Creators offload the construction of their artifact in that the world helps to determine the nature of their imposition in ways that can go beyond the content of their imposing activities. Extant theories of imposition fail to account for offloading by requiring match between content and product. Therefore, I develop an externalist theory that accommodates offloading by taking the imposition of mind onto world to be objectively constrained. An important kind of imposition is normativity. Focusing on personal value, what’s valuable (...) for someone is determined by what they value as good or bad for themselves. Such a subjectivist view faces the same problem as extant theories of imposition in seeming to preclude the possibility of making mistakes about value. Applying imposition externalism, I defend an artifactual approach to subjectivism such that mistakes are captured in terms of offloading. A subject’s valuing can fail to match the very value it creates. (shrink)

This chapter (Chapter 7) presents a reconstruction of purely doxastic states in Kant’s theory of assent, focusing on those species of assents that are distinguished solely by the strength of their psychological commitment. It is suggested that Kant held a view, according to which (i) our degreed doxastic states can be articulated as degrees of conviction, and (ii) our outright doxastic states — above all, opinion, conviction (simpliciter), and certainty — can be reduced to conviction thresholds. Moreover, it is suggested (...) that Kant’s notion of ‘assent’ (‘Fürwahrhalten’), as the most general doxastic state, comes closest to our present-day notion of ‘belief’. (NB please read Chapter 7 together with Section 2.1.). (shrink)

Summary. The purpose of this article is to serve as a clear introduction to the modeling languages of the three most widely used IDEF methods: IDEF0, IDEF1X, and IDEF3. Each language is presented in turn, beginning with a discussion of the underlying “ontology” the language purports to describe, followed by presentations of the syntax of the language — particularly the notion of a model for the language — and the semantical rules that determine how models are to be interpreted. The (...) level of detail should be sufficient to enable the reader both to understand the intended areas of application of the languages and to read and construct simple models of each of the three types. (shrink)

Political epistemology is the intersection of political philosophy and epistemology. This paper develops a political 'hinge' epistemology. Political hinge epistemology draws on the idea that all belief systems have fundamental presuppositions which play a role in the determination of reasons for belief and other attitudes. It uses this core idea to understand and tackle political epistemological challenges, like political disagreement, polarization, political testimony, political belief, ideology, and biases, among other possibilities. I respond to two challenges facing the development of a (...) political hinge epistemology. The first is about nature and demarcation of political hinges, while the second is about rational deliberation over political hinges. I then use political hinge epistemology to analyze ideology, dealing with the challenge of how an agent's ideology 'masks' or distorts their understanding of social reality, along with the challenge of how ideology critique can change the beliefs of agents who adhere to dominant ideologies, if agents only have their own or the competing ideology to rely on (see Haslanger 2017). I then explore how political hinge epistemology might be extended to further our understanding of political belief polarization. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive book on the philosophy of time. Leading philosophers discuss the metaphysics of time, our experience and representation of time, the role of time in ethics and action, and philosophical issues in the sciences of time, especially quantum mechanics and relativity theory.

Can one pay attention to objects without being conscious of them? Some years ago there was evidence that had been taken to show that the answer is 'yes'. That evidence was inconclusive, but there is recent work that makes the case more compellingly: it now seems that it is indeed possible to pay attention to objects of which one is not conscious. This is bad news for theories in which the connection between attention and consciousness is taken to be an (...) essential one. It is good news for theories (including mine) in which the connection between attention and agency is taken to be essential. (shrink)

The article develops an internalist justification of welfare ethics based on empathy. It takes up Hume’s and Schopenhauer’s internalistic (but not consistently developed) justification approach via empathy, but tries to solve three of their problems: 1. the varying strength of empathy depending on the proximity to the object of empathy, 2. the unclear metaethical foundation, 3. the absence of a quantitative model of empathy strength. 1. As a solution to the first problem, the article proposes to limit the foundation of (...) welfare ethics to certain types of empathy. 2. In response to the second problem, an internalistic metaethical conception of the justification of moral principles is outlined, the result of which is: The moral value of the well-being of persons is identical to the expected extent of (positive and negative) empathy arising from this well-being. 3. The contribution to the solution of the third problem and focus of the article is an empirical model of the (subject’s) expected extent of empathy depending on (an object’s) well-being. According to this model, the extent of empathy is not proportional to the expected empathy, but follows a concave function and is therefore prioritarian. Accordingly, the article provides a sketch of an internalist justification of prioritarianism. (shrink)

Although existing work draws attention to a range of obstacles in realizing fair AI, the field lacks an account that emphasizes how these worries hang together in a systematic way. Furthermore, a review of the fair AI and philosophical literature demonstrates the unsuitability of ‘treat like cases alike’ and other intuitive notions as conceptions of fairness. That review then generates three desiderata for a replacement conception of fairness valuable to AI research: (1) It must provide a meta-theory for understanding tradeoffs, (...) entailing that it must be flexible enough to capture diverse species of objection to decisions. (2) It must not appeal to an impartial perspective (neutral data, objective data, or final arbiter.) (3) It must foreground the way in which judgments of fairness are sensitive to context, i.e., to historical and institutional states of affairs. We argue that a conception of fairness as appropriate concession in the historical iteration of institutional decisions meets these three desiderata. On the basis of this definition, we organize the insights of commentators into a process-structure map of the ethical territory that we hope will bring clarity to computer scientists and ethicists analyzing Fair AI while clearing some ground for further technical and philosophical work. (shrink)

