive response during labour and the stakes are high, care providers can move to clearly communicated opt-out consent. Our discussion is focused on episiotomies, but also provides a useful starting point for addressing the ethics of consent for other procedures during labour, as well as general time-critical medical procedures. (shrink)

One major way of arguing for the moral attractiveness of luck egalitarianism is indirect; it consists in showing that the view follows from competing views on distributive justice which one actually endorses. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (KLR) claims that luck egalitarianism is indirectly supported in this way by Rawls’s intuitive argument for the difference principle. That argument begins by asserting that the impact of social and natural contingencies on distributive shares is unjust. After clarifying the notion of indirect support, I argue against (...) KLR’s claim. Whether the argument goes on to support luck egalitarianism is a matter of interpretation which can only be decided by looking closer at what Rawls has to say about the difference principle than KLR’s own treatment of the argument allows. In its most plausible reading, the intuitive argument veers away from luck egalitarianism in favor of a non-egalitarian view of the difference principle as a principle of compensating advantage. On this view, inequality due to bad luck is not in any respect unjust when the least advantaged cannot be made better off under alternative arrangements. In conclusion I explain why there are good reasons of fairness to understand the difference principle in this way. (shrink)

This paper rejects most aspects of John W. Lango and Eric Patterson’s proposal that the United States should plan for a possible intervention in Sudan on secessionist and humanitarian grounds and announce this planning as a deterrent to the central government of Sudan attacking the people of South Sudan if they would opt in a January 2011 referendum for independence. I argue that secession is not a just cause for armed intervention and that, rightfully, neither the American people nor many (...) of its men and women in uniform would be prepared to engage in an intervention that might easily escalate. I also caution that American intervention against an Islamic regime might have high global security costs. For the sake of avoiding these negative consequences and harm to the people of Sudan, available nonviolent policy alternatives should be pursued. Still, I grant that the global community should intervene in Sudan if mass slaughter of civilians were to occur as a result of renewed hostilities between North and South Sudan. My objections to Lango and Patterson’s intervention proposal appeal to jus ad bellum principles as well as just military preparedness (jus ante bellum) principles. (shrink)