This article sheds light on managing and utilizing scientific and technological funds (Sci-Tech funds) in Vietnam.

What are the sensory individuals of audition? What are the entities our auditory system attributes properties to? We examine various proposals about the nature of the sensory individuals of audition, and show that while each can account for some aspects of auditory perception, each also faces certain difficulties. We then put forward a new conception of sensory individuals according to which auditory sensory individuals are composite individuals. A feature shared by all existing accounts of sounds and sources is that they (...) postulate sensory individuals that are non-composite. They identify the sensory individual of sound hearing or source hearing with one type of entity in the environment, be they sound waves, vibrations, or interactions. We question this assumption and argue that our perceptual systems represent two or more aspects of the environment as a single sensory individual. Finally, we show that taking auditory individuals to be composite sensory individuals allows for an account of audition that is less problematic than its existing alternatives. (shrink)

Abstract: This research paper presents a novel approach to predict audit risks using a neural network model. The dataset used for this study was obtained from Kaggle and comprises 774 samples with 18 features, including Sector_score, PARA_A, SCORE_A, PARA_B, SCORE_B, TOTAL, numbers, marks, Money_Value, District, Loss, Loss_SCORE, History, History_score, score, and Risk. The proposed neural network architecture consists of three layers, including one input layer, one hidden layer, and one output layer. The neural network model was trained and validated, achieving (...) an impressive accuracy of 100% and an average error of 0.000015, indicating its robust predictive capability. Moreover, we conducted feature importance analysis to identify the most influential features for predicting audit risk. The key features found to be critical for classifying fraudulent activities in audit risk prediction are Sector_score, PARA_A, SCORE_A, PARA_B, SCORE_B, TOTAL, numbers, marks, Money_Value, District, Loss, Loss_SCORE, History, and History_score. This research contributes to the field of audit risk prediction by demonstrating the effectiveness of a neural network-based approach and highlighting the importance of specific features in detecting fraudulent activities. The findings have significant implications for auditors and organizations seeking to enhance their audit risk assessment processes, ultimately leading to improved financial transparency and fraud detection. (shrink)

An increasing number of regulations propose the notion of ‘AI audits’ as an enforcement mechanism for achieving transparency and accountability for artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Despite some converging norms around various forms of AI auditing, auditing for the purpose of compliance and assurance currently have little to no agreed upon practices, procedures, taxonomies, and standards. We propose the ‘criterion audit’ as an operationalizable compliance and assurance external audit framework. We model elements of this approach after financial auditing (...) practices, and argue that AI audits should similarly provide assurance to their stakeholders about AI organizations’ ability to govern their algorithms in ways that mitigate harms and uphold human values. We discuss the necessary conditions for the criterion audit, and provide a procedural blueprint for performing an audit engagement in practice. We illustrate how this framework can be adapted to current regulations by deriving the criteria on which ‘bias audits’ for hiring algorithms can be performed, as required by the recently effective New York City Local Law 144 of 2021. We conclude by offering critical discussion on the benefits, inherent limitations, and implementation challenges of applying practices of the more mature financial auditing industry to AI auditing where robust guardrails against quality assurance issues are only starting to emerge. Our discussion as informed by experiences in performing these audits in practice highlights the critical role that an audit ecosystem plays in ensuring the effectiveness of such methodology. (shrink)

A series of recent developments points towards auditing as a promising mechanism to bridge the gap between principles and practice in AI ethics. Building on ongoing discussions concerning ethics-based auditing, we offer three contributions. First, we argue that ethics-based auditing can improve the quality of decision making, increase user satisfaction, unlock growth potential, enable law-making, and relieve human suffering. Second, we highlight current best practices to support the design and implementation of ethics-based auditing: To be feasible (...) and effective, ethics-based auditing should take the form of a continuous and constructive process, approach ethical alignment from a system perspective, and be aligned with public policies and incentives for ethically desirable behaviour. Third, we identify and discuss the constraints associated with ethics-based auditing. Only by understanding and accounting for these constraints can ethics-based auditing facilitate ethical alignment of AI, while enabling society to reap the full economic and social benefits of automation. (shrink)

In recent years, the ethical impact of AI has been increasingly scrutinized, with public scandals emerging over biased outcomes, lack of transparency, and the misuse of data. This has led to a growing mistrust of AI and increased calls for mandated ethical audits of algorithms. Current proposals for ethical assessment of algorithms are either too high level to be put into practice without further guidance, or they focus on very specific and technical notions of fairness or transparency that do not (...) consider multiple stakeholders or the broader social context. In this article, we present an auditing framework to guide the ethical assessment of an algorithm. The audit instrument itself is comprised of three elements: a list of possible interests of stakeholders affected by the algorithm, an assessment of metrics that describe key ethically salient features of the algorithm, and a relevancy matrix that connects the assessed metrics to stakeholder interests. The proposed audit instrument yields an ethical evaluation of an algorithm that could be used by regulators and others interested in doing due diligence, while paying careful attention to the complex societal context within which the algorithm is deployed. (shrink)

