Phrasing the question is one of the most delicate points of a referendum. A first problem is to choose the most important alternatives. Several procedures to select these alternatives and to avoid some kinds of manipulation, exist. There are a lot of arguments for the voting on principles, but also a lot against.The Swiss criterion for «unity of matter» is not workable; a new criterion is proposed. The danger of suggestivity is real. Rules to prevent these dangers are discussed. Finally, (...) some remarks are made on the problem «who decides on the question?». A neutral commission is wishful. (shrink)

In most referenda, only two alternatives are used. In this article, the possibility to find procedures for three and more alternatives is discussed.The Swiss voting system for the revision of the constitution is not logically correct. Most procedures used in Swiss cantons are not either. Voting systems with two rounds, with points, or based on a relative majority are not defendable too. Nevertheless, a workable and logically correct procedure for 3 alternatives exists.Using 4 of more alternatives is only possible in (...) case of single-peakedness or some kinds of value-restrictedness. When this is not the case, systems which are logically correct, are getting too complex to be workable. (shrink)

Although it has been proposed that inhibition is related to individual differences in mathematical achievement, it is not clear how it is related to specific aspects of mathematical skills, such as arithmetic fact retrieval. The present study therefore investigated the association between inhibition and arithmetic fact retrieval and further examined the unique role of inhibition in individual differences in arithmetic fact retrieval, in addition to numerical magnitude processing. We administered measures of cognitive inhibition (i.e., numerical and non-numerical stroop tasks) and (...) a complementary, more ecologically valid measure of children’s inhibition in the classroom (i.e., teacher questionnaire), as well as numerical magnitude processing (i.e., symbolic and non-symbolic numerical magnitude comparison) and arithmetic fact retrieval (i.e., two verification tasks) in 86 typically developing third graders. We used a correlation, a regression and a Bayesian analysis. This study failed to observe a significant association between inhibition and arithmetic fact retrieval. Consequently, our results did not reveal a unique contribution of inhibition to arithmetic fact retrieval in addition to numerical magnitude processing. On the other hand, symbolic numerical magnitude processing turned out to be a very powerful predictor of arithmetic fact retrieval, as indicated by both frequentist and Bayesian approaches. (shrink)

As thousands of healthy research participants are being included in small and large imaging studies, it is essential that dilemmas raised by the detection of incidental findings are adequately handled. Current ethical guidance indicates that pathways for dealing with incidental findings should be in place, but does not specify what such pathways should look like. Building on an interview study of researchers’ practices and perspectives, we identified key considerations for the set-up of pathways for the detection, management and communication of (...) incidental findings in imaging research. We conducted an interview study with a purposive sample of researchers at research facilities across the Netherlands. Based on a qualitative analysis of these interviews and on existing guidelines found in the literature, we developed a prototype ethical framework, which was critically assessed and fine-tuned during a two-day international expert meeting with bioethicists and representatives from large population-based imaging studies from the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Belgium. Practices and policies for the handling of incidental findings vary strongly across the Netherlands, ranging from no review of research scans and limited feedback to research participants, to routine review of scans and the arrangement of clinical follow-up. Respondents felt that researchers do not have a duty to actively look for incidental findings, but they do have a duty to act on findings, when detected. The principle of reciprocity featured prominently in our interviews and expert meeting. We present an ethical framework that may guide researchers and research ethics committees in the design and/or evaluation of appropriate pathways for the handling of incidental findings in imaging studies. The framework consists of seven steps: anticipation of findings, information provision and informed consent, scan acquisition, review of scans, consultation on detected abnormalities, communication of the finding, and further clinical management and follow-up of the research participant. Each of these steps represents a key decision to be made by researchers, which should be justified not only with reference to costs and/or logistical considerations, but also with reference to researchers’ moral obligations and the principle of reciprocity. (shrink)

The European Corporate Sustainability Framework (ECSF) is, among other concepts, based on a phase-wise development approach as described by Clare Graves' Levels of Existence Theory. As much as corporate sustainability has a sequence of adequate interpretations, aligned with each development level, also the notion of business excellence can be defined at multiple levels, as this paper demonstrates. Furthermore, the authors analyze the current EFQM Excellence Model for particular biases towards various development levels and suggest a new and innovative two-step approach (...) to assessing organizational performance with respect to organizational excellence (OE) and corporate sustainability. According to the organization's ambition, the assessment is either limited to a shareholder approach, mainly focusing at optimal usage of resources, or it also includes an additional assessment format based on the stakeholder approach, with specific reference to the organization's performance on the financial, social and ecological bottom line. This paper demonstrates the need and feasibility of an EFQM-Based assessment tool with a combined focus on corporate sustainability and OE. (shrink)

