Criteria for the evaluation of most scholars’ work have recently received wider attention due to high-profile cases of scientific misconduct which are perceived to be linked to these criteria. However, in the competition for career advancement and funding opportunities almost all scholars are subjected to the same criteria. Therefore these evaluation criteria act as ‘switchmen’, determining the tracks along which scholarly work is pushed by the dynamic interplay of interests of both scholars and their institutions. Currently one of the most (...) important criteria is the impact of publications. In this research, the extent to which publish or perish, a long standing evaluation criterion, led to scientific misconduct is examined briefly. After this the strive for high impact publications will be examined, firstly by identifying the period in which this became an important evaluation criterion, secondly by looking at variables contributing to the impact of scholarly papers by means of a non-structured literature study, and lastly by combining these data into a quantitative analysis. (shrink)

One of the optional topics of Corporate (Social) Responsibility (CSR) is animal welfare. This exploratory qualitative study reveals which communicative factors stimulate an attitude of responsibility towards animals in companies in the animal-based food industry. It shows that a manager who is made responsible for animal welfare can strengthen the company’s ethical position in two ways using communication. The first one is to connect with stakeholders within and outside the company. The second way is to facilitate, as a moderator, communicative (...) connections between these stakeholders in which the manager is not involved per se. In both cases, if these connections take the form of personal meetings, this is extra helpful for a responsible attitude, because in that way insight, trust and collaboration are gained and sustained. We present a model outlining all supportive communicative connections, a summary of communication channels that are used to effectuate them, and practical advice for managers. (shrink)

This book explores the various views on language and its relation to philosophy in the Platonic tradition by examening the reception of Plato’s Cratylus in antiquity in general, and the commentary of the Neoplatonist Proclus in particular.

This book puts the hymns by the Neoplatonist Proclus in the context of his philosophy and offers a detailed commentary together with a new translation of them.

In response to Maarten Van Dyck’s commentary, I present a translation of Vailati’s original paper with a short introductory note.Keywords: Giovanni Vailati; Ernst Mach; Archimedes; Balance.

Essays over filosofen die als vertegenwoordigers van de deugdenethiek kunnen gelden.

A vast stream of empirical work has revealed that coach and athlete leadership are important determinants of sport teams’ functioning and performance. Although coaches have a direct impact on individual and team outcomes, they should also strive to stimulate athletes to take up leadership roles in a qualitative manner. Yet, the relation between coach leadership behavior and the extent of high-quality athlete leadership within teams remains underexposed. Based on organizational justice theory and the social identity approach, the present research tested (...) whether perceived justice of the coach positively predicts the quality of athlete leadership. Furthermore, we examined the role of group dynamic processes within this relation. Belgian volleyball and basketball players were asked to rate the justice of their coach, their team identification, the task cohesion, and the athlete leadership quality in the team. Structural equation modeling indicated that coaches’ perceived justice positively predicted the quality of athletes’ leadership, and that this relation was established through three intermediate steps. These results suggest that fair coach behavior does not only bridge the gap between leadership and followership, it also has the potential to improve the quality of athletes’ leadership within sport teams. More specifically, findings suggest that coaches’ perceived justice cultivates a shared social identity characterized by high levels of players’ identification with their team, which in turn increased their perceptions of the team’s task cohesion. Finally, this increased task cohesion encouraged the athlete leaders to demonstrate high-quality leadership. (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.

Criteria for the evaluation of most scholars’ work have recently received wider attention due to high-profile cases of scientific misconduct which are perceived to be linked to these criteria. However, in the competition for career advancement and funding opportunities almost all scholars are subjected to the same criteria. Therefore these evaluation criteria act as ‘switchmen’, determining the tracks along which scholarly work is pushed by the dynamic interplay of interests of both scholars and their institutions. Currently one of the most (...) important criteria is the impact of publications. In this research, the extent to which publish or perish, a long standing evaluation criterion, led to scientific misconduct is examined briefly. After this the strive for high impact publications will be examined, firstly by identifying the period in which this became an important evaluation criterion, secondly by looking at variables contributing to the impact of scholarly papers by means of a non-structured literature study, and lastly by combining these data into a quantitative analysis. (shrink)

Van Vugt, van der Velde, and collaborators show how cognitive architectures can implement verbal theories of psychiatric problems. They show how one theory of depressive rumination can be implemented in the ACT‐R cognitive architecture by changing the contents of its simulated memory. These manipulations of memory habits lead the model to show impairments in a sustained attention task‐‐a plausible impairment given that people who suffer from depression have concentration complaints.

