The essay proceeds from the assumptions that for a economic/political integration group to succeed, first, its participants’ motives should ideally be as alike as possible and not oppose one another and, second, their expectations from integration should correspond to the organisation’s capabilities. In light of these assumptions, the study endeavours to assess the Eurasian Economic Union’s (EAEU) potential for stability and development. First, the author analyses the key motives that were driving its member states’ decisions to enter the organisation, (...) compares them with one another and discusses how the countries’ motives influence their conduct in the union. Second, the author confronts those motives against the EAEU’s activities and the general logic of interstate politics on the post-Soviet space to reckon up whether the bloc’s capabilities fit with the expectations of its member countries. Finally, based on that discussion, the author speculates on how the divergence/convergence of EAEU member states’ goals, as well as the (in-)feasibility of their expectations, affect the organisation’s development. (shrink)

A paradox, it is claimed, is a radical form of contradiction, one that produces gaps in meaning. In order to approach this idea, two senses of “separation” are distinguished: separation by something and separation by nothing. The latter does not refer to nothing in an ordinary sense, however, since in that sense what’s intended is actually less than nothing. Numerous ordinary nothings in philosophy as well as in other fields are surveyed so as to clarify the contrast. Then follows the (...) suggestion that philosophies which one would expect to have room for paradoxes actually tend either to exclude them altogether, or to dull them. There is a clear alternative, however, one that fully recognizes paradoxes and yet also strives to overcome them. (shrink)

Gender issues are well-researched in the general management literature, particular in studies on new ventures. Unfortunately, gender issues have been largely ignored in the dynamic capabilities literature. We address this gap by analyzing the effects of gender diversity on dynamic capabilities among micro firms. We consider the gender of managers and personnel in 124 Ukrainian tourism micro firms. We examine how a manager’s gender affects the firm’s sensing capacities and investigate how it moderates team gender diversity’s impact on sensing capacities. (...) We also investigate how personnel composition impacts seizing and reconfiguration capacities. We find that female managers have several shortcomings concerning a firm’s sensing capacity but that personnel gender diversity increases this capacity. Team gender diversity has positive effects on a firm’s seizing and reconfiguration abilities. Our study advances research on gender diversity and its impact on firm capabilities and illustrates its relevance for staffing practices in micro firms. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are ubiquitous. From social media timelines, video recommendations on YouTube, and the kinds of adverts we see online, AI, in a very real sense, filters the world we see. More than that, AI is being embedded in agent-like systems, which might prompt certain reactions from users. Specifically, we might find ourselves feeling frustrated if these systems do not meet our expectations. In normal situations, this might be fine, but with the ever increasing sophistication of AI-systems, (...) this might become a problem. While it seems unproblematic to realize that being angry at your car for breaking down is unfitting, can the same be said for AI-systems? In this paper, therefore, I will investigate the so-called “reactive attitudes”, and their important link to our responsibility practices. I then show how within this framework there exist exemption and excuse conditions, and test whether our adopting the “objective attitude” toward agential AI is justified. I argue that such an attitude is appropriate in the context of three distinct senses of responsibility (answerability, attributability, and accountability), and that, therefore, AI-systems do not undermine our responsibility ascriptions. (shrink)

Sparrow argues that military robots capable of making their own decisions would be independent enough to allow us denial for their actions, yet too unlike us to be the targets of meaningful blame or praise—thereby fostering what Matthias has dubbed “the responsibility gap.” We agree with Sparrow that someone must be held responsible for all actions taken in a military conflict. That said, we think Sparrow overlooks the possibility of what we term “blank check” responsibility: A person of sufficiently high (...) standing could accept responsibility for the actions of autonomous robotic devices—even if that person could not be causally linked to those actions besides this prior agreement. The basic intuition behind our proposal is that humans can impute relations even when no other form of contact can be established. The missed alternative we want to highlight, then, would consist in an exchange: Social prestige in the occupation of a given office would come at the price of signing away part of one's freedoms to a contingent and unpredictable future guided by another agency. (shrink)

Gender issues are well-researched in the general management literature, particular in studies on new ventures. Unfortunately, gender issues have been largely ignored in the dynamic capabilities literature. We address this gap by analyzing the effects of gender diversity on dynamic capabilities among micro firms. We consider the gender of managers and personnel in 124 Ukrainian tourism micro firms. We examine how a manager’s gender affects the firm’s sensing capacities and investigate how it moderates team gender diversity’s impact on sensing capacities. (...) We also investigate how personnel composition impacts seizing and reconfiguration capacities. We find that female managers have several shortcomings concerning a firm’s sensing capacity but that personnel gender diversity increases this capacity. Team gender diversity has positive effects on a firm’s seizing and reconfiguration abilities. Our study advances research on gender diversity and its impact on firm capabilities and illustrates its relevance for staffing practices in micro firms. (shrink)

Life expectancy prediction, a pivotal facet of public health and policy formulation, has witnessed remarkable advancements owing to the integration of neural network models and comprehensive datasets. In this research, we present an innovative approach to forecasting life expectancy in diverse countries. Leveraging a neural network architecture, our model was trained on a dataset comprising 22 distinct features, acquired from Kaggle, and encompassing key health indicators, socioeconomic metrics, and cultural attributes. The model demonstrated exceptional predictive accuracy, attaining an impressive 99.27% (...) and an average error of 0.0034, underscoring the potency of deep learning in tackling complex, real-world challenges. Furthermore, our study delved into feature importance analysis, identifying critical determinants such as HIV/AIDS prevalence, income composition of resources, and socioeconomic status that significantly influence life expectancy. These findings provide actionable insights for healthcare policymakers and practitioners, emphasizing the importance of addressing health disparities, promoting economic development, and implementing targeted interventions. This research bridges the gap between data-driven methodologies and global health, offering a robust predictive tool and enriching our understanding of the multifaceted dynamics that shape life expectancy across nations. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, cognitive science has identified several forms of reasoning that make essential use of conceptual knowledge. Despite significant theoretical and empirical progress, there is still no unified framework for understanding how concepts are used in reasoning. This paper argues that the theory of conceptual spaces is capable of filling this gap. Our strategy is to demonstrate how various inference mechanisms which clearly rely on conceptual information—including similarity, typicality, and diagnosticity-based reasoning—can be modeled using principles derived from (...) conceptual spaces. Our first topic analyzes the role of expectations in inductive reasoning and their relation to the structure of our concepts. We examine the relationship between using generic expressions in natural language and common-sense reasoning as a second topic. We propose that the strength of a generic can be described by distances between properties and prototypes in conceptual spaces. Our third topic is category-based induction. We demonstrate that the theory of conceptual spaces can serve as a comprehensive model for this type of reasoning. The final topic is analogy. We review some proposals in this area, present a taxonomy of analogical relations, and show how to model them in terms of distances in conceptual spaces. We also briefly discuss the implications of the model for reasoning with concepts in artificial systems. (shrink)