This interview study investigates the short- and long-term implications of incidental findings detected through brain imaging on research participants’ lives and their surroundings. For this study, nine participants of the Rotterdam Scan Study with an incidental finding were approached and interviewed. When examining research participants’ narratives on the impact of the disclosure of incidental findings, the authors identified five sets of tensions with regard to motivations for and expectations of research participation, preferences regarding disclosure, short- and long-term impacts and impacts (...) on self and others. The paper shows: that the impact of incidental findings may be greater than participants at first let on; incidental findings can have significant effects on participants’ social environment; and participants may not feel prepared for disclosure even if incidental findings have been discussed during the informed consent process. The authors call for investigators to be aware of research participants’ experiences and these short- and long-term impacts when designing suitable courses of action for the detection and management of incidental findings in research settings. (shrink)

This article presents and interprets a number of neglected paradoxes in early Chinese philosophical texts . Looking beyond well-known paradoxes put forward by masters such as Hui Shi and Gongsun Long, it intends to complement our picture of Warring States and early Western Han paradoxical statements. The first section contrasts the neglected paradoxes with the well-known ones. It is contended here that our understanding of these latter paradoxes is hampered by a lack of context and that the neglected paradoxes possess (...) an interpretative advantage by virtue of their being context-embedded. The second section presents an overview of three groups of neglected paradoxes, showing that the paradoxical effect of these paradoxes results from a challenge to the semantics of their central terms. The third section discusses the distribution of the paradoxes throughout the early literature and concludes that they typically appear in "Daoist" writings. The final section proposes a semantic-rhetorical interpretation. Placing the paradoxes against the background of the features and use of important terms, it is argued that they constitute unorthodox redefinitions and are formulated to influence the behavior and values of their intended audience. (shrink)

Coping with stress has been primarily investigated as an individual-level phenomenon. In work settings, however, an individual’s exposure to demands is often shared with co-workers, and the process of dealing with these demands takes place in the interaction with them. Coping, therefore, may be conceptualized as a multilevel construct. This paper introduces the team coping concept and shows that including coping as a higher-level team property may help explain individual-level outcomes. Specifically, we investigated the effects of exposure to danger during (...) deployment on burnout symptoms in military service members and examined to what extent this relationship was moderated by individual-level and team-level functional coping. We hypothesized that the relationship between individuals’ exposure to danger and burnout is contingent on both. In line with our predictions, we found that service members who were highly exposed to danger, and did not engage in much functional coping, suffered most from burnout symptoms, but only when their teammates did not engage in much functional coping either. When their teammates did engage in much functional coping, the effect of exposure to danger on burnout was buffered. Hence, team members’ coping efforts functioned as a resilience resource for these service members. (shrink)

Human reasoning is often conceived as an interplay between a more intuitive and deliberate thought process. In the last 50 years, influential fast-and-slow dual-process models that capitalize on this distinction have been used to account for numerous phenomena – from logical reasoning biases, over prosocial behavior, to moral decision making. The present paper clarifies that despite the popularity, critical assumptions are poorly conceived. My critique focuses on two interconnected foundational issues: the exclusivity and switch feature. The exclusivity feature refers to (...) the tendency to conceive intuition and deliberation as generating unique responses such that one type of response is assumed to be beyond the capability of the fast-intuitive processing mode. I review the empirical evidence in key fields and show that there is no solid ground for such exclusivity. The switch feature concerns the mechanism by which a reasoner can decide to shift between more intuitive and deliberate processing. I present an overview of leading switch accounts and show that they are conceptually problematic – precisely because they presuppose exclusivity. I build on these insights to sketch the groundwork for a more viable dual-process architecture and illustrate how it can set a new research agenda to advance the field in the coming years. (shrink)

