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.

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.

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)

We present an investigation of the ways in which speakers' subjective perspectives are likely to affect the meaning of gradable adjectives like tall or heavy. We present the results of a study showing that people tend to use themselves as a yardstick when ascribing these adjectives to human figures of varied measurements: subjects' height and weight requirements for applying tall and heavy are found to be positively correlated with their personal measurements. We draw more general lessons regarding the definition of (...) subjectivity and the ways in which a standard of comparison and a significant deviation from that standard are specified. (shrink)

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

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 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.

Can the theory of conceptual spaces developed by Peter Gärdenfors and others be applied to moral issues? Martin Peterson argues that several moral principles can be construed as regions in a shared similarity space, but Kristin Shrader-Frechette and Gert-Jan Lokhorst question Peterson’s claim. They argue that the moral similarity judgments used to construct the space are underspecified and subjective. In this paper, we present new data indicating that moral principles can indeed be construed as regions in a multidimensional conceptual space (...) on the basis of moral similarity judgments. Four hundred and seventy-five students taking a course in engineering ethics completed a survey in which they were presented with ten cases featuring ethical issues related to technology and engineering. Participants were asked to judge the moral similarity of each pair of cases and to select which moral principle they believed should be applied for resolving the case. We used interval multidimensional scaling as well as individual differences scaling for analyzing the moral similarity judgments. Despite noteworthy individual variations in the judgments, the five moral principles included in the study were discernable in the aggregate multidimensional spaces, even for participants with no previous exposure to the principles. Participants tended to apply the same moral principles to cases rated as morally similar. Our overall conclusion is that moral similarity judgments, and their representation in multidimensional spaces, can help us identify moral principles that are relevant for assessing difficult moral choice situations. (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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)