The present study explored the multidimensionality of moral identity. In four studies (N = 1,159), we compiled a comprehensive list of moral traits, analyzed their factorial structure, and established relationships between the factorial dimensions and outcome variables. The resulting dimensions are Connectedness, Truthfulness, Care, and Righteousness. To examine relations to personality traits and pro- and antisocial inclinations we developed a new instrument, the Moral Identity Profile (MIP). Our results show distinctive relationships for the four dimensions, which challenge previous unidimensional conceptualizations (...) of moral identity. We discuss implications, limitations, and how our conceptualization reaffirms the social aspect of morality. (shrink)

v. 1. Classical roots and medieval discussions -- v. 2. Renaissance controversis, later scholasticism, and the elimination of the intelligible species in modern philosophy.

Robots are slowly, but certainly, entering people's professional and private lives. They require the attention of regulators due to the challenges they present to existing legal frameworks and the new legal and ethical questions they raise. This paper discusses four major regulatory dilemmas in the field of robotics: how to keep up with technological advances; how to strike a balance between stimulating innovation and the protection of fundamental rights and values; whether to affirm prevalent social norms or nudge social norms (...) in a different direction; and, how to balance effectiveness versus legitimacy in techno-regulation. The four dilemmas are each treated in the context of a particular modality of regulation: law, market, social norms, and technology as a regulatory tool; and for each, we focus on particular topics? such as liability, privacy, and autonomy? that often feature as the major issues requiring regulatory attention. The paper then highlights the role and potential of the European framework of rights and values, responsible research and innovation, smart regulation and soft law as means of dealing with the dilemmas. (shrink)

Patient-centered pharmacy practice involves increased pharmacist engagement in patient care. This increased involvement can sometimes require diverse decision-making when handling various situations, ranging from simple matters to major ethical dilemmas. There is literature about pharmacy ethics in developed Western countries. However, little is known about pharmacists’ practices in many developing countries. For example, there is a paucity of research conducted in the area of pharmacy ethics in Jordan. This study aimed to explore the manner in which ethical dilemmas were handled (...) by Jordanian pharmacists, the resources used and their attitudes towards them. Semi-structured, face to face interviews were carried out with 30 Jordanian registered pharmacists. The transcribed interviews were thematically analysed for emerging themes. Four major themes were identified: legal practice; familiarity with the code of ethics; personal judgement, cultural and religious values; and Experience. Findings showed that ethical decision-making in pharmacy practice in Jordan was decisively influenced by pharmacists’ personal moral values, legal requirements and managed by exercising common sense and experience. This pointed to gaps in Jordanian pharmacists’ understanding and application of basic principles of pharmacy ethics and highlighted the need for professional ethics training, incorporating pharmacy ethics courses in pharmacy undergraduate curricula, as well as professional development courses. This study highlighted that paternalism, personal values and legal obligations were major drivers influencing decision-making processes of Jordanian pharmacists. Findings also highlighted an inclination towards lack of respect for patient autonomy. This illuminated the need for increasing pharmacists’ literacy in professional ethics. (shrink)

Ex-vivo tissue engineering is a quickly developing medical technology aiming to regenerate tissue through the introduction of an ex-vivo created tissue construct instead of restoring the damaged tissue to some level of functionality. Tissue engineering is considered by some as a new medical paradigm. We analyse this claim and identify tissue engineering’s fundamental characteristics, focusing on the aim of the intervention and on the complexity and continuity of the process. We inquire how these features have an impact not only on (...) the scientific research itself but also on the ethical evaluation of this research. We suggest that viewing tissue engineering as a new medical paradigm allows us to develop a wider perspective for successful investigation instead of focusing on isolated steps of the tissue engineering process in an anecdotal way, which may lead to an inadequate ethical evaluation. We argue that the concept of tissue engineering as a paradigm may benefit the way we address the ethical challenges presented by tissue engineering. (shrink)