In 2012, a major traffic safety organization tasked the MIT AgeLab with developing a data-driven system for rating the effectiveness of new technologies intended to improve safety. Such a system was envisioned as having the potential to educate and guide consumers towards more confident and strategic purchasing decisions, ideally encouraging adoption of technologies with demonstrated safety benefit. In addition, an evaluation of the status and extent of existing data was seen as a way of identifying research gaps in the state (...) of knowledge about safety systems. The focus was on technologies as a class, not on a rating review of individual vehicle model implementations. As conceptualized, the system aimed to complement traditional NCAP style ratings as well as to provide consumers with transparent information on early stage and often improving safety technologies. Development of the rating system and identification of data was undertaken in consultation with a range of academic, industrial, consumer, NGO, and governmental experts as well as with representatives of many of the major automotive manufacturers and suppliers. -/- A key observation that emerged was that data on objectively demonstrable real-world benefits were generally sparse and often lower than expectations based on theoretical considerations, simulation studies, or pre-production evaluations. A number of experts and industry representatives expressed some surprise at both the divergence between theoretical and observed benefits and the relative scarcity of data upon which to make objective assessments, while others were quite aware of these issues and the need for the development of objective data under real-world operating conditions. A number of factors that might be relevant to understanding why such differences between expected and observed benefits exist were identified. One outcome of this effort was the founding of the Advanced Vehicle Technology (AVT) consortium to collect and examine objective data under naturalistic driving conditions of how drivers interact with, engage or don’t engage, various production safety and driver assistance systems. This ongoing effort is contributing to insights concerning actual benefits and reasons for benefit gaps. -/- Drawing from our initial work, as well as newer sources of data, we argue that the evaluation and rating of safety and driver assistance technologies for informing the consumer and the public at large should consider both theoretical potential and existing demonstrated benefit of specific technologies. This position is increasingly relevant as the effectiveness of many newer technologies have the potential to actually improve over the lifecycle of a vehicle through software updates. The emphasis on ratings based on observed benefit for actual drivers under real-world conditions is proposed to be complementary, rather than competing with, ratings focused largely on controlled test track evaluations of engineered capability. In addition, a case is made for providing ratings that assesses benefit relative to overall crash, injury, and fatality rates – and in relation to the specific scenario / crash event type that a given technology is intended to address. This approach should aid consumers in considering the extent to which a specific technology is or is not relevant to their particular driving needs. (shrink)

With the existing commitments to climate change mitigation, global warming is likely to exceed 2°C and to trigger irreversible and harmful threshold effects. The difference between the reductions necessary to keep the 2°C limit and those reductions countries have currently committed to is called the ‘emissions gap’. I argue that capable states not only have a moral duty to make voluntary contributions to bridge that gap, but that complying states ought to make up for the failures of some other states (...) to comply with this duty. While defecting or doing less than one’s fair share can be a good move in certain circumstances, it would be morally wrong in this situation. In order to bridge the emissions gap, willing states ought to take up the slack left by others. The paper will reject the unfairness-objection, namely that it is wrong to require agents to take on additional costs to discharge duties that are not primarily theirs. Sometimes what is morally right is simply unfair. (shrink)

Typically, philosophers analysing well-being’s nature maintain three claims. First, that well-being has essential properties. Second, that the concept of well-being circumscribes those properties. Third, that well-being theories should capture them exhaustively and exclusively. This predominant position is called well-being monism. In opposition, contextualists argue that no overarching concept of well-being referring to a universally applicable well-being standard exists. Such a standard would describe what is good, bad, and neutral, for us without qualification. Instead, well-being research is putatively about several central (...) phenomena. If several phenomena are central, a proliferation of concurrently acceptable well-being theories and operationalisations is expected. However, contextualists are challenged to explain how those analysing well-being are not systematically talking past each other. In this paper, I address that challenge. The upshot is that contextualist well-being theories can be justifiably context-sensitive and applied to tailor-made policy-making efforts. I illustrate the benefits by connecting contextualism to the capability approach. (shrink)

Hyperbole is traditionally understood as exaggeration. Instead, in this paper, we shall define it not just in terms of its form, but in terms of its effects and its purpose. Specifically, we characterize its form as a shift of magnitude along a scale of measurement. In terms of its effect, it uses this magnitude shift to make the target property more salient. The purpose of hyperbole is to express with colour and force that the target property is either greater or (...) lesser than expected or desired. This purpose is well suited to hyperbolic expression. This because hyperbole naturally draws a contrast between two points: how things are versus how they were expected to be. We also consider compound figures involving hyperbole. When it combines with other figures hyperbole operates by magnifying the specific effects of the figure it operates on. We shall see that sometimes hyperbole works as an input for irony; and at other times it builds on a metaphor to increase the effects of that metaphor. (shrink)

Much attention has recently been paid to the idea, which I label ‘External World Acquaintance’ (EWA), that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is partially constituted by external features. One motivation for EWA which has received relatively little discussion is its alleged ability to help deal with the ‘Explanatory Gap’ (e.g. Fish 2008, 2009, Langsam 2011, Allen 2016). I provide a reformulation of this general line of thought, which makes clearer how and when EWA could help to explain the specific (...) phenomenal nature of visual experience. In particular, I argue that by focusing on the different kinds of perceptual actions that are available in the case of visual spatial vs. colour perception, we get a natural explanation for why we should expect the specific nature of colour phenomenology to remain less readily intelligible than the specific nature of visual spatial phenomenology. (shrink)

Many philosophers think the distinctive function of deontic evaluation is to guide action. This idea is used in arguments for a range of substantive claims. In this paper, we entirely do one completely destructive thing and partly do one not entirely constructive thing. The first thing: we argue that there is an unrecognized gap between the claim that the function of deontic evaluation is to guide action and attempts to put that claim to use. We consider and reject four arguments (...) intended to bridge this gap. The interim conclusion is thus that arguments starting with the claim that the function of deontic evaluation is to guide action have a lacuna. The second thing: we consider a different tack for making arguments of this sort work. We sketch a methodology one could accept that would do the trick. Unfortunately, as we’ll explain, although this methodology would bridge the gap in arguments that put claims about the function of deontic evaluation to work, it would do so in a way that vitiates any interest we might have in such arguments. As an aside, we’ll also point out how epistemologists, who have recently become interested in the function of epistemic evaluation, appear to already recognize this fact. The conclusion is hence a dilemma: either arguments from deontic function to substance have a lacuna or such arguments lack teeth. (shrink)