Abstract: This research focuses on utilizing Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to predict Audit Risk accurately, a critical aspect of ensuring financial system integrity and preventing fraud. Our dataset, gathered from Kaggle, comprises 18 diverse features, including financial and historical parameters, offering a comprehensive view of audit-related factors. These features encompass 'Sector_score,' 'PARA_A,' 'SCORE_A,' 'PARA_B,' 'SCORE_B,' 'TOTAL,' 'numbers,' 'marks,' 'Money_Value,' 'District,' 'Loss,' 'Loss_SCORE,' 'History,' 'History_score,' 'score,' and 'Risk,' with a total of 774 samples. Our proposed neural network architecture, consisting of three (...) layers (1 input, 1 hidden, and 1 output), forms the core of this study. While it may seem simple, the power of ANNs lies not in complexity but in their ability to uncover intricate data patterns. The model underwent rigorous training and validation, resulting in remarkable outcomes—an accuracy of 100% and an average error rate of 0.000015. In addition to performance metrics, our research investigates feature importance, revealing the key contributors to Audit Risk prediction. Notably, 'Sector_score,' 'PARA_A,' 'SCORE_A,' 'PARA_B,' 'SCORE_B,' 'TOTAL,' 'numbers,' 'marks,' 'Money_Value,' 'District,' 'Loss,' 'Loss_SCORE,' 'History,' and 'History_score' emerged as the most influential factors, shedding light on the elements crucial for precise risk assessment. This study advances Audit Risk prediction models and highlights the potential of ANNs in strengthening financial system integrity and fraud prevention. The insights gained from our findings offer practical guidance for stakeholders in the audit and financial sectors. (shrink)

Randomization is an integral part of well-designed statistical trials, and is also a required procedure in legal systems. Implementation of honest, unbiased, understandable, secure, traceable, auditable and collusion resistant randomization procedures is a mater of great legal, social and political importance. Given the juridical and social importance of randomization, it is important to develop procedures in full compliance with the following desiderata: (a) Statistical soundness and computational efficiency; (b) Procedural, cryptographical and computational security; (c) Complete auditability and traceability; (d) Any (...) attempt by participating parties or coalitions to spuriously influence the procedure should be either unsuccessful or be detected; (e) Open-source programming; (f) Multiple hardware platform and operating system implementation; (g) User friendliness and transparency; (h) Flexibility and adaptability for the needs and requirements of multiple application areas (like, for example, clinical trials, selection of jury or judges in legal proceedings, and draft lotteries). This paper presents a simple and easy to implement randomization protocol that assures, in a formal mathematical setting, full compliance to the aforementioned desiderata for randomization procedures. (shrink)

Important decisions that impact humans lives, livelihoods, and the natural environment are increasingly being automated. Delegating tasks to so-called automated decision-making systems can improve efficiency and enable new solutions. However, these benefits are coupled with ethical challenges. For example, ADMS may produce discriminatory outcomes, violate individual privacy, and undermine human self-determination. New governance mechanisms are thus needed that help organisations design and deploy ADMS in ways that are ethical, while enabling society to reap the full economic and social benefits of (...) automation. In this article, we consider the feasibility and efficacy of ethics-based auditing as a governance mechanism that allows organisations to validate claims made about their ADMS. Building on previous work, we define EBA as a structured process whereby an entity’s present or past behaviour is assessed for consistency with relevant principles or norms. We then offer three contributions to the existing literature. First, we provide a theoretical explanation of how EBA can contribute to good governance by promoting procedural regularity and transparency. Second, we propose seven criteria for how to design and implement EBA procedures successfully. Third, we identify and discuss the conceptual, technical, social, economic, organisational, and institutional constraints associated with EBA. We conclude that EBA should be considered an integral component of multifaced approaches to managing the ethical risks posed by ADMS. (shrink)

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, increasing the effectiveness of auditing has weighed heavily on the minds of those responsible for governance. When a business is profitable and paying healthy dividends to its stockholders, fraudulent activities and accounting irregularities can go unnoticed. However, when revenue and cash flow decline, internal costs and operations may be scrutinized more diligently, and discrepancies can emerge as a result. Effective Auditing for Corporates provides you with proactive advice to ...

Forensics is proposed as a means to understand, trace, and recompile data and computational activities. It has a securitocratic dimension and one that is being developed as a means of opening processes, events and systems into a more public state. This article proposes an analysis of forces at play in the circulation of a ‘screener’ of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and associated files, to suggest that forensic approaches used to control flows of data may be repurposed for dis­semination. The (...) article maps a brief history of digital forensics and sets out some of its political entailments, indicating further lines of enquiry regarding the inter-relation of technosocial powers constituted in the interactions between forensics and coun­ter-measures. The article proposes that the posthumanities are partially constituted by a renewed relationship between questions of culture, subjectivity, knowledge and the technical. Some propositions for the technical as grounds for cultural politics are made. (shrink)

The method of contrast is used within philosophy of perception in order to demonstrate that a specific property could be part of our perception. The method is based on two passages. I argue that the method succeeds in its task only if the intuition of the difference, which constitutes the core of the first passage, has two specific traits. The second passage of the method consists in the evaluation of the available explanations of this difference. Among the three outlined options, (...) I will demonstrate that only in the third option – as we shall see, the case of the scenario that remains the same but is perceived in two different ways by the same perceiver – the intuition purports a difference that posses the necessary characteristics, namely being immediately evident and extremely complex and multifaceted, which determine its tensive nature. The application within auditory perception of this third option will generate two cases, a diachronic one and a synchronic one, which clearly show that we can auditorily perceive causality as a link between two sonorous episodes. The causal explanation is the only possible explanation among the many evaluated within the second passage of the method of contrast. (shrink)