This study investigated the understanding of underinformative sentences like “Some elephants have trunks” by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The scalar term ‘some’ can be interpreted pragmatically, ‘Not all elephants have trunks’, or logically, ‘Some and possibly all elephants have trunks’. Literature indicates that adults with ASD show no real difficulty in interpreting scalar implicatures, i.e., they often interpret them pragmatically, as controls do. This contrasts with the traditional claim of difficulties of people with ASD in other pragmatic domains, (...) and is more in line with the idea that pragmatic problems are not universal. The aim of this study was to: a) gain insight in the ability of children with ASD to derive scalar implicatures, and b) do this by assessing not only sensitivity to underinformativeness, but also different degrees of tolerance to violations of informativeness. We employed a classic statement-evaluation task, presenting optimal, logical false, and underinformative utterances. In Experiment 1, children had to express their judgment on a binary option ‘I agree’ vs ‘I disagree’. In Experiment 2, a ternary middle answer option ‘I agree a bit’ was also available. Sixty-six Flemish-speaking 10-year-old children were tested: 22 children with ASD, an IQ-matched group, and an age-matched group. In the binary judgment task, the ASD-group gave more pragmatic answers than the other groups, which was significant in the mixed effects logistic regression analysis, although not in the non-parametric analysis. In the ternary judgment task, the children with ASD showed a dichotomized attitude towards the speaker’s meaning, by tending to either fully agree or fully disagree with underinformative statements, in contrast with TD children, who preferred the middle option. Remarkably, the IQ-matched group exhibited the same pattern of results as the ASD group. Thanks to a fine-grained measure such as the ternary judgment task, this study highlighted a neglected aspect of the pragmatic profile of ASD, whose struggle with social communication seems to affect also the domain of informativeness. We discuss the implications of the dichotomized reaction towards violations of informativeness of these two groups in terms of the potential role of ASD and of cognitive and verbal abilities. (shrink)

This spectacular discovery attracted a lot of media attention. This edition will be published in Brill's Texts and Sources on Intellectual History (BSIH) in August.

Leibniz's overall view of the relationship between reasoning and computation is discussed on the basis of two broad claims that one finds in his writings, concerning respectively the nature of human reasoning and the possibility of replacing human thinking by a mechanical procedure. A joint examination of these claims enables one to appreciate the wide scope of Leibniz's interests for mechanical procedures, concerning a variety of philosophical themes further developed both in later logical investigations and in methodological contributions to cognitive (...) psychology. (shrink)

When debating the cognitive value of the novel, philosophers often focus on the resemblance between real and fictional world. Therefore, it is a hardly surprising that modernist literature, such as Franz Kafka’s novels, are rarely used as examples to support claims about the novel’s cognitive value. In my paper, I therefore offer a starting point for the development of a theory on the novel’s cognitive value that also works for modernist literature by building on Paul Ricoeur’s conception of productive imagination. (...) Starting from a case study of a short story of Kafka, I develop an account of the novel’s cognitive value that is based on the tension between the literary work’s invitation to interpretation and its simultaneous resistance against interpretation. (shrink)

Epidemiologists’ discussions on causation are not always very enlightening with regard to the notion of ‘cause’ in epidemiology. Epidemiologists rightly work from a science-based approach to causation in epidemiology, but largely disagree about the matter. Disagreement may be partly due to confusion of the question of useful concepts for causal inference in epidemiological practice with the question of the metaphysical presuppositions of causal concepts used in epidemiology. In other words, epidemiologists seem to confuse the practical results of epidemiological research at (...) the population level with the metaphysical views about the reality of disease causation at the individual level in their writings on causation. (shrink)

This paper discusses some aspects of the controversies regarding the operation of the agent intellect on sensory images. I selectively consider views developed between the 13th century and the beginning of the 17th century, focusing on positions which question the need for a (distinct) agent intellect or argue for its essential "inactivity" with respect to phantasms. My aim is to reveal limitations of the Peripatetical framework for analyzing and explaining the mechanisms involved in conceptual abstraction. The first section surveys developments (...) of Aristotelian noetics and abstraction in Ancient and Arabic philosophy. The second section presents a discussion of some "positive" accounts on abstraction and the agent intellect, and some "negative" accounts. (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.

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.