The management of Higher Education Systems has continued to suffer from plethora of concerns and issues, cardinal amongst them, is the application of conventional administrative strategies and leadership patterns, sometimes without appropriate modifications so much so, that the management effectiveness of higher education systems is gradually being eroded. This is evident in the increasing distasteful gamut of multidimensional outcomes arising from the used of dogmatic and stereotype variants of managerial principles or nothing at all, in the circumstance. Given this premise, (...) there is an urgent desire to rejig and re-engineer learning experiences that will culminate into dynamic, goal oriented and robust management packages for higher education systems with results for global acclamations, thereby, chatting new directions to fill this existing gap in the management of higher education systems in Nigeria. With humility, I introduce to you this book titled: Management of Higher Education Systems, a collection of well-researched essays. The essays in this book promises to deliver on the deliverables of its raison d’tre of job specifications and management dynamics of higher education landscape, reflecting on the global realities. This is because scholarly evidences abound, to proof that looking into the National Universities Commission’s Bench Mark Minimum Academic Standard (BMAS) of the curriculum for Educational Management as a discipline, it is obvious, that the BMAS has fallen short of global expectations and appears to be revolving within neo-colonial conventional administrative theorizing, with little or no emphasis on the practical demonstration of acquired skills, competences and capabilities for trained educational administrators, to deal with peculiarities of the moment, especially in the developing world. This felt need pushes for a paradigm shift in our curricula endeavours. It is even worse off, when experiences have continued to show, that there are deficiencies noticeable in the understanding of job requirements of educational managers of higher education systems in Nigeria. -/- It is this gap therefore, that the current effort is geared towards building this literature which seeks to address this lacuna by re-chiseling and retooling educational management practices through equipping this sophisticated discipline with up-to-date information and knowledge that will enhance the full optimaization of the job specifications, of higher educational managers, to bring into a perfect nexus of the man, job and social milieu. It is also in public domain, that managers of higher educational systems with such limitations are very often left with no option than to resort to on -the- job training by bureaucrats, who are in themselves their acolytes ab-initio and who sometimes take over leadership of the organization, owing to the existing gaps that manifest in the knowledge of educational managers, thereby reducing substantive higher education executive head to a titular head or at best ceremonial heads. -/- This book brings together articles and chapters to be published in these directions by researchers, policy makers and practitioners to re-inform, reeducate and reorient higher educational managers on their job expectations. The volume also offers a rich and relevant literature of the dynamic state of higher education in global perspective. While this publication will be freely available online, the essays in this volume are carefully selected and they will provide a basis for thematic and analytical perspectives on the concerns of management of contemporary higher education systems. -/- The book is divided into twelve thematic sections with each addressing the demands of its Kernel, as it is reflected in Historical development of higher education systems and its organs, Gloabilization of higher education, Internationalization and the labour market, Funding of higher education systems, Proliferations of higher education systems, Corruption in higher education systems and the deterioration of its estate, Internationalization and massification, Politics and leadership in higher educational systems, Academic freedom and access to higher education, Academic planning and affiliation relationship of higher education systems, Conflict management in higher education systems, Research and training in higher education systems and Inclusivity in higher education. -/- Another striking feature of this book is in its efforts at globalizing the curriculum of management of higher education and providing opportunity for scholars with different shades of opinion even on same issues but from different perspectives with the hope that it will guarantee overall effectiveness in the management of higher education systems. I recommemd this book to all with passion for the management of diferentiated higher education systems, and invite you to this intellectual feast prepared so deliciously like a meal for the gods. -/- Finally, let me reflect on what may appears to be an aberration in this context, by appreciating all authors who had found time to respond to this academic calling by their various chapter contributions. This singular act is in itself enough justification as show of interest and further demonstration of your continuous determination to address gaps in Nigerian educational landscape. Similarly, my gratitude is equally extended to all members of my editorial team for their thoughtfulness and very constructive criticisms which have shaped these scholarly presentations thereof. May the Almighty God continue to enrich the contents of your cerebrum most intellectually, for the benefit of man but to His glory. -/- The PDF contains just the preliminary pages of the book. You can order the full copy of the book by contacting the editor-in-chief, Professor John A. Undie, FNAEAP, KSM. (shrink)

Open Access: Trudy Govier (FR) argues for “conditional unforgivability,” yet avers that we should never give up on a human being. She not only says it is justifiable to take a “hopeful and respectful attitude” toward one’s wrongdoers, she indicates that it is wrong not to; she says it is objectionable to adopt an attitude that any individual is “finally irredeemable” or “could never change,” because such an attitude “anticipates and communicates the worst” (137). Govier’s recommendation to hold a hopeful (...) attitude seems to follow from one’s knowing that an appropriate object of unforgivability is also an agent capable of moral transformation. I appeal to Blake Myers-Schultz’s and Eric Schwitzgebels’ account of knowledge without belief, and Schwitzgebels’ account of attitudes, to argue that a victim’s knowledge that a wrongdoer has the capacities of a moral agent does not entail belief in the possibility that a wrongdoer will exercise those moral capacities, nor does knowledge of a wrongdoer’s moral capacities entail hopeful attitudes toward the prospects of an individual wrongdoer’s moral transformation. I conclude that what victims can hope for should not be that which victims are held to as a moral minimum. (shrink)

Since our moral and legal judgments are focused on our decisions and actions, one would expect information about the neural underpinnings of human decision-making and action-production to have a significant bearing on those judgments. However, despite the wealth of empirical data, and the public attention it has attracted in the past few decades, the results of neuroscientific research have had relatively little influence on legal practice. It is here argued that this is due, at least partly, to the discussion on (...) the relationship of the neurosciences and law mixing up a number of separate issues that have different relevance on our moral and legal judgments. The approach here is hierarchical; more and less feasible ways in which neuroscientific data could inform such judgments are separated from each other. The neurosciences and other physical views on human behavior and decision-making do have the potential to have an impact on our legal reasoning. However, this happens in various different ways, and too often appeal to any neural data is assumed to be automatically relevant to shaping our moral and legal judgments. Our physicalist intuitions easily favor neural-level explanations to mental-level ones. But even if you were to subscribe to some reductionist variant of physicalism, it would not follow that all neural data should be automatically relevant to our moral and legal reasoning. However, the neurosciences can give us indirect evidence for reductive physicalism, which can then lead us to challenge the very idea of free will. Such a development can, ultimately, also have repercussions on law and legal practice. (shrink)

Different anesthetics are known to modulate different types of membrane-bound receptors. Their common mechanism of action is expected to alter the mechanism for consciousness. Consciousness is hypothesized as the integral of all the units of internal sensations induced by reactivation of inter-postsynaptic membrane functional LINKs during mechanisms that lead to oscillating potentials. The thermodynamics of the spontaneous lateral curvature of lipid membranes induced by lipophilic anesthetics can lead to the formation of non-specific inter-postsynaptic membrane functional LINKs by different mechanisms. These (...) include direct membrane contact by excluding the inter-membrane hydrophilic region and readily reversible partial membrane hemifusion. The constant reorganization of the lipid membranes at the lateral edges of the postsynaptic terminals (dendritic spines) resulting from AMPA receptor-subunit vesicle exocytosis and endocytosis can favor the effect of anesthetic molecules on lipid membranes at this location. Induction of a large number of non-specific LINKs can alter the conformation of the integral of the units of internal sensations that maintain consciousness. Anesthetic requirement is reduced in the presence of dopamine that causes enlargement of dendritic spines. Externally applied pressure can transduce from the middle ear through the perilymph, cerebrospinal fluid, and the recently discovered glymphatic pathway to the extracellular matrix space, and finally to the paravenular space. The pressure gradient reduce solubility and displace anesthetic molecules from the membranes into the paravenular space, explaining the pressure reversal of anesthesia. Changes in membrane composition and the conversion of membrane hemifusion to fusion due to defects in the checkpoint mechanisms can lead to cytoplasmic content mixing between neurons and cause neurodegenerative changes. The common mechanism of anesthetics presented here can operate along with the known specific actions of different anesthetics. (shrink)