For more than two decades, police in the United States have used facial recognition to surveil civilians. Local police departments deploy facial recognition technology to identify protestors’ faces while federal law enforcement agencies quietly amass driver’s license and social media photos to build databases containing billions of faces. Yet, despite the widespread use of facial recognition in law enforcement, there are neither federal laws governing the deployment of this technology nor regulations settings standards with respect to its development. To make (...) matters worse, the Fourth Amendment—intended to limit police power and enacted to protect against unreasonable searches—has struggled to rein in new surveillance technologies since its inception. -/- This Article examines the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence leading up to Carpenter v. United States and suggests that the Court is reinterpreting the amendment for the digital age. Still, the too-slow expansion of privacy protections raises challenging questions about racial bias, the legitimacy of police power, and ethical issues in artificial intelligence design. This Article proposes the development of an algorithmic auditing and accountability market that not only sets standards for AI development and limitations on governmental use of facial recognition but encourages collaboration between public interest technologists and regulators. Beyond the necessary changes to the technological and legal landscape, the current system of policing must also be reevaluated if hard-won civil liberties are to endure. (shrink)

There is a close connection between Dante’’s portrayal of usury in the Inferno and wider scholastic argumentation on the subject. Reading Dante’’s account in light of the scholastic critique of usury reveals a conceptual depth and clarity to the former which has, in the absence of such a reading, remained unfortunately opaque. Dante’’s treatment is informed by three of the four main scholastic arguments against usury, which are cen- tered around the themes of the nature and purpose of money, the (...) relation between labor and a just recompense, and the medieval vision of society as an harmonious whole. Each of these themes are weaved by Dante into his poem in a range of diverse ways, yet the final (social) element is arguably a unifying factor. In this regard, his account of usury can be read in continuity with other critiques of ‘‘bad commerce’’ which are in evidence throughout the Inferno. (shrink)

The idea of a common currency underlying our choice behaviour has played an important role in sciences of behaviour, from neurobiology to psychology and economics. However, while it has been mainly investigated in terms of values, with a common scale on which goods would be evaluated and compared, the question of a common scale for subjective probabilities and confidence in particular has received only little empirical investigation so far. The present study extends previous work addressing this question, by showing that (...) confidence can be compared across visual and auditory decisions, with the same precision as for the comparison of two trials within the same task. We discuss the possibility that confidence could serve as a common currency when describing our choices to ourselves and to others. others. (shrink)

Іn this monograph, the authors summarized and supplemented the results of many scientific studies and developments. Considerable attention is paid to the study of accounting and taxation in the context of current trends in society and the economy; application of new methods of information processing and analysis, its understanding and interpretation; opportunities for convergence of national accounting and control models in the context of globalization of economic processes.

We hear sounds, and their sources, and their audible qualities. Sounds and their sources are essentially dynamic entities, not wholly present at any given moment, but unfolding through their temporal interval. Sounds and their sources, essentially dynamic entities, are the bearers or susbtrata of audible qualities. Audible qualities are qualities essentially sustained by activity. The only bearers of audible qualities present in auditory experience are essentially dynamic entities. Bodies are not, in this sense, essentially dynamic entities and so are not (...) present in our auditory experience. Though absent in auditory experience, we may, nonetheless, attend to bodies in audition, when an audible sound-generating event in which they participate presents a dynamic aural image of them. (shrink)

Internal audit, management review, and account reconciliation are popular tools for combating corporate fraud, but whistle-blowing is the most prevalent. Whistle-blowers frequently fear reprisal from coworkers and bosses. That is why they require protection and support. Many international organizations have advocated that countries adopt regulatory frameworks for protecting whistle-blowers. Therefore, the current study investigates the notion of whistle-blowing to compare it to Public Interest Disclosure Act 2017 of Pakistan, which was enacted. It identifies the influence of legal and ethical cultural (...) norms in organizations on whistle-blowing behaviour. (shrink)

This is a book about the metaphysics of perception and discusses touch, audition, and vision. Though primarily concerned with the nature of perception, it draws heavily from the history of philosophy of perception, and connects the concerns of analytical and continental philosophers.

In this paper, we distinguish between different sorts of assessments of algorithmic systems, describe our process of assessing such systems for ethical risk, and share some key challenges and lessons for future algorithm assessments and audits. Given the distinctive nature and function of a third-party audit, and the uncertain and shifting regulatory landscape, we suggest that second-party assessments are currently the primary mechanisms for analyzing the social impacts of systems that incorporate artificial intelligence. We then discuss two kinds of as-sessments: (...) an ethical risk assessment and a narrower, technical algo-rithmic bias assessment. We explain how the two assessments depend on each other, highlight the importance of situating the algorithm within its particular socio-technical context, and discuss a number of lessons and challenges for algorithm assessments and, potentially, for algorithm audits. The discussion builds on our team’s experience of advising and conducting ethical risk assessments for clients across dif-ferent industries in the last four years. Our main goal is to reflect on the key factors that are potentially ethically relevant in the use of algo-rithms, and draw lessons for the nascent algorithm assessment and audit industry, in the hope of helping all parties minimize the risk of harm from their use. (shrink)

I give an account of sensory presentation, an indispensable and irreducible element of perceptual experience, in terms of the principle of sympathy. Haptic touch, audition, and vision are compared.