Galileo proposed what has been called a proto-inertial principle, according to which a body un horizontal motion will conserve its motion. This statement is only true in counterfactual circumstances where no impediments are present. This paper analyzes how Galileo could have been justified in ascribing definite properties to this idealized motion. This analysis is then used to better understand the relation of Galileo’s proto-inertial principle to the classical inertial principle.

Essays over de essentie van de moderne mystiek-innerlijke ervaring op het grensvlak tussen literatuur, filosofie, beeldende kunst en film.

Inleidingen tot vijfentwintig invloedrijke hedendaagse filosofen.

Within moral psychology, theories focusing on the conceptualization and empirical measurement of people’s morality in terms of general moral values –such as Moral Foundation Theory- assume general moral values to be relevant concepts for the explanation and prediction of behavior in everyday life. However, a solid theoretical and empirical foundation for this idea remains work in progress. In this study we explore this relationship between general moral values and daily life behavior through a conceptual analysis and an empirical study. Our (...) conceptual analysis of the moral value-moral behavior relationship suggests that the effect of a generally endorsed moral value on moral behavior is highly context dependent. It requires the manifestation of several phases of moral decision-making, each influenced by many contextual factors. We expect that this renders the empirical relationship between generic moral values and people’s concrete moral behavior indeterminate. Subsequently, we empirically investigate this relationship in three different studies. We relate two different measures of general moral values -the Moral Foundation Questionnaire and the Morality As Cooperation Questionnaire- to a broad set of self-reported morally relevant daily life behaviors. Our empirical results are in line with the expectations derived from our conceptual analysis: the considered general moral values are poor predictors of the selected daily life behaviors. Furthermore, moral values that were tailored to the specific context of the behavior showed to be somewhat stronger predictors. Together with the insights derived from our conceptual analysis, this indicates the relevance of the contextual nature of moral decision-making as a possible explanation for the poor predictive value of general moral values. Our findings suggest that the investigation of morality’s influence on behavior by expressing and measuring it in terms of general moral values may need revision. (shrink)

It is argued that, contrary to prevailing opinion, Bas van Fraassen nowhere uses the argument from underdetermination in his argument for constructive empiricism. It is explained that van Fraassen’s use of the notion of empirical equivalence in The Scientific Image has been widely misunderstood. A reconstruction of the main arguments for constructive empiricism is offered, showing how the passages that have been taken to be part of an appeal to the argument from underdetermination should actually be interpreted.

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.

Within current debates about the future impact of Artificial Intelligence on human society, roughly three different perspectives can be recognised: the technology-centric perspective, claiming that AI will soon outperform humankind in all areas, and that the primary threat for humankind is superintelligence; the human-centric perspective, claiming that humans will always remain superior to AI when it comes to social and societal aspects, and that the main threat of AI is that humankind’s social nature is overlooked in technological designs; and the (...) collective intelligence-centric perspective, claiming that true intelligence lies in the collective of intelligent agents, both human and artificial, and that the main threat for humankind is that technological designs create problems at the collective, systemic level that are hard to oversee and control. The current paper offers the following contributions: a clear description for each of the three perspectives, along with their history and background; an analysis and interpretation of current applications of AI in human society according to each of the three perspectives, thereby disentangling miscommunication in the debate concerning threats of AI; and a new integrated and comprehensive research design framework that addresses all aspects of the above three perspectives, and includes principles that support developers to reflect and anticipate upon potential effects of AI in society. (shrink)