Dual process theories conceive human thinking as an interplay between heuristic processes that operate automatically and analytic processes that demand cognitive effort. The interaction between these two types of processes is poorly understood. De Neys and Glumicic (2008) recently found that most of the time heuristic processes are successfully monitored. This monitoring, however, would not demand as many cognitive resources as the analytic thinking that is needed to solve reasoning problems. In the present study we tested the crucial assumption about (...) the effortless nature of the monitoring process directly. Participants solved base-rate neglect problems in which heuristic and analytic processes cued a conflicting response or not. Half of the participants reasoned under a secondary task load. A surprise recall task was used as an implicit measure of whether the participants detected the conflict in the problems. Results showed that, even under load, base-rate recall performance was better for conflict problems than for no-conflict problems. Although participants made more reasoning errors under load, recall of the conflict problems was not affected by the working memory load. These findings support the claim about the successful and undemanding nature of the conflict detection process during thinking. (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.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Index to Volume Fifty-SixArticlesBernier, Bernard, National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, 1 : 84-105Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, Chai-sik Chung, 2 : 253-280Buxton, Nicholas, The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, 3 : 392-408Chan, Sin Yee, The Confucian Notion of Jing (Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : (...) 229-252Chong, Kim-chong, Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, 3 : 370-391Chung, Chai-sik, Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, 2 : 253-280The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, Chenyang Li, 4 : 583-603The Confucian Notion of Jing.(Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : 229-252The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? Jay L. Garfield, 2 : 201-228The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'āmirī, Paul L. Heck, 1 : 106-135The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, Nicholas Buxton, 3 : 392-408De Reu, Wim, Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, 2 : 281-300The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhaga-vadgītā, Christopher Framarin, 4 : 604-617Framarin, Christopher, The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhagavadgītā, 4 : 604-617Garfield, Jay L., The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? 2 : 201-228Heck, Paul L., The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'ā mirī, 1 : 106-135Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel, 4 : 519-566Ho, Chien-hsing, Saying the Unsayable, 3 : 409-427Kantor, Hans-Rudolf, Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538-597) Tiantai Buddhism, 1 : 16-68Lai, Karyn, Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, 1 : 69-83Li, Chenyang, The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, 4 : 583-603Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, Karyn Lai, 1 : 69-83Ma, Lin, and Jaap van Brakel, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, Bernard Bernier, 1 : 84-105Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538- 597) Tiantai Buddhism, Hans-Rudolf Kantor, 1 : 16-68Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, Wim De Reu, 2 : 281-300The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, Jinmei Yuan, 1 : 136-152Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, Jonathan Stoltz, 4 : 567-582Saying the Unsayable, Chien-hsing Ho, 3 : 409-427Schiltz, Elizabeth, Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, 3 : 451-468Spackman, John, The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, 3 : 428-450Stevenson, Frank W., Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, 2 : 301-331Stoltz, Jonathan, Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, 4 : 567-582The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, John Spackman, 3 : 428-450 [End Page 709]Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, Elizabeth Schiltz, 3 : 451-468van Brakel, Jaap, and Lin Ma, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566Yuan, Jinmei, The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, 1 : 136-152Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, Kim-chong Chong, 3 : 370-391Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, Frank W. Stevenson, 2 : 301-331Book NotesFenner, David E. W., Introducing Aesthetics (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516Introducing Aesthetics, by David E. W. Fenner (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516McRae, James, a book... (shrink)

Ex aequo et bono compensations refer to tribunal’s compensations that cannot be determined exactly according to the rule of law, in which case the judge relies on an estimate that seems fair for the case at hand. Such cases are prone to legal uncertainty, given the subjectivity that is inherent to the concept of fairness. We show how basic principles from statistics and machine learning may be used to reduce legal uncertainty in ex aequo et bono judicial decisions. For a (...) given type of ex aequo et bono dispute, we consider two general stages in estimating the compensation. First, the stage where there is significant disagreement among judges as to which compensation is fair. In that case, we let judges rule on such disputes, while a machine tracks a certain measure of the relative differences of the granted compensations. In the second stage that measure, which expresses the degree of legal uncertainty, has dropped below a predefined threshold. From then on legal decisions on the quantity of the ex aequo et bono compensation for the considered type of dispute may be replaced by the average of previous compensations. The main consequence is that this type of dispute is, from this stage on, free of legal uncertainty. (shrink)

In this commentary, I warn against a possible dual process misconception that might lead people to conclude that utilitarian judgments are normatively correct. I clarify how the misconception builds on (1) the association between System 2 and normativity in the dual process literature on logical/probabilistic reasoning, and (2) the classification of utilitarian judgments as resulting from System 2 processing in the dual process model of moral reasoning. I present theoretical and empirical evidence against both premises.