From the temporal perspective, this article examines shifts in the productionof sociological knowledge. It identifies two kinds of rhythms of sociology: 1) that of sociological standpoints and techniques of investigation and 2) that of contemporary academic life and culture. The article begins by discussing some of the existing research strategies designed to "chase"high-speed society. Some, predominantly methodological, currents are explored and contrasted with the "slow" instruments of sociological analysis composed of different, yet complementary, modes of inquiry. Against this background, the (...) article stresses that it is through the tension between fast and slow modes of inquiry that sociology reproduces itself. The subsequent part explores the subjective temporal experience in contemporary academia. It is argued that increasing administration and auditing of intellectual work significantly coshapes sociological knowledge production not only by requiring academics to work faster due to an increasing volume of tasks, but also by normalizing time-pressure.The article concludes by considering the problem as to whether the increasing pace of contemporary academic life has detrimental consequences for the more organic reproductive rhythms of sociology. (shrink)

According to cognitive psychology, virtually every sensory system influences the way in which flavours are experienced. However, it is less clear which systems are actually constitutive of flavour perception and which have merely causal influence. The paper focuses on the status of vision and audition, which are usually not treated as constitutive in the context of flavour perception. First, it is proposed that the mechanistic explanation debate provides conceptual resources which allow the constitutivity of sensory systems to be assessed. Second, (...) it is argued that the contemporary state of the art provides reasons for accepting the constitutive role of audition, but analogous evidence is not available in the case of vision. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued that we do not hear sounds as located in the environment. Others have objected that this straightforwardly contradicts the phenomenology of auditory experience. And from this they draw metaphysical conclusions about the nature of sounds—that they are events or properties of vibrating surfaces rather than waves or sensations. I argue that there is a minimal, but recognizable, notion of audition to which this phenomenal objection does not apply. While this notion doesn’t correspond to our ordinary notion (...) of auditory experience, it does—in conjunction with our lack of an uncontroversial individuation of the senses and recent interest in distinctively multisensory features of perceptual experiences—raise the possibility of more expansive notions of audition, including some that do plausibly count as corresponding to our everyday notion of audition, that lack the spatial phenomenology cited in the objection. Until this possibility is ruled out, the phenomenal objection and metaphysical conclusions drawn from it remain inconclusive. (shrink)

An increasing number of financial services (FS) companies are adopting solutions driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to gain operational efficiencies, derive strategic insights, and improve customer engagement. However, the rate of adoption has been low, in part due to the apprehension around its complexity and self-learning capability, which makes auditability a challenge in a highly regulated industry. There is limited literature on how FS companies can implement the governance and controls specific to AI-driven solutions. AI auditing cannot be performed (...) in a vacuum; the risks are not confined to the algorithm itself, but rather permeates the entire organization. Using the risk of unfairness as an example, this paper will introduce the overarching governance strategy and control framework to address the practical challenges in mitigating risks AI introduces. With regulatory implications and industry use cases, this framework will enable leaders to innovate with confidence. (shrink)

In today’s neoliberal audit cultures university rankings, quantitative evaluation of publications by JIF or researchers by h-index are believed to be indispensable instruments for “quality assurance” in the sciences. Yet there is increasing resistance against “impactitis” and “evaluitis”. Usually overseen: Trivial errors in Thomson Reuters’ citation indexes produce severe non-trivial effects: Their victims are authors, institutions, journals with names beyond the ASCII-code and scholars of humanities and social sciences. Analysing the “Joshua Lederberg Papers” I want to illuminate eventually successful ‘invention’ (...) of science citation indexing is a product of contingent factors. To overcome severe resistance Eugene Garfield, the “father” of citation indexing, had to foster overoptimistic attitudes and to downplay the severe problems connected to global and multidisciplinary citation indexing. The difficulties to handle different formats of references and footnotes, non-Anglo-American names, and of publications in non-English languages were known to the pioneers of citation indexing. Nowadays the huge for-profit North-American media corporation Thomson Reuters is the owner of the citation databases founded by Garfield. Thomson Reuters’ influence on funding decisions, individual careers, departments, universities, disciplines and countries is immense and ambivalent. Huge technological systems show a heavy inertness. This insight of technology studies is applicable to the large citation indexes by Thomson Reuters, too. (shrink)

It is a distinctive mark of normal conscious perception that perceived objects are experienced as actually present in one’s surroundings. The aim of this paper is to offer a phenomenologically accurate and empirically plausible account of the cognitive underpinning of this feature of conscious perception, which I shall call perceptual presence. The paper begins with a preliminary characterization of. I then consider and criticize the seminal account of proposed by Mohan Matthen. In the remainder of the paper I put forward (...) and defend my own attentional account. I first outline a simple version of the view by focusing on vision and then extend it to audition. After discussing the case of depersonalization, I consider some objections. The last objection, in particular, will motivate a refinement of the attentional account for the visual case. The paper ends with some remarks mainly about the specificity of the visual case vis-à-vis the auditory one. (shrink)

To create fair and accountable AI and robotics, we need precise regulation and better methods to certify, explain, and audit inscrutable systems.