The essays in this book clarify the technical, legal, ethical, and social aspects of the interaction between eHealth technologies and surveillance practices. The book starts out by presenting a theoretical framework on eHealth and surveillance, followed by an introduction to the various ideas on eHealth and surveillance explored in the subsequent chapters. Issues addressed in the chapters include privacy and data protection, social acceptance of eHealth, cost-effective and innovative healthcare, as well as the privacy aspects of employee wellness programs using (...) eHealth, the use of mobile health app data by insurance companies, advertising industry and law enforcement, and the ethics of Big Data use in healthcare. A closing chapter draws on the previous content to explore the notion that people are 'under observation', bringing together two hitherto unrelated streams of scholarship interested in observation: eHealth and surveillance studies. In short, the book represents a first essential step towards cross-fertilization and offers new insights into the legal, ethical and social significance of being 'under observation'. (shrink)

In light of the growing use of tablets for news reading and mobile news consumption behaviors, this study examined whether an innovative way of structuring news on the tablet that mimics mobile news behaviors reinforced attention for, and learning from, news. Specifically, it was theorized that the chronological and associative structuring of news articles into so-called developing news stories would lead to more attention for news, and better recall and comprehension of news, than the linear print newspaper structure that newspaper (...) publishers continue to copy from print to tablet. A multiple-day experiment was set up using the eye-tracking method to measure and control for attention. The results show that the developing news structure increased comprehension of news substantively, independently of attention effects; no effects were found on attention and factual recall. (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.

Much work on legal knowledge systems treats legal reasoning as arguments that lead from a description of the law and the facts of a case, to the legal conclusion for the case. The reasoning steps of the inference engine parallel the logical steps by means of which the legal conclusion is derived from the factual and legal premises. In short, the relation between the input and the output of a legal inference engine is a logical one. The truth of the (...) conclusion only depends on the premises, and is independent of the argument that leads to the conclusion.This paper opposes the logical approach, and defends a procedural approach to legal reasoning. Legal conclusions are not true or false independent of the reasoning process that ended in these conclusions. In critical cases this reasoning process consists of an adversarial procedure in which several parties are involved. The course of the argument determines whether the conclusion is true or false. The phenomenon of hard cases is used to demonstrate this essential procedural nature of legal reasoning. (shrink)

Results of an online survey reveal that, in contrast with the general belief, college students do not at all seem to be heavy users of online news media and online news features. A cluster analysis shows that the use of online news media and interactive features differs among the students, a majority of them being traditional users and some, non-users. Logistic regressions demonstrate that the level of digital skills is a better predictor of news media and interactive features use than (...) demographics. This article invites scholars in online journalism to emphasize on students’ differences rather than on similarities when it comes to measuring the impact of online news use. Our results suggest that online skills as a prerequisite for using online news media and features should be centrally taken into account in future research. (shrink)

This article reports on a survey of youth in Brussels and their ownership and use of digital technologies, focusing specifically on the social and cultural diversity within this group. Socio-cultural diversity includes differences regarding ethnicity and gender, language and educational attainment, as well as social and economic status. The relationship of these socio-cultural differences with the digital divide in terms of ownership and use is investigated. The data show a persistent ownership divide between socially weaker versus stronger groups accompanied by (...) an emerging socially compensatory function of instrumentally oriented user profiles among the socially weaker groups. (shrink)

The internet offers adolescents a huge window of opportunities, but these opportunities are not always exempt from risks. Indeed, many young people are nowadays confronted with spam, gruesome or violent images and content including pornography, drugs, racism, and even suicide. We surveyed 815 Flemish 15- to 19-year-olds about the online risks they have been confronted with and on how they cope with these risks. We controlled for digital literacy levels, socio-demographics and personality traits. Interestingly, our research shows that not only (...) adolescents with a high level of internet literacy but also those with lower internet literacy levels, such as youths enrolled in vocational education, tend to be more frequently exposed to online risks. Also worthwhile noting is the fact that a high level of self-confidence positively correlates with exposure to risky online content. In general, adolescents do not consult anybody when it comes to coping with risks and negative experiences online. However, a good parent-child relationship pays off as kids with a good parental relationship encounter aggressive, sexual or value-based content less frequently. (shrink)

This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make descriptive and normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to, but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility (...) of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the “pragmatic approach to scientific explanation.” We clarify what this approach consists in and defend it. (shrink)

In this paper we try to bring some clarification in the recent debate on causal pluralism. Our first aim is to clarify what it means to have a pluralistic theory of causation and to articulate the criteria by means of which a certain theory of causation can or cannot qualify as a pluralistic theory of causation. We also show that there is currently no theory on the\nmarket which meets these criteria, and therefore no full-blown pluralist theory of causation exists. Because (...) of this, we offer a general strategy by means of which pluralist theories of causation can be developed. (shrink)