Ralph Wedgwood's The Nature of Normativity provides a theory about the semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology of normative judgments, taken to be judgments of the form 'I ought to ___'. The theory is based on the principle of Normative Judgment Internalism, and the principle that 'the intentional is normative'. I argue, first, that by being merely about oughts, Wedgwood's account leaves out one essential constituent of normativity: value. Secondly, I argue that mainly because of this, the account faces a serious issue (...) of relevance. (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.

In this paper I distinguish two types of mental causation, called 'higher-level causation' and 'exploitation'. These notions superficially resemble the traditional problematic notions of supervenient causation and downward causation, but they are different in crucial respects. My new distinction is supported by a radically externalist competitor of the so-called Standard View of mental states, i.e. the view that mental states are brain states. I argue that on the Alternative View, the notions of 'higher-level causation' and 'exploitation' can in combination dissolve (...) the problem of mental causation as standardly discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a theory of the physical realization of higher-level properties. I argue that physical realization is in an important sense indirect, and that at each level causal relations are crucial to realizing next-level phenomena. My account makes it intelligible how higher-level properties can be realized by wide stretches of physical reality without the inter-level dependence becoming weak, or global; it also explains how both physicalism and non-reductivism can be true.

Is the position of a moving target ? I argue that we should regard moving targets as the natural (veridical) position references. Motion is probably perceptually absolute, whereas position and time are relative quantities, as in physics. According to this view, processing delays are incorporated in the abstract local signs of motion signals. The flash-lag effect is one case in point.

In the Netherlands, consent from relatives is obligatory for post mortal donation. This study explored the perspectives of relatives regarding the request for consent for donation in cases without donor registration. A content analysis of narratives of 24 bereaved relatives of unregistered, eligible, brain-dead donors was performed. Relatives of unregistered, brain-dead patients usually refuse consent for donation, even if they harbour pro-donation attitudes themselves, or knew that the deceased favoured organ donation. Half of those who refused consent for donation mentioned (...) afterwards that it could have been an option. The decision not to consent to donation is attributed to contextual factors, such as feeling overwhelmed by the notification of death immediately followed by the request; not being accustomed to speaking about death; inadequate support from other relatives or healthcare professionals, and lengthy procedures. Healthcare professionals could provide better support to relatives prior to donation requests, address their informational needs and adapt their message to individual circumstances. It is anticipated that the number of consenting families could be enlarged by examining the experience of decoupling and offering the possibility of consent for donation after circulatory death if families refuse consent for donation after brain-death. (shrink)

The conclusions drawn by Benjamin Libet from his work with collegues on the timing of somatosensorial conscious experiences has met with a lot of praise and criticism. In this issue we find three examples of the latter. Here I attempt to place the divide between the two opponent camps in a broader perspective by analyzing the question of the relation between physical timing, neural timing, and experiential timing. The nervous system does a sophisticated job of recombining and recoding messages from (...) the sensorial surfaces and if these processes are slighted in a theory, it might become necessary to postulate weird operations, including subjective back-referral. Neuroscientifically inspired theories are of necessity still based on guesses, extrapolations, and philosophically dubious manners of speech. They often assume some neural correlate of consciousness as a part of the nervous system that transforms neural activity in reportable experiences. The majority of neuroscientists appear to assume that the NCC can compare and bind activity patterns only if they arrive simultaneously at the NCC. This leads to a search for synchrony or to theories in terms of the compensation of differences in neural delays . This is the main dimension of the Libet discussion. Examples from vision research, such as “temporal-binding-by-synchrony” and the “flash-lag” effect, are then used to illustrate these reasoning patterns in more detail. Alternatively one could assume symbolic representations of time and space that are not coded in their own dimension . Unless such tags are multiplexed with the quality message , one gets a binding problem for tags. One of the hidden aspects of the discussion between Libet and opponents appears to be the following. Is the NCC smarter than the rest of the nervous system, so that it can solve the problems of local sign and timing on its own, or are these pieces of information coded symbolically early on in the system? A supersmart NCC appears to be the assumption of Libet's camp . The wish to distribute the smartness evenly across all stages of processing in the nervous system appears to motivate the opponents. I argue that there are reasons to side with the latter group. (shrink)