The novel use of symbolism in early modern mathematics poses both philosophical and historical questions. How can we trace its development and transmission through manuscript sources? Is it intrinsically related to the emergence of symbolic algebra? How does symbolism relate to the use of diagrams? What are the consequences of symbolic reasoning on our understanding of nature? Can a symbolic language enable new forms of reasoning? Does a universal symbolic language exist which enable us to express all knowledge? This book (...) brings together a collection of papers that address all these and related questions which were initially posed at a conference held in Ghent (Belgium) in August 2009. Scholars working on philosophy of science, history of philosophy and history of mathematics provide an insight into the role and function of symbolic representations in the development of early modern mathematics. The papers cover the period from early abbaco arithmetic and algebra (14h century) up to Leibniz (early 18th century). (shrink)

In a previous issue of Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, Filip Buekens argues that evolutionary psychology (EP), or some interpretations thereof, have a corrosive impact on our ‘manifest self-image’. Buekens wants to defend and protect the global adequacy of this manifest self-image in the face of what he calls evolutionary revisionism. Although we largely agree with Buekens’ central argument, we criticize his analysis on several accounts, making some constructive proposals to strengthen his case. First, Buekens’ argument fails to target EP, because his (...) notion of the ‘constitutive conditions’ of our attitudes is too wide and too extensive. Second, his defense of the global adequacy of our attitudes does not allow for sufficient differentiation to analyze the problem of potential self-refutation with respect to EP. Third, his account of knowledge about constitutive conditions, and its impact on our self-image, is problematic. We provide a more detailed explanation for the pervasiveness of evolutionary revisionism and other misconceptions about EP. Finally, we consider in what sense EP may legitimately affect our self-image, and whether it can truly inspire corrections of our view of human nature. (shrink)

New and Emerging Science and Technology (NEST) based innovations, e.g. in the field of Life Sciences or Nanotechnology, frequently raise societal and political concerns. To address these concerns NEST researchers are expected to deploy socially responsible R&D practices. This requires researchers to integrate social and ethical aspects (SEAs) in their daily work. Many methods can facilitate such integration. Still, why and how researchers should and could use SEAs remains largely unclear. In this paper we aim to relate motivations for NEST (...) researchers to include SEAs in their work, and the requirements to establish such integration from their perspectives, to existing approaches that can be used to establish integration of SEAs in the daily work of these NEST researchers. Based on our analyses, we argue that for the successful integration of SEAs in R&D practice, collaborative approaches between researchers and scholars from the social sciences and humanities seem the most successful. The only way to explore whether that is in fact the case, is by embarking on collaborative research endeavours. (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.

The current study investigated how work-related disagreements—coined as conflicts—relate to workplace bullying, from the perspective of the target as well as the perpetrator. We hypothesized a positive indirect association between task conflicts and bullying through relationship conflicts. This process accounted for both for targets and perpetrators of bullying. Targets are distinguished from perpetrators in our assumption that this indirect effect is boosted by distributive conflict behavior, being yielding for targets and forcing for perpetrators. Results in a large representative sample of (...) the Flemish working population confirmed our hypotheses. Additionally, our study also revealed a direct effect from task conflicts to bullying in the analyses regarding the indirect as well as the conditional indirect effects. For perpetrators, both the indirect and direct relationships are moderated by forcing, underlining the importance of distributive conflict behavior particularly for the enactment of bullying behaviors. (shrink)

Equipped with the ultimate query answering system, computers would finally be in a position to address all our information needs in a natural way. In this paper, we describe how Language and Computing nv (L&C), a developer of ontology-based natural language understanding systems for the healthcare domain, is working towards the ultimate Question Answering (QA) System for healthcare workers. L&C’s company strategy in this area is to design in a step-by-step fashion the essential components of such a system, each component (...) being designed to solve some one part of the total problem and at the same time reflect well-defined needs on the prat of our customers. We compare our strategy with the research roadmap proposed by the Question Answering Committee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), paying special attention to the role of ontology. (shrink)