Are groups ever capable of bearing responsibility, over and above their individual members? This chapter discusses and defends the view that certain organized collectives – namely, those that qualify as group moral agents – can be held responsible for their actions, and that group responsibility is not reducible to individual responsibility. The view has important implications. It supports the recognition of corporate civil and even criminal liability in our legal systems, and it suggests that, by recognizing group agents as loci (...) of responsibility, we may be able to avoid “responsibility gaps” in some cases of collectively caused harms for which there is a shortfall of individual responsibility. The chapter further asks whether the view that certain groups are responsible agents commits us to the view that those groups should also be given rights of their own and gives a qualified negative answer. (shrink)

The statement that we are currently failing to address some of humanity’s greatest challenges seems uncontroversial—we are not doing enough to limit global warming to a maximum of 2 °C and we are exposing vulnerable people to preventable diseases when failing to produce herd immunity. But what singles out such failings from all the things we did not do when all are unintended? Unlike their individualist counterparts, collective inaction and omission have not yet received much attention in the literature. collective (...) inaction, I argue, can be attributed to a group of agents where a collective action x that the agents did not perform was collectively feasible at time t where each agent in that group had sufficient reason to contribute to performing x or others had a reasonable expectation that they would perform x. I show that, perhaps surprisingly, we can speak of collective inaction even where only one member of the group fails to act. However, where large and dispersed groups of agents are concerned, there is often no meaningful way of attributing collective failings. Still, I contend that the failure to close the global emissions gap and—in some cases—to generate herd immunity are indeed on us. (shrink)

As stochastic independence is essential to the mathematical development of probability theory, it seems that any foundational work on probability should be able to account for this property. Bayesian decision theory appears to be wanting in this respect. Savage’s postulates on preferences under uncertainty entail a subjective expected utility representation, and this asserts only the existence and uniqueness of a subjective probability measure, regardless of its properties. What is missing is a preference condition corresponding to stochastic independence. To fill this (...) significant gap, the article axiomatizes Bayesian decision theory afresh and proves several representation theorems in this novel framework. (shrink)

We present two defeasible logics of norm-propositions (statements about norms) that (i) consistently allow for the possibility of normative gaps and normative conflicts, and (ii) map each premise set to a sufficiently rich consequence set. In order to meet (i), we define the logic LNP, a conflict- and gap-tolerant logic of norm-propositions capable of formalizing both normative conflicts and normative gaps within the object language. Next, we strengthen LNP within the adaptive logic framework for non-monotonic reasoning in order to meet (...) (ii). This results in the adaptive logics LNPr and LNPm, which interpret a given set of premises in such a way that normative conflicts and normative gaps are avoided ‘whenever possible’. LNPr and LNPm are equipped with a preferential semantics and a dynamic proof theory. (shrink)

Coordination is a key problem for addressing goal–action gaps in many human endeavors. We define interpersonal coordination as a type of communicative action characterized by low interpersonal belief and goal conflict. Such situations are particularly well described as having collectively “intelligent”, “common good” solutions, viz., ones that almost everyone would agree constitute social improvements. Coordination is useful across the spectrum of interpersonal communication—from isolated individuals to organizational teams. Much attention has been paid to coordination in teams and organizations. In this (...) paper we focus on the looser interpersonal structures we call active support networks, and on technology that meets their needs. We describe two needfinding investigations focused on social support, which examined four application areas for improving coordination in ASNs: academic coaching, vocational training, early learning intervention, and volunteer coordination; and existing technology relevant to ASNs. We find a thus-far unmet need for personal task management software that allows smooth integration with an individual’s active support network. Based on identified needs, we then describe an open architecture for coordination that has been developed into working software. The design includes a set of capabilities we call “social prompting”, as well as templates for accomplishing multi-task goals, and an engine that controls coordination in the network. The resulting tool is currently available and in continuing development. We explain its use in ASNs with an example. Follow-up studies are underway in which the technology is being applied in existing support networks. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to revolutionise the practice of medicine. Recent advancements in the field of deep learning have demonstrated success in variety of clinical tasks: detecting diabetic retinopathy from images, predicting hospital readmissions, aiding in the discovery of new drugs, etc. AI’s progress in medicine, however, has led to concerns regarding the potential effects of this technology on relationships of trust in clinical practice. In this paper, I will argue that there is merit to these concerns, since AI (...) systems can be relied on, and are capable of reliability, but cannot be trusted, and are not capable of trustworthiness. Insofar as patients are required to rely on AI systems for their medical decision-making, there is potential for this to produce a deficit of trust in relationships in clinical practice. (shrink)

Human-centered explainable AI (HCXAI) advocates for the integration of social aspects into AI explanations. Central to the HCXAI discourse is the Social Transparency (ST) framework, which aims to make the socio-organizational context of AI systems accessible to their users. In this work, we suggest extending the ST framework to address the risks of social misattributions in Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly in sensitive areas like mental health. In fact LLMs, which are remarkably capable of simulating roles and personas, may lead (...) to mismatches between designers' intentions and users' perceptions of social attributes, risking to promote emotional manipulation and dangerous behaviors, cases of epistemic injustice, and unwarranted trust. To address these issues, we propose enhancing the ST framework with a fifth 'W-question' to clarify the specific social attributions assigned to LLMs by its designers and users. This addition aims to bridge the gap between LLM capabilities and user perceptions, promoting the ethically responsible development and use of LLM-based technology. (shrink)

Do we rightly expect a perfectly loving God to bring it about that, right now, we reasonably believe that He exists? It seems so. For love at its best desires the well-being of the beloved, not from a distance, but up close, explicitly participating in her life in a personal fashion, allowing her to draw from that relationship what she may need to flourish. But why suppose that we would be significantly better off were God to engage in an explicit, (...) personal relationship with us? Well, first, there would be broadly moral benefits. We would be able to draw on the resources of that relationship to overcome seemingly everpresent flaws in our character. And we would be more likely to emulate the self-giving love with which we were loved. So loved, we would be more likely to flourish as human beings. Secondly, there would be experiential benefits. We would be, for example, more likely to experience peace and joy stemming from the strong conviction that we were properly related to our Maker, security in suffering knowing that, ultimately, all shall be well, and there would be the sheer pleasure of God's loving presence. As a consequence of these moral and experiential benefits, our relationships with others would likely improve. Thirdly, to be personally related to God is intrinsically valuable, indeed, according to the Christian tradition, the greatest intrinsic good. In these ways our well-being would be enhanced if God were to relate personally to us. Moreover, the best love does not seek a personal relationship only for the sake of the beloved. As Robert Adams rightly notes, "It is an abuse of the word 'love' to say that one loves a person, or any other object, if one does not care, except instrumentally, about one's relation to that object."1 Thus, God would want a personal relationship with us not only for the benefit we would receive from it but for its own sake as well. So, if a perfectly loving God exists, He wants a personal relationship with us, or more accurately, every capable creature, those cognitively and affectively equipped to relate personally with Him.. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to defend Langsam’s Theory of Appearing (TA) against Djukic et al’s critique. In strengthening Langsam’s defense of TA, I adopt some of Le Morvan's arguments in defending Direct Realism. TA states that experiences are relations between material object and mind, and that phenomenal features are appearances of relations held between material objects and mind. Djukic objects to TA on three grounds of Hallucination, Causal Principle (CP), and Time-Gap: First, Djukic objects to TA on the (...) ground that perception and hallucinations are phenomenally indistinguishable, thus phenomenal features (or properties) instantiated in perception may not be relations either, and thus TA could fail. In defending TA, Langsam argues that indistinguishability does not entail that perception and hallucination instantiate the same appearance. Moreover, disjunctivist conception of experience supports TA in that phenomenal features are either a relation between a material object and mind, or it is something else (as in cases of hallucination). I aim to show that sense-data (or like) theories of perception, that Djukic favors as being superior, would fail Djukic's own scrutiny in cases of hallucination in addition to being against common-sense. Second objection is that perception and hallucination must have the same-cause because they are indistinguishable, and also CP requires that same-causes to produce the same-effects. But hallucination and perception are different experiences, and hence TA fails CP. Responding to CP objection, “same-cause same-effect” only applies to intrinsic changes and intrinsic changes are changes in intrinsic properties and relations between intrinsic properties. Third, TA is opposed because for a given Time-Gap we cannot experience objects as they are (were) at the time of our perception. TA defeats this objection because it does not claim that “we can now (experience) the no-longer existent object as it is now, but only that we can now (experience) the once-existent object as it used to be. Fourth, to further strengthen TA, I will raise objections to TA including from the vantage point of Durability, Perceptual Relativity, Illusion, and Partial Perception arguments, and respond to such objections accordingly. To explicate TA, I argue from the vantage points of common sense, realistic physical biological considerations, and non-miraculous expectations from any theory of perception, including from TA. (shrink)