Two experiments examined the contribution of working memory (WM) to the retrieval and inhibition of background knowledge about counterexamples (alternatives and disablers, Cummins, ) during conditional reasoning. Experiment 1 presented a conditional reasoning task with everyday, causal conditionals to a group of people with high and low WM spans. High spans rejected the logically invalid AC and DA inferences to a greater extent than low spans, whereas low spans accepted the logically valid MP and MT inferences less frequently than high (...) spans. In Experiment 2, an executive-attention-demanding secondary task was imposed during the reasoning task. Findings corroborate that WM resources are used for retrieval of stored counterexamples and that people with high WM spans will use WM resources to inhibit the counterexample activation when the type of counterexample conflicts with the logical validity of the reasoning problem. (shrink)

Oaksford & Chater (O&C) rely on a data fitting approach to show that a Bayesian model captures the core reasoning data better than its logicist rivals. The problem is that O&C's modeling has focused exclusively on response output data. I argue that this exclusive focus is biasing their conclusions. Recent studies that focused on the processes that resulted in the response selection are more positive for the role of logic.

This article attempts to reframe the state of research on the notion of goblet words in the Zhuangzi. Recent studies predominantly view the notion of zhiyan as referring to peculiar stylistic forms exhibited in the Zhuangzi—forms such as dilemmatic questions and paradoxes. In this article, I question the quick identification of these forms as zhiyan. I argue that zhiyan are essentially definite yet provisional simple-form utterances located on the level of everyday interaction and coexistence. On this level, the peculiar stylistic (...) forms do not play their part. However, such stylistic forms do become indispensable in discussing and recommending zhiyan. It is on this meta-level—for the Zhuangzi, the level of writing—that we find these forms employed. Based on structural similarities, we may stretch the label ‘zhiyan’ to include such forms but should keep in mind that any such extension is secondary to the use of language in coexisting with others. (shrink)

Dual process models of higher cognition have become very influential in the cognitive sciences. The popular Default-Interventionist model has long favoured a serial view on the interaction between...

In latter-day discussions on corporate morality, duties of commission are fiercely debated. Moral institutionalists argue that duties of commission—such as a duty of assistance—overstep the boundaries of moral duty owed by economic agents. " Moral institutionalism" is a newly coined term for a familiar position on market morality. It maintains that market morality ought to be restricted, excluding all duties of commission. Neo-Classical thinkers such as Baumol and Homann defend it most eloquently. They underpin their position with concerns that go (...) to the core of liberalism—the dominant western political theory that sustains the ideals of both the free market and the free, rational person. Those authors claim that liberalism calls for a fully differentiated market because it resents the politicization of the market. Fully differentiated markets exclude duties of commission. They also claim that full differentiation of the market closes the troublesome gap between moral motivation and moral virtue. Full differentiation redeems the promise of "easy virtue". In this paper moral institutionalism will be rejected from a Kantian point of view, mostly inspired by Herman's thesis on the invisibility of morality. Liberalism may perhaps ban the politicization of the market; it does not forbid its moralization. The idea of a fully differentiated market must also be rejected because it is either morally over-demanding (to the morally autonomous person) or morally hazardous (to the person with failing moral motivation). Contrary to what the moral institutionalists claim, right action, morally, is actually quite difficult in fully differentiated markets. (shrink)

This work covers, in its subsequent parts, ontology, the metaphysics of causation, and the philosophy of mind. It provides a firm theoretical basis for believing that in our all-physical world mental causation is perfectly real, and that it can be understood.

Recent research emphasizes the complexity of providing useful explanations of computer-generated output. In developing an explanation-generating tool, the computer scientist should take a user-centered perspective, while taking into account the user’s susceptibility to certain biases. The purpose of this paper is to expand the research results on explainability from the social sciences, and to indicate how these results are relevant to the field of XAI. This is done through the presentation of two surveys to university students. The analysis of the (...) results leads to some interesting hypotheses, for example that the presented order of historical facts might be more influential on the interpretation or appreciation of an event than the actual temporal order of these facts. The computer scientist should, therefore, pay particular emphasis to the format of the produced output of any explainable artificial intelligence system. The main message of the paper is that results from the social sciences must be regarded as a crucial foundation of any explainable artificial intelligence system. (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.