During the production process, production companies need to monitor the finished products and ensure their quality, which imposes on them the appointment of inspectors for auditing, and this appointment costs the company amounts that affect the general profit, so it strives to make this cost as low as possible and that the audit process is carried out with high accuracy because in case that the finished products do not conform to the basic specifications of the product, the company is (...) required to pay a fine. In this research, we will formulate the text of the problem appropriately for such a case and then we will build the appropriate mathematical model through which we can obtain the lowest possible cost of inspection, and we will present the study using classical values and neutrosophic values, and we will demonstrate them through an example that shows us the difference between them. (shrink)

Philosophers often state that the persistence of objects in vision is experienced differently than the persistence of sounds in audition. This difference is expressed by using metaphors from the metaphysical endurantism/perdurantism debate. For instance, it is claimed that only sounds are perceived as “temporally extended”. The paper investigates whether it is justified to characterize visually experienced objects and auditorily experienced sounds as different types of entities: endurants and perdurants respectively. This issue is analyzed from the perspective of major specifications of (...) the endurance/perdurance distinction connected, inter alia, with the notions of temporal parts and temporal localization. It is argued that it is unjustified to characterize visually experienced objects and auditorily experienced sounds as different types of entities in respect of how they persist. On the other hand, the apparent difference in the way of persisting can be explained by the presence of contingent differences between typical visual and auditory experiences. (shrink)

Is the sense of smell a source of aesthetic perception? Traditional philosophical aesthetics has centered on vision and audition but eliminated smell for its subjective and inherently affective character. This article dismantles the myth that olfaction is an unsophisticated sense. It makes a case for olfactory aesthetics by integrating recent insights in neuroscience with traditional expertise about flavor and fragrance assessment in perfumery and wine tasting. My analysis concerns the importance of observational refinement in aesthetic experience. I argue that the (...) active engagement with stimulus features in perceptual processing shapes the phenomenological content, so much so that the perceptual structure of trained smelling varies significantly from naive smelling. In a second step, I interpret the processes that determine such perceptual refinement in the context of neural decision-making processes, and I end with a positive outlook on how research in neuroscience can be used to benefit philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

Over the years, companies have adopted hiring algorithms because they promise wider job candidate pools, lower recruitment costs and less human bias. Despite these promises, they also bring perils. Using them can inflict unintentional harms on individual human rights. These include the five human rights to work, equality and nondiscrimination, privacy, free expression and free association. Despite the human rights harms of hiring algorithms, the AI ethics literature has predominantly focused on abstract ethical principles. This is problematic for two reasons. (...) First, AI principles have been criticized for being vague and not actionable. Second, the use of vague ethical principles to discuss algorithmic risks does not provide any accountability. This lack of accountability creates an algorithmic accountability gap. Closing this gap is crucial because, without accountability, the use of hiring algorithms can lead to discrimination and unequal access to employment opportunities. This paper makes two contributions to the AI ethics literature. First, it frames the ethical risks of hiring algorithms using international human rights law as a universal standard for determining algorithmic accountability. Second, it evaluates four types of algorithmic impact assessments in terms of how effectively they address the five human rights of job applicants implicated in hiring algorithms. It determines which of the assessments can help companies audit their hiring algorithms and close the algorithmic accountability gap. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that there is a causal condition on perception, and that this condition is a conceptual truth about perception. A highly influential argument for this claim is based on intuitive responses to Gricean-style thought experiments. Do the folk share the intuitions of philosophers? Roberts et al. (2016) presented participants with two kinds of cases: Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a mirror and a pillar) and Non-Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a clock and brain stimulation). (...) They found that a substantial minority agreed that seeing occurs in the Non-Blocker cases, and that in the Blocker cases significantly less agreed that seeing occurs. They thus hypothesized that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition than with a causal condition. This paper continues this line of enquiry with two new experiments. The paper investigates the generality and robustness of Roberts et al.’s findings by expanding the sense modalities tested from only vision to audition and olfaction as well. The paper also uses Gricean-style thought experiments as a case study for investigating the “reflection defense” against the negative project in experimental philosophy. Our results replicate and extend Roberts et al.’s study and support their hypothesis that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition. They also provide an empirical reason to doubt the reflection defense. (shrink)