Current technology and surveillance practices make behaviors traceable to persons in unprecedented ways. This causes a loss of anonymity and of many privacy measures relied on in the past. These de facto privacy losses are by many seen as problematic for individual psychology, intimate relations and democratic practices such as free speech and free assembly. I share most of these concerns but propose that an even more fundamental problem might be that our very ability to act as autonomous and purposive (...) agents relies on some degree of privacy, perhaps particularly as we act in public and semi-public spaces. I suggest that basic issues concerning action choices have been left largely unexplored, due to a series of problematic theoretical assumptions at the heart of privacy debates. One such assumption has to do with the influential conceptualization of privacy as pertaining to personal intimate facts belonging to a private sphere as opposed to a public sphere of public facts. As Helen Nissenbaum has pointed out, the notion of privacy in public sounds almost like an oxymoron given this traditional private-public dichotomy. I discuss her important attempt to defend privacy in public through her concept of ‘contextual integrity.’ Context is crucial, but Nissenbaum’s descriptive notion of existing norms seems to fall short of a solution. I here agree with Joel Reidenberg’s recent worries regarding any approach that relies on ‘reasonable expectations’ . The problem is that in many current contexts we have no such expectations. Our contexts have already lost their integrity, so to speak. By way of a functional and more biologically inspired account, I analyze the relational and contextual dynamics of both privacy needs and harms. Through an understanding of action choice as situated and options and capabilities as relational, a more consequence-oriented notion of privacy begins to appear. I suggest that privacy needs, harms and protections are relational. Privacy might have less to do with seclusion and absolute transactional control than hitherto thought. It might instead hinge on capacities to limit the social consequences of our actions through knowing and shaping our perceptible agency and social contexts of action. To act with intent we generally need the ability to conceal during exposure. If this analysis is correct then relational privacy is an important condition for autonomic purposive and responsible agency—particularly in public space. Overall, this chapter offers a first stab at a reconceptualization of our privacy needs as relational to contexts of action. In terms of ‘rights to privacy’ this means that we should expand our view from the regulation and protection of the information of individuals to questions of the kind of contexts we are creating. I am here particularly interested in what I call ‘unbounded contexts’, i.e. cases of context collapses, hidden audiences and even unknowable future agents. (shrink)

Many have expected that understanding the evolution of norms should, in some way, bear on our first-order normative outlook: How norms evolve should shape which norms we accept. But recent philosophy has not done much to shore up this expectation. Most existing discussions of evolution and norms either jump headlong into the is/ought gap or else target meta-ethical issues, such as the objectivity of norms. My aim in this paper is to sketch a different way in which evolutionary considerations can (...) feed into normative thinking—focusing on stability. I will discuss two forms of argument that utilize information about social stability drawn from evolutionary models, and employs it to assess claims in political philosophy. One such argument treats stability as feature of social states that may be taken into account alongside other features. The other uses stability as a constraint on the realization of social ideals, via a version of the ought-implies-can maxim. These forms of argument are not new; indeed they have a history going back at least to early modern philosophy. But their marriage with evolutionary information is relatively recent, has a significantly novel character, and has received little attention in recent moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

Motivated by the question of responsible AI and value alignment, I seek to offer a uniquely Foucauldian reconstruction of the problem as the emergence of an ethical subject in a disciplinary setting. This reconstruction contrasts with the strictly human-oriented programme typical to current scholarship that often views technology in instrumental terms. With this in mind, I problematise the concept of a technological subjectivity through an exploration of various aspects of ChatGPT in light of Foucault’s work, arguing that current systems lack (...) the reflexivity and self-formative characteristics inherent in the notion of the subject. By drawing upon a recent dialogue between Foucault and phenomenology, I suggest four techno-philosophical desiderata that would address the gaps in this search for a technological subjectivity: embodied self-care, embodied intentionality, imagination and reflexivity. Thus I propose that advanced AI be reconceptualised as a subject capable of “technical” self-crafting and reflexive self-conduct, opening new pathways to grasp the intertwinement of the human and the artificial. This reconceptualization holds the potential to render future AI technology more transparent and responsible in the circulation of knowledge, care and power. (shrink)

Forests play fundamental roles in the Earth’s ecosystems. With the great capability of carbon sequestration, tropical forests are expected to contribute substantially to reducing the CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere. However, global tropical forest areas have declined drastically over the last few decades due to pressures from socio-economic development pursuit. The current essay aims to demonstrate the ongoing global deforestation crisis and its underlying drivers and discuss the vital roles of tropical forests in the socio-economic development in the face of (...) climate change when developed countries start to tighten the carbon emission control regulations (e.g., European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism). It suggests why developing countries in tropical regions, particularly Vietnam, should not sacrifice forests for short- and medium-term socio-economic goals but capitalize on them to leverage long-term development. Moreover, evidence of Vietnamese political leaders’ commitment to forest protection and sustainable development is also provided. (shrink)

Vigorous debate over the moral propriety of cognitive enhancement exists, but the views of the public have been largely absent from the discussion. To address this gap in our knowledge, four experiments were carried out with contrastive vignettes in order to obtain quantitative data on public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement. The data collected suggest that the public is sensitive to and capable of understanding the four cardinal concerns identified by neuroethicists, and tend to cautiously accept cognitive enhancement even as they (...) recognize its potential perils. The public is biopolitically moderate, endorses both meritocratic principles and the intrinsic value of hard work, and appears to be sensitive to the salient moral issues raised in the debate. Taken together, these data suggest that public attitudes toward enhancement are sufficiently sophisticated to merit inclusion in policy deliberations, especially if we seek to align public sentiment and policy. (shrink)

