Safe-by-Design (SBD) frameworks for the development of emerging technologies have become an ever more popular means by which scholars argue that transformative emerging technologies can safely incorporate human values. One such popular SBD methodology is called Value Sensitive Design (VSD). A central tenet of this design methodology is to investigate stakeholder values and design those values into technologies during early stage research and development (R&D). To accomplish this, the VSD framework mandates that designers consult the philosophical and ethical literature to (...) best determine how to weigh moral trade-offs. However, the VSD framework also concedes the universalism of moral values, particularly the values of freedom, autonomy, equality trust and privacy justice. This paper argues that the VSD methodology, particularly applied to nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) technologies, has an insufficient grounding for the determination of moral values. As such, an exploration of the value-investigations of VSD are deconstructed to illustrate both its strengths and weaknesses. This paper also provides possible modalities for the strengthening of the VSD methodology, particularly through the application of moral imagination and how moral imagination exceed the boundaries of moral intuitions in the development of novel technologies. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 220 Seiten: 123-153.

Conceptual integration—“blending”—is a general cognitive operation on a par with analogy, recursion, mental modeling, conceptual categorization, and framing. It serves a variety of cognitive purposes. It is dynamic, supple, and active in the moment of thinking. It yields products that frequently become entrenched in conceptual structure and grammar, and it often performs new work on its previously entrenched products as inputs. Blending is easy to detect in spectacular cases but it is for the most part a routine, workaday process that (...) escapes detection except on technical analysis. It is not reserved for special purposes, and is not costly.In blending, structure from input mental spaces is projected to a separate, “blended” mental space. The projection is selective. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations.Blending operates according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles. It additionally observes a set of optimality principles. (shrink)

Conceptual integration—“blending”—is a general cognitive operation on a par with analogy, recursion, mental modeling, conceptual categorization, and framing. It serves a variety of cognitive purposes. It is dynamic, supple, and active in the moment of thinking. It yields products that frequently become entrenched in conceptual structure and grammar, and it often performs new work on its previously entrenched products as inputs. Blending is easy to detect in spectacular cases but it is for the most part a routine, workaday process that (...) escapes detection except on technical analysis. It is not reserved for special purposes, and is not costly.In blending, structure from input mental spaces is projected to a separate, “blended” mental space. The projection is selective. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations.Blending operates according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles. It additionally observes a set of optimality principles. (shrink)

According to Hintikka and Sandu, metaphorical meaning is word-based and can be analyzed in the framework of possible world semantics (PWS) by means of nonstandard meaning lines drawn via similarity considerations. It is shown how PWS offers an analytical tool which enables Hintikka and Sandu's theory to resist classical objections against the comparison view and theories involving considerations to alternative scenarios. It is further argued that Hintikka and Sandu's theory is superior to Davidson's "non-meaning" theory of metaphor and the speech-act (...) approaches of Searle and Grice. Finally, it is shown how Hintikka and Sandu's view is deficient in not being able to account for the type of metaphoricity exposed by cognitive semantics, but how principles could be incorporated in order to take this into account. (shrink)

The theory of metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980a, 1980b) and Lakoff (1993) involves a mapping of conceptual structure from one semantic domain to another. We investigate properties of these conceptual domain mappings by comparing them to morphological derivational relations. Schematicity and productivity are properties that Bybee (1985) and Langacker (1987) propose for characterizing morphological derivational relations, which we apply to our analysis of metaphor. Metaphors are argued to vary in their degree of semantic schematicity: Domain relations function as (...) generalizations over specific metaphorical expressions. We also demonstrate three points on a continuum of productivity: Conventional metaphors are highly productive, metaphorically motivated transparent idioms are semiproductive, and opaque idioms are unproductive. Each point is compared with an example of morphological productivity having a corresponding conceptual organization. The results demonstrate that semantic productivity can be characterized in the same way as morphological productivity, suggesting that form and meaning are organized by the same principles. (shrink)

A group of 71 university students were first asked to explain 3 conceptual metaphors. Then the participants' cognitive styles were classified into "analytic" or "holistic" and "imager" or "verbalizer" by means of the Riding (1991) computer-assisted test of cognitive styles. The results of the experiment revealed cognitive style variables in participants' preferred strategies to explain the metaphors: (a) "holistic thinkers" were more likely than "analytic" ones to blend their conception of the target domain with the source domain, and (b) "imagers" (...) were more likely than "verbalizers" to refer to stereotypical images to explain the metaphors. (shrink)