In the recent literature on episodic memory, there has been increasing recognition of the need to provide an account of its adaptive function. In this context, it is sometimes argued that episodic memory is critical for certain forms of decision making about the future. We criticize existing accounts that try to give episodic memory a role in decision making, before giving a novel such account of our own. This turns on the thought of a link between episodic memory and the (...) emotion of regret. We discuss how both experienced and anticipated regret can have a distinctive influence on decision making, and argue that the ability to recollect past events in episodic memory underpins the capacity to engage in the sophisticated types of mental time travel recruited in experiencing and anticipating regret. (shrink)

A number of cases involving self-locating beliefs have been discussed in the Bayesian literature. I suggest that many of these cases, such as the sleeping beauty case, are entangled with issues that are independent of self-locating beliefs per se. In light of this, I propose a division of labor: we should address each of these issues separately before we try to provide a comprehensive account of belief updating. By way of example, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order (...) to accommodate these issues. Then, putting these other issues aside, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order to accommodate self-locating beliefs. Finally, I propose a constraint on updating rules, the "Learning Principle", which rules out certain kinds of troubling belief changes, and I use this principle to assess some of the available options. (shrink)

This paper explores what a Rule Consequentialist of Brad Hooker's sort can and should say about normative rea- sons for action. I claim that they can provide a theory of reasons, but that doing so requires distinguishing dif- ferent roles of rules in the ideal code. Some rules in the ideal code specify reasons, while others perform differ- ent functions. The paper also discusses a choice that Rule Consequentialists face about how exactly to specify rea- sons. It ends by comparing (...) the theory of reasons offered by Rule Consequentialism with the theory offered by Act Consequentialism, noting that Rule Consequentialism seems better able to explain moral constraints. (shrink)

This article presents theories of attention that attempt to derive their answer to the question of what attention is from their answers to the question of what it is for some activity to be done attentively. Such theories provide a distinctive account of the difficulties that are faced by the attempt to locate processes in the brain by which the phenomena of attention can be explained. Their account does not share the pessimism of theories suggesting that the concept of attention (...) is defective. Instead it reconstrues the explanatory relationship between attention and the processes that constitute it, in a way that is illustrated here by considering the relationship between attention and the processes that are identified by the biased competition theory. After considering some of the ways in which an adverbialist approach might be developed, the article concludes by suggesting some possible solutions to a problem concerning distraction, by which prominent adverbialist theories of attention have been dogged. (shrink)

Thomistic Hylomorphists claim that we human persons have rational or intellective souls which can continue to exist separately from our bodies after we die. Much of the recent scholarly discussion of Thomistic Hylomorphism has centered on this thesis and the question of whether human persons can survive death along with their souls or whether only their souls can survive in this separated, disembodied, post-mortem state. As a result, two rival versions of Thomistic Hyomorphism have been formulated: Survivalism and Corruptionism. This (...) chapter makes a new contribution to the debate between Survivalists and Corruptionists by identifying a heretofore undiscussed problem for Corruptionist Thomistic Hylomorphism. In particular, it is argued that if Corruptionists were right that human persons cannot survive their deaths along with their souls, this would undermine the grounds on which all Thomistic Hylomorphists, including Corruptionists, rely to justify their belief that our souls can continue to exist after our deaths. Given this, it is argued that Thomistic Hylomorphists have grounds for thinking that our souls can continue to exist after our deaths only if they allow, as Survivalists do and Corruptionists do not, that we human persons can continue to exist after our deaths, with souls but no bodies. (shrink)

Als eine von tausenden von Arten, welche im Zuge der Evolution nach dem darwinschen Prinzip von Variation und natürlicher Selektion entstanden sind, ist der Mensch ein Teil der Natur. Eine Besonderheit scheint ihn allerdings von allen anderen Systemen der Natur abzuheben: Er besitzt die Fähigkeit, Dinge zu erzeugen, die ihrerseits nicht mehr Teil der Natur sind. Denn Objekte wie Werkzeuge, Gebäude, Musikinstrumente oder Bücher sind zwar Teil der physischen Welt, sie gehören aber nur schon deshalb nicht zur Natur, weil sie (...) künstlich hergestellt und damit, dem allgemeinen Sprachgebrauch folgend, das Gegenteil von natürlich sind. Doch warum bleibt eigentlich die Fähigkeit, Kunstobjekte herzustellen, dem Menschen vorbehalten? Die Antwort auf diese Frage hängt eng mit derjenigen nach dem Unterschied zwischen menschlichem Handeln und rein physikalischen Vorgängen einerseits, sowie tierischem Verhalten andererseits zusammen. Antworten auf die Frage werden im