This paper considers questions about continuity and discontinuity between life and mind. It begins by examining such questions from the perspective of the free energy principle (FEP). The FEP is becoming increasingly influential in neuroscience and cognitive science. It says that organisms act to maintain themselves in their expected biological and cognitive states, and that they can do so only by minimizing their free energy given that the long-term average of free energy is entropy. The paper then argues that there (...) is no singular interpretation of the FEP for thinking about the relation between life and mind. Some FEP formulations express what we call an independence view of life and mind. One independence view is a cognitivist view of the FEP. It turns on information processing with semantic content, thus restricting the range of systems capable of exhibiting mentality. Other independence views exemplify what we call an overly generous non-cognitivist view of the FEP, and these appear to go in the opposite direction. That is, they imply that mentality is nearly everywhere. The paper proceeds to argue that non-cognitivist FEP, and its implications for thinking about the relation between life and mind, can be usefully constrained by key ideas in recent enactive approaches to cognitive science. We conclude that the most compelling account of the relationship between life and mind treats them as strongly continuous, and that this continuity is based on particular concepts of life (autopoiesis and adaptivity) and mind (basic and non-semantic). (shrink)

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to explore the "resource curse" problem as a counter-example of creative performance and innovation by examining reliance on capital and physical resources, showing the gap between expectations and ex-post actual performance that became clearer under conditions of economic turmoil. Design/methodology/approach ‐ The analysis uses logistic regressions with dichotomous response and predictor variables on structured tables of count data, representing firm performance as an outcome of capital resources, physical resources and innovation where (...) appropriate. Findings ‐ Key findings relevant to economic and business practice follow. First, a typical characteristic of successful Vietnamese firms in the transition period is their reliance on either capital resources or physical asset endowments. Second, poor performers exhibit evidence of over-reliance on both capital and physical assets. Third, firms that relied on both types of resources tended to downplay creative performance. Some evidence suggests that firms face more acute problem caused by the law of diminishing returns in troubled times. Fourth, the "innovation factor" has not been tapped as a source of economic growth. Research limitations/implications ‐ This study has some limitations. The size of the survey sample is approximately 150 firms, while the potential sample of > 300 should be possible in the future. When the size increases, the research could be expanded to include further variables that will help investigate more deeply into the related issues and business implications. With regard to the implications of the study, the absence of innovations has made the notion of "resource curse" identical to "destructive creation" implemented by ex-ante resource-rich firms, and worsened the problem of resource misallocation in transition turmoil. The Vietnamese corporate sector's addiction to resources may contribute to economic deterioration, through a downward spiral of lower efficiency leading to consumption of more resources. Practical implications ‐ Insights obtained from this study could save transition economies' resources which have almost always been considered sine qua non before any critical major policymaking, while this is not necessarily true, and in many cases, even counterproductive. Originality/value ‐ Original data set on Vietnam stock market are collected, processed, prepared and used by the authors. Original design by the authors for regression equations with dichotomous predictor variables: dependence on endowed physical assets, reliance on capital resources and significant signs of creative performance/innovations. Original idea of viewing "resource curse" as absence of innovation and due to uncreative "destructive creation" of poor-performing commercial operations by resource-rich firms is used in the paper. We have searched the literature in business research and found that the empirical results have not been previously reported. (shrink)

The literature on counterspeech has been debating how institutions and citizens should respond to offensive or dangerous communicative acts. This article identifies a gap in this debate, namely, the lack of attention paid to the individual vote in large-scale democratic elections as an effective act of distancing from candidates who use explicitly derogatory forms of expression to unify and mobilize supporters. In studying the place of voting in the ethics of counterspeech, this article investigates what counterspeakers can expect other counterspeakers (...) to do in large-scale democratic elections framed as a vote for or against hateful representatives. I argue that even in large-scale elections, the individual act of voting, understood as a contribution to increasing the clarity of the indicators of force of a collectivized speech act, can be an effective form of counterspeech. Voting is one of the first forms of counterspeech that must be taken so that other, and perhaps more controversial, actions can stand criticism on moral grounds. For this reason, I also argue that counterspeakers can expect other counterspeakers to contribute to an electoral outcome that, under certain circumstances, can be received as a vote against representatives who use explicit derogatory forms of expression to gain consensus. (shrink)

Beginning with the Untimely Meditations (1873) and continuing until his final writings of 1888-9, Nietzsche refers to humility (Demuth or a cognate) in fifty-two passages and to modesty (Bescheidenheit or a cognate) in one hundred and four passages, yet there are only four passages that refer to both terms. Moreover, perhaps surprisingly, he often speaks positively of modesty, especially in epistemic contexts. These curious facts might be expected to lead scholars to explore what Nietzsche thinks of humility and modesty, but (...) to date there have been no systematic analyses of Nietzsche’s reflections on these dispositions. In this chapter, I fill that gap in the literature using semantic network analysis and systematically-guided close-reading. In so doing, I show that Nietzsche sharply distinguished between humility and modesty, considering the former a vice (for certain types of people in certain contexts) and the latter a virtue (again, for certain types of people in certain contexts). (shrink)

Priority setting in health care is ubiquitous and health authorities are increasingly recognising the need for priority setting guidelines to ensure efficient, fair, and equitable resource allocation. While cost-effectiveness concerns seem to dominate many policies, the tension between utilitarian and deontological concerns is salient to many, and various severity criteria appear to fill this gap. Severity, then, must be subjected to rigorous ethical and philosophical analysis. Here we first give a brief history of the path to today’s severity criteria in (...) Norway and Sweden. The Scandinavian perspective on severity might be conducive to the international discussion, given its long-standing use as a priority setting criterion, despite having reached rather different conclusions so far. We then argue that severity can be viewed as a multidimensional concept, drawing on accounts of need, urgency, fairness, duty to save lives, and human dignity. Such concerns will often be relative to local mores, and the weighting placed on the various dimensions cannot be expected to be fixed. Thirdly, we present what we think are the most pertinent questions to answer about severity in order to facilitate decision making in the coming years of increased scarcity, and to further the understanding of underlying assumptions and values that go into these decisions. We conclude that severity is poorly understood, and that the topic needs substantial further inquiry; thus we hope this article may set a challenging and important research agenda. (shrink)

Reductive intellectualists (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011a; 2011b; Brogaard 2008; 2009; 2011) hold that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. If this thesis is correct, then we should expect the defeasibility conditions for knowledge-how and knowledge-that to be uniform—viz., that the mechanisms of epistemic defeat which undermine propositional knowledge will be equally capable of imperilling knowledge-how. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, against intellectualism, we will show that knowledge-how is in fact resilient to being undermined by (...) the very kinds of traditional (propositional) epistemic defeaters which clearly defeat the items of propositional knowledge which intellectualists identify with knowledge-how. Second, we aim to fill an important lacuna in the contemporary debate, which is to develop an alternative way in which epistemic defeat for knowledge-how could be modelled within an anti-intellectualist framework. (shrink)

Self-determination theory, like other psychological theories that study eudaimomia, focuses on general processes of growth and self-realization. An aspect that tends to be sidelined in the relevant literature is virtue. We propose that special focus needs to be placed on moral virtue and its development. We review different types of moral motivation and argue that morally virtuous behavior is regulated through integrated regulation. We describe the process of moral integration and how it relates to the development of moral virtue. We (...) then discuss what morally virtuous individuals are like, what shape their internal moral system is expected to take and introduce moral self-concordance. We consider why morally virtuous individuals are expected to experience eudaimonic well-being. Finally, we address the current gap in self-determination theory research on eudaimonia. (shrink)