What does it feel like to be a bat? Is conscious experience of echolocation closer to that of vision or audition? Or do bats process echolocation nonconsciously, such that they do not feel anything about echolocation? This famous question of bats' experience, posed by a philosopher Thomas Nagel in 1974, clarifies the difficult nature of the mind–body problem. Why a particular sense, such as vision, has to feel like vision, but not like audition, is totally puzzling. This is especially so (...) given that any conscious experience is supported by neuronal activity. Activity of a single neuron appears fairly uniform across modalities and even similar to those for non-conscious processing. Without any explanation on why a particular sense has to feel the way it does, researchers cannot approach the question of the bats' experience. Is there any theory that gives us a hope for such explanation? Currently, probably none, except for one. Integrated information theory has potential to offer a plausible explanation. IIT essentially claims that any system that is composed of causally interacting mechanisms can have conscious experience. And precisely how the system feels is determined by the way the mechanisms influence each other in a holistic way. In this article, I will give a brief explanation of the essence of IIT. Further, I will briefly provide a potential scientific pathway to approach bats' conscious experience and its philosophical implications. If IIT, or its improved or related versions, is validated enough, the theory will gain credibility. When it matures enough, predictions from the theory, including nature of bats' experience, will have to be accepted. I argue that a seemingly impossible question about bats' consciousness will drive empirical and theoretical consciousness research to make big breakthroughs, in a similar way as an impossible question about the age of the universe has driven modern cosmology. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that there is a visual field, but the analogous notion of an auditory field is rejected by many philosophers on the grounds that the metaphysics or phenomenology of audition lack the necessary spatial or phenomenological structure. In this paper, I argue that many of the common objections to the existence of an auditory field are misguided and that, contrary to a tradition of philosophical scepticism about the spatiality of auditory experience, it is as richly spatial as (...) visual experience—and in some ways even more so. By carefully considering the spatiality and boundedness of audition, along with how sounds or their sources are experienced as occurring within the surrounding acoustic environment, we can gain a better understanding of (i) our auditory experience of space and (ii) the conditions for the existence of spatial sensory fields in general in a way that does not privilege vision over the other senses. (shrink)

This publication forms a basis for the interdisciplinary development of a certification system for artificial intelligence. In view of the rapid development of artificial intelligence with disruptive and lasting consequences for the economy, society, and everyday life, it highlights the resulting challenges that can be tackled only through interdisciplinary dialogue between IT, law, philosophy, and ethics. As a result of this interdisciplinary exchange, it also defines six AI-specific audit areas for trustworthy use of artificial intelligence. They comprise fairness, transparency, autonomy (...) and control, data protection as well as security and reliability while addressing ethical and legal requirements. The latter are further substantiated with the aim of operationalizability. (shrink)

Changes in an upper level ontology have obvious conse-quences for the domain ontologies that use it at lower levels. It is therefore crucial to document the changes made between successive versions of ontologies of this kind. We describe and apply a method for tracking, explaining and measuring changes between successive versions of upper level ontologies such as the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The proposed change-tracking method extends earlier work on Realism-Based Ontology Versioning (RBOV) and Evolutionary Terminology Auditing (ETA). We (...) describe here the application of this evaluation method to changes between BFO 1.0, BFO 1.1, and BFO 2.0. We discuss the issues raised by this application and describe the extensions which we added to the original evaluation schema in order to account for changes in an ontology of this type. Our results show that BFO has undergone eight types of changes that can be systematically explained by the extended evaluation schema. Finally, we discuss problematic cases, possible pitfalls and certain limits of our study that we propose to address in future work. (shrink)

The Passenger Name Record (PNR) Directive has introduced a pre-emptive, risk-based approach in the landscape of European databases and information exchange for security purposes. The article contributes to ongoing debates on algorithmic security and data-driven decision-making by fleshing out the specific way in which the EU PNR-based approach to security substantiates core characteristics of algorithmic regulation. The EU PNR framework appropriates data produced in the commercial sector for generating security-related behavioural predictions and does so in a way that gives rise (...) to a paradoxical normativity directly dependent on empirical states. Its ‘securitisation move’ is moreover characterised by an inherent tendence to expand. As a result, the PNR Directive poses challenges for existing check and balance mechanisms and for human autonomy. These challenges could be partially addressed by strengthening ex-post control procedures and independent auditing. Yet in the decision to adopt a risk-based security model, something more fundamental seems to be at stake, namely, the preservation of the idea of human beings as moral agents able to direct and modify their behaviour in accordance with an intelligible, reliable and predictable normative order. (shrink)

The philosophy of perception has been mostly focused on vision, to the detriment of other modalities like audition or olfaction. In this paper I focus on olfaction and olfactory experience, and raise the following questions: is olfaction a perceptual-representational modality? If so, what does it represent? My goal in the paper is, firstly, to provide an affirmative answer to the first question, and secondly, to argue that olfaction represents odors in the form of olfactory objects, to which olfactory qualities are (...) attributed. In order to do this I develop an empirically adequate notion of olfactory object that is sensitive to the peculiarities of olfaction, and defend it against various objections. (shrink)

At the intersection of aesthetics and the philosophy of perception lies a problem about representational images. When you look at Vermeer's View of Delft, do you in fact get to see Delft? It would be nice if we could answer in the affirmative, as it would so neatly explain many of our practices in engaging with images. Be it in churches, advertising, or psychology labs, we typically use images as substitutes for the immediate perception of things. Here is what I (...) claim: Images make it possible to see the objects they represent, and they do so because they can function in vision as perceptual mediators. A perceptual mediator is an object of perception by means of which we can perceive something wholly distinct from it. I show that, while such perceptual mediators may be exceptional in vision, in other sensory modalities they occur universally. Our sensory lives would be impoverished without the possibility of perceiving things mediately. In Chapter 1 I identify a fundamental dispute about images. The dispute is about whether images represent by making absent scenes appear to a viewer, or by merely copying the way an object or event looks. Many philosophers favour the idea that images merely copy how things look. In Chapter 2 I explain my dissatisfaction with the copy view. I lay out my main positive proposal in Chapter 3. How does the idea that images make absent objects visible fit with our current concept of perception? I formulate my answer through a study of the other sensory modalities. In audition, it is no mystery that sounds can make other things heard. My arguments forge a connection between images and sounds that has not been explored in recent work on representation or perception. I show how it offers an attractive solution to our problem. In Chapter 4, I argue that moreover, we may regard mediate perception as a purely sensory mode of perception. There is no need to rely on non-sensory or quasi-sensory effects of thought or cognition. Instead, coming to see a painted surface as an image consists in no more than discovering a previously unseen aspect of our visible surroundings. In Chapter 5 I consider at a more general level how visual images contribute to visual perception. Overall, I establish how visual representation has a structural place in our visual world. (shrink)

Touch is standardly taken to be a proximal sense, principally constituted by capacities to detect proximal pressure and thermal stimulation, and contrasted with the distal senses of vision and audition. It has, however, recently been argued that the scope of touch extends beyond proximal perception; touch can connect us to distal objects. Hence touch generally should be thought of as a connection sense. In this paper, I argue that whereas pressure perception is a connection sense, thermal perception is not. Thermal (...) perception is a proximal sense distinct from touch. One significant consequence of this is that it motivates an alternative explanation of how we detect the thermal properties of the things we touch and what they are. (shrink)

It seems plausible that visual experiences of darkness have perceptual phenomenal content that clearly differentiates them from absences of visual experiences. I argue, relying on psychological results concerning auditory attention, that the analogous claim is true about auditory experiences of silence. More specifically, I propose that experiences of silence present empty spatial directions like ‘right’ or ‘left’, and so have egocentric spatial content. Furthermore, I claim that such content is genuinely auditory and phenomenal in the sense that one can, in (...) principle, recognize that one is experiencing silence. This position is far from obvious, as the majority of theories concerning silence perception do not ascribe perceptual phenomenal content to experiences of silence. (shrink)

Sortition, i.e. random appointment for public duty, has been employed by societies throughout the years as a firewall designated to prevent illegitimate interference between parties in a legal case and agents of the legal system. In judicial systems of modern western countries, random procedures are mainly employed to select the jury, the court and/or the judge in charge of judging a legal case. Therefore, these random procedures play an important role in the course of a case, and should comply with (...) some principles, such as transparency and complete auditability. Nevertheless, these principles are neglected by random procedures in some judicial systems, which are performed in secrecy and are not auditable by the involved parties. The assignment of cases in the Brazilian Supreme Court is an example of such a procedure, for it is performed using procedures unknown to the parties involved in the judicial cases. This article presents a review of how sortition has been historically employed by societies and discusses how Mathematical Statistics may be applied to random procedures of the judicial system, as it has been applied for almost a century on clinical trials, for example. A statistical model for assessing randomness in case assignment is proposed and applied to the Brazilian Supreme Court. As final remarks, guidelines for the development of good randomization procedures are outlined. (shrink)

When discussing the safety of research subjects, including their exploitation and vulnerability as well as failures in clinical research, recent commentators have focused mostly on countries with low or middle-income economies. High-income countries are seen as relatively safe and well-regulated. This article presents irregularities in clinical trials in an EU member state, Poland, which were revealed by the Supreme Audit Office of Poland (the NIK). Despite adopting many European Union regulations, including European Commission directives concerning Good Clinical Practice, these irregularities (...) occurred. Causes as well as potential solutions to make clinical trials more ethical and safer are discussed. (shrink)

AI systems that demonstrate significant bias or lower than claimed accuracy, and resulting in individual and societal harms, continue to be reported. Such reports beg the question as to why such systems continue to be funded, developed and deployed despite the many published ethical AI principles. This paper focusses on the funding processes for AI research grants which we have identified as a gap in the current range of ethical AI solutions such as AI procurement guidelines, AI impact assessments and (...) AI audit frameworks. We highlight the responsibilities of funding bodies to ensure investment is channelled towards trustworthy and safe AI systems and provides case studies as to how other ethical funding principles are managed. We offer a first sight of two proposals for funding bodies to consider regarding procedures they can employ. The first proposal is for the inclusion of a Trustworthy AI Statement’ section in the grant application form and offers an example of the associated guidance. The second proposal outlines the wider management requirements of a funding body for the ethical review and monitoring of funded projects to ensure adherence to the proposed ethical strategies in the applicants Trustworthy AI Statement. The anticipated outcome for such proposals being employed would be to create a ‘stop and think’ section during the project planning and application procedure requiring applicants to implement the methods for the ethically aligned design of AI. In essence it asks funders to send the message “if you want the money, then build trustworthy AI!”. (shrink)