Growing demand for broadly accessible mental health care, together with the rapid development of new technologies, trigger discussions about the feasibility of psychotherapeutic interventions based on interactions with Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI). Many authors argue that while currently available CAI can be a useful supplement for human-delivered psychotherapy, it is not yet capable of delivering fully fledged psychotherapy on its own. The goal of this paper is to investigate what are the most important obstacles on our way to developing CAI (...) systems capable of delivering psychotherapy in the future. To this end, we formulate and discuss three challenges central to this quest. Firstly, we might not be able to develop effective AI-based psychotherapy unless we deepen our understanding of what makes human-delivered psychotherapy effective. Secondly, assuming that it requires building a therapeutic relationship, it is not clear whether psychotherapy can be delivered by non-human agents. Thirdly, conducting psychotherapy might be a problem too complicated for narrow AI, i.e., AI proficient in dealing with only relatively simple and well-delineated tasks. If this is the case, we should not expect CAI to be capable of delivering fully-fledged psychotherapy until the so-called “general” or “human-like” AI is developed. While we believe that all these challenges can ultimately be overcome, we think that being mindful of them is crucial to ensure well-balanced and steady progress on our path to AI-based psychotherapy. (shrink)

In a recent paper, María Pía Méndez (2022) offers an epistemic critique of epistocracy according to which the sort of politically well-informed but homogenous groups of citizens that would be empowered under epistocracy would lack reliable access to information about the preferences of less informed citizens. Specifically, they would lack access to such citizens’ preferences regarding the form that policies ought to take—that is, how these policies ought to be implemented. Arguing that this so-called Information Gap Problem militates against epistocracy, (...) Méndez instead recommends that we respond to problems created by widespread voter ignorance by improving the flow of information between political actors by adopting some participatory democratic institutions. In this paper I argue that the severity of the Information Gap Problem for epistocracy is overstated. After first sketching some background (Section 1), I argue that it is hard to see why information about citizens’ preferences for the form that policies ought to take is important enough that the expected costs of epistocracy outweigh its expected benefits if it selectively empowers people who lack access to such information (Section 2). Moreover, different forms of epistocracy are less threatened by the Information Gap Problem, assuming it is indeed a problem. For some forms of epistocracy, it may be no problem whatsoever. However, I conclude by suggesting that Méndez touches upon some more serious problems for epistocracy (Section 3). First, even setting aside the Information Gap Problem, there are open questions about the possible epistemic inferiority of epistocracy relative to democracy. Second, more comprehensive accounts of political competence that move beyond the possession of sufficient levels of political information are much harder to reliably test for, thus complicating the task of devising effective epistocratic selection mechanisms. Lastly, epistocracy arguably creates a serious risk of abuse that may outweigh any other benefits it brings. More research is needed to determine how (and whether) epistocrats can respond to such challenges. (shrink)

The possibility of employing human enhancement interventions to aid in future space missions has been gaining attention lately. These possibilities have included one of the more controversial kinds of enhancements: biomedical moral enhancement. However, the discussion has thus far remained on a rather abstract level. In this paper we further this conversation by looking more closely at what type of interventions with what sort of effects we should expect when we are talking about biomedical moral enhancements. We suggest that a (...) more grounded way to picture moral enhancement, at least in the near term, is to envision a form of cognitive enhancement that also provides some moral benefits by heightening the enhanced person's capability for acting according to their own subjective moral code. While this concept of moral adherence enhancement also has relevance for the moral enhancement discussion more widely, in this paper we apply it specifically in the context of space missions. We argue that there are weighty reasons to consider making biomedical enhancements of the proposed kind a mandatory feature of early-phase long-distance space travel because these missions are high-stakes in nature and take place in an environment where the enhancement could be seen as conferring important advantages while negating many of the traditional arguments weighed against it. (shrink)

Warfare is becoming increasingly automated, from automatic missile defense systems to micro-UAVs (WASPs) that can maneuver through urban environments with ease, and each advance brings with it ethical questions in need of resolving. Proponents of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) provide varied arguments in their favor; robots are capable of better identifying combatants and civilians, thus reducing "collateral damage"; robots need not protect themselves and so can incur more risks to protect innocents or gather more information before using deadly force; (...) robots can assess situations more quickly and do so without emotion, reducing the likelihood of fatal mistakes due to human error; and sending robots to war protects our own soldiers from harm. However, these arguments only point in favor of autonomous weapons systems, failing to demonstrate why such systems need be made *lethal*. In this paper I argue that if one grants all of the proponents' points in favor of LAWS, then, contrary to what might be expected, this leads to the conclusion that it would be both immoral and illegal to deploy *lethal* autonomous weapons, because the many features that speak in favor of them also undermine the need for them to be programmed to take lives. In particular, I argue that such systems, if lethal, would violate the moral and legal principle of necessity, which forbids the use of weapons that impose superfluous injury or unnecessary harm. I conclude by highlighting that the argument is not against autonomous weapons per se, but only against *lethal* autonomous weapons. (shrink)

A naturalistic theory of intentionality is proposed that differs from previous evolutionary and tracking theories. Full-blown intentionality is constructed through a series of evolvable refinements. A first, minimal version of intentionality originates from a conjectured internal process that estimates an organism’s own fitness and that continually modifies the organism. This process produces the directedness of intentionality. The internal estimator can be parsed into intentional components that point to components of the process that produces fitness. It is argued that such intentional (...) components can point to mistaken or non-existing entities. Different Fregian senses of the same reference correspond to different components that have different roles in the estimator. Intentional components that point to intentional components in other organisms produce directedness towards semi-abstract entities. Finally, adding a general, population-wide means of communication enables intentional components that point to fully abstract entities. Intentionality thus naturalized has all of its expected properties: being directed; potentially making errors; possibly pointing to non-existent, abstract, or rigid entities; capable of pointing many-to-one and one-to-many; distinguishing sense and reference; having perspective and grain; and having determinate content. Several examples, such as ‘swampman’ and ‘brain-in-a-vat’, illustrate how the theory can be applied. (shrink)

Enterprise Risk Management involves the process of identification, evaluation, treatment, and communication regarding risks throughout the enterprise. To support the tasks associated with this process, several frameworks and modeling languages have been proposed, such as the Risk and Security Overlay (RSO) of ArchiMate. An ontological investigation of this artifact would reveal its adequacy, capabilities, and limitations w.r.t. the domain of risk and security. Based on that, a language redesign can be proposed as a refinement. Such analysis and redesign have been (...) executed for the risk elements of the RSO grounded in the Common Ontology of Value and Risk. The next step along this line of research is to address the following research problems: What would be the outcome of an ontological analysis of security-related elements of the RSO? That is, can we identify other semantic deficiencies in the RSO through an ontological analysis? Once such an analysis is provided, can we redesign the security elements of the RSO accordingly, in order to produce an improved artifact? Here, with the aid of the Reference Ontology for Security Engineering (ROSE) and the ontological theory of prevention behind it, we address the remaining gap by proceeding with an ontological analysis of the security-related constructs of the RSO. The outcome of this assessment is an ontology-based redesign of the ArchiMate language regarding security modeling. In a nutshell, we report the following contributions: (1) an ontological analysis of the RSO that identifies six limitations concerning security modeling; (2) because of the key role of the notion of prevention in security modeling, the introduction of the ontological theory of prevention in ArchiMate; (3) a well-founded redesign of security elements of ArchiMate; and (4) ontology-based security modeling patterns that are logical consequences of our proposal of redesign due to its underlying ontology of security. As a form of evaluation, we show that our proposal can describe risk treatment options, according to ISO 31000. Finally, besides presenting multiple examples, we proceed with a real-world illustrative application taken from the cybersecurity domain. (shrink)

In “The Zygote Argument is Invalid: Now What?” (2015), Kristin Mickelson published an objection to the Zygote Argument that she first presented in 2012 as workshop comments on a draft of Mele's "Manipulation, Moral Responsibility, and Bullet-Biting" (2013). Assuming that the phrase "determinism precludes free will" means something like determinism-related causal factors are what prevent people from acting freely when determinism is true, Mele's original Zygote Argument was invalid. At the workshop, Mickelson presented Mele with two options to address the (...) problem, a premise-preserving option and a conclusion-preserving option. That is, Mele could change the conclusion of the original argument to the negative, non-explanatory thesis entailed by its original two premises, or find a way to add premises that would support the positive, explanatory conclusion of the original argument (which, notably, is the conclusion that Pereboom supports using best-explanation reasoning in his Four-Case Argument). Mickelson used this as an opportunity to explain the key contribution that best-explanation reasoning makes to manipulation arguments -- and why the best variant of the manipulation argument might conclude that incompatibilism is FALSE. In response to Mickelson's objection, Mele changed the conclusion of the argument before "Manipulation, Moral Responsibility, and Bullet-Biting" went to print, choosing Mickelson's proposal to change its conclusion over the suggestion to change its premises. However, Mele failed to mention Mickelson's invalidity objection in print and that he changed the conclusion of his argument as a direct response to it; nor did Mele mention the costs that Mickelson outlined for the premise-preserving solution that he adopted or the benefits of a conclusion-preserving solution. At the same time, Mele began using the term 'incompatibilism' to pick out the negative, non-explanatory claim supported by the newly revised Zygote Argument--and also started to claim (without providing evidence) that those who use the term 'incompatibilism' to denote the explanatory claim deterministic causal factors *make it the case* that no one acts freely when determinism is true" is guilty of using the term in a nonstandard and nontraditional way that he had "never had any use for"--failing to mention that he clearly used the term in this explanatory sense in his 2005 critique of the Four-Case Argument, which is to be expected give that Derk Pereboom uses the explanatory definition (as do Kadri Vihvelin, Carolina Sartorio, and *most* other contributors to the free-will literature). In THIS reply essay, Mickelson responds to an attempt by Gabriel De Marco (FSU, advisor Alfred Mele) to defend the original Zygote Argument from Mickelson's 2012/2015 critique. Unfortunately, both of De Marco's proposed "solutions" are non-starters. The first is a non-starter because De Marco merely repeats the premise-preserving solution that Mickelson offered to Mele in 2012 and that Mele adopted in print in 2013. In other words, De Marco took credit for the premise-preserving solution to the invalidity objection that Mickelson developed (although he does *redescribe* Mickelson's solution in his own idiosyncratic jargon) and Mele had already adopted in print. De Marco's second solution is a non-starter because it is constituted by a patently invalid argument. Contrary to De Marco's proposal, it's not true that the conjunction of possibilism and incompossibilism deductively entails the positive, diagnostic claim that deterministic causal factors beyond one's control preclude (destroy, undermine, is antagonistically relevant to) free will when determinism is true. *My thanks to the editors of Philosophia for publishing this reply when PhilStudies would not. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology provides terms for and supports annotation of species-specific protein complexes in an ontology framework that relates them both to their components and to species-independent families of complexes. Comprehensive curation of experimentally known forms and annotations thereof is expected to expose discrepancies, differences, and gaps in our knowledge. We have annotated the early events of innate immune signaling mediated by Toll-Like Receptor 3 and 4 complexes in human, mouse, and chicken. The resulting ontology and annotation data set has (...) allowed us to identify species-specific gaps in experimental data and possible functional differences between species, and to employ inferred structural and functional relationships to suggest plausible resolutions of these discrepancies and gaps. (shrink)

A de minimis risk is defined as a risk that is so small that it may be legitimately ignored when making a decision. While ignoring small risks is common in our day-to-day decision making, attempts to introduce the notion of a de minimis risk into the framework of decision theory have run up against a series of well-known difficulties. In this paper, I will develop an enriched decision theoretic framework that is capable of overcoming two major obstacles to the modelling (...) of de minimis risk. The key move is to introduce, into decision theory, a non-probabilistic conception of risk known as normic risk. (shrink)

Typically, fair machine learning research focuses on a single decision maker and assumes that the underlying population is stationary. However, many of the critical domains motivating this work are characterized by competitive marketplaces with many decision makers. Realistically, we might expect only a subset of them to adopt any non-compulsory fairness-conscious policy, a situation that political philosophers call partial compliance. This possibility raises important questions: how does partial compliance and the consequent strategic behavior of decision subjects affect the allocation outcomes? (...) If k% of employers were to voluntarily adopt a fairness-promoting intervention, should we expect k% progress (in aggregate) towards the benefits of universal adoption, or will the dynamics of partial compliance wash out the hoped-for benefits? How might adopting a global (versus local) perspective impact the conclusions of an auditor? In this paper, we propose a simple model of an employment market, leveraging simulation as a tool to explore the impact of both interaction effects and incentive effects on outcomes and auditing metrics. Our key findings are that at equilibrium: (1) partial compliance by k% of employers can result in far less than proportional (k%) progress towards the full compliance outcomes; (2) the gap is more severe when fair employers match global (vs local) statistics; (3) choices of local vs global statistics can paint dramatically different pictures of the performance vis-a-vis fairness desiderata of compliant versus non-compliant employers; (4) partial compliance based on local parity measures can induce extreme segregation. Finally, we discuss implications for auditors and insights concerning the design of regulatory frameworks. (shrink)

Affordances are standardly understood as perceived possibilities for interaction. What is afforded is in turn regarded as dependent on the properties of a body and its environment. Human bodies are nearly ubiquitously clothed, and clothing can change the capabilities of bodies. We argue that when clothing does this, it should be regarded as an affordance transforming technology. Clothing receives passing attention in remarks by Gibson, and some empirical work in ecological psychology uses worn items as experimental manipulations. We argue that (...) the effects of clothing should be a central topic of investigation. We further show how the notion of clothing as an affordance transforming technology allows ecological psychology to accommodate feminist insights about the restrictive or oppressive nature of some gendered clothing norms. We aim to show that if ecological psychology is to be a general framework for thinking about human perception and activity, then it should consider clothing, because of the differences it can make to what is afforded. It should do so critically because the ways that clothing transforms affordances are sometimes discriminating in that what people are expected to wear and what differences that makes aren’t independent of how they’re classified in systems of power and oppression. (shrink)