Background: Use of patients’ medical data for secondary purposes such as health research, audit, and service planning is well established in the UK. However, the governance environment, as well as public understanding about this work, have lagged behind. We aimed to systematically review the literature on UK and Irish public views of patient data used in research, critically analysing such views though an established biomedical ethics framework, to draw out potential strategies for future good practice guidance and inform ethical and (...) privacy debates. Methods: We searched three databases using terms such as patient, public, opinion, and electronic health records. Empirical studies were eligible for inclusion if they surveyed healthcare users, patients or the public in UK and Ireland and examined attitudes, opinions or beliefs about the use of patient data for medical research. Results were synthesised into broad themes using a framework analysis. Results: Out of 13,492 papers and reports screened, 20 papers or reports were eligible. While there was a widespread willingness to share patient data for research for the common good, this very rarely led to unqualified support. The public expressed two generalised concerns about the potential risks to their privacy. The first of these concerns related to a party’s competence in keeping data secure, while the second was associated with the motivation a party might have to use the data. Conclusions: The public evaluates trustworthiness of research organisations by assessing their competence in data-handling and motivation for accessing the data. Public attitudes around data-sharing exemplified several principles which are also widely accepted in biomedical ethics. This provides a framework for understanding public attitudes, which should be considered in the development in any guidance for regulators and data custodians. We propose four salient questions which decision makers should address when evaluating proposals for the secondary use of data. (shrink)

Studios resist reductive analyses. Although isolated, they have their own frontstages and backstages, and like the laboratories studied by Knorr-Cetina, function as more than simply “internal environments.” The placeness of studios leaves both audible traces (the early reflections of sounds) and visible ones, if we think of those studios that become shrines or pilgrimage sites, or photo or video documentation of studios that provide the outside world a brief glimpse into the interior isolation of recording studio life. It would seem (...) that major facilities such as Abbey Road, Ocean Way or Sun Records are emphatically not “placeless place[s]” (Gieryn 2008), nor are they decontextualized from their immediate geographic surroundings. -/- Although atomized project studios (including bedroom studios, garages, and barns) may not immediately appear to be embedded within the social relations of a bounded local culture, many such studios are embedded within the social relations of specific online networked cultures,20 as is evinced by the vibrant online recording engineer communities that support everything from amateur acoustician pedagogy to advanced mixing techniques and even online mixing/remixing competitions. Such studios can be considered as “local anchoring points in the cultural metropolises of the global urban network” (Watson, Hoyler and Mager 2009). Knorr-Cetina (1992) suggests something similar when she discusses how laboratories function not just as “internal environments” but rather as “a link between internal and external environments, a border in a wider traffic of objects and observations”. Like their larger counterparts, project studios are acoustic environments isolated from various perceived outsides, use the very same technologies of audition to make up for the constrained paths of audibility, and similarly shape the kinds of musical and social practices that can transpire within (even if this shaping process effectively restricts the studio’s usage to a single musician at a time). I argue that the more we wish to understand the vibe and sound of the studios, the more we may wish to consider the studio as an active agent in the process of recording production, an actor in the social worlds that inhabit its very wombs and bunkers. (shrink)

Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) aim to compensate for the loss of a sensory modality, typically vision, by converting information from the lost modality into stimuli in a remaining modality. “The vOICe” is a visual-to-auditory SSD which encodes images taken by a camera worn by the user into “soundscapes” such that experienced users can extract information about their surroundings. Here we investigated how much detail was resolvable during the early induction stages by testing the acuity of blindfolded sighted, naïve vOICe users. (...) Initial performance was well above chance. Participants who took the test twice as a form of minimal training showed a marked improvement on the second test. Acuity was slightly but not significantly impaired when participants wore a camera and judged letter orientations “live”. A positive correlation was found between participants' musical training and their acuity. The relationship between auditory expertise via musical training and the lack of a relationship with visual imagery, suggests that early use of a SSD draws primarily on the mechanisms of the sensory modality being used rather than the one being substituted. If vision is lost, audition represents the sensory channel of highest bandwidth of those remaining. The level of acuity found here, and the fact it was achieved with very little experience in sensory substitution by naïve users is promising. (shrink)

This paper proposes a methodological strategy to investigate the question of the individuation of the senses both from a commonsensical and a scientific point of view. We start by discussing some traditional and recent criteria for distinguishing the senses and argue that none of them taken in isolation seems to be able to handle both points of views. We then pay close attention to the faculty of hearing which offers promising examples of the strategy we pursue of combining commonsense and (...) science. In particular, we argue in favour of a distinction between two kinds of modes of presentation associated with sound perception: a mechanical mode of presentation that makes sounds perceptible by other modalities than audition such as touch and a tonal mode of presentation that makes people conceive of sounds as the proper objects of auditory perception. (shrink)

In June 2002, Arthur Andersen LLP became the first accounting firm in history to be criminally convicted. The repercussions were immense. From a position as one of the leading professional services firms in the world, with 85,000 staff in 84 countries and revenues in excess of $9 billion, Andersen effectively ceased to exist within a matter of months. Although Andersen’s conviction related specifically to a charge of obstructing justice, public attention focused on the audit relationship between Andersen and its major (...) client, Enron Corporation, particularly the actions (and inactions) that had allowed Enron to post spectacular year-on-year earnings and profit growth. As well as examining events leading up to the demise of Andersen, the case provides an opportunity to consider the broader controversy over accounting and corporate governance practices and, more generally, the pressures found within organisations that can foster unethical conduct. The case was prepared from public sources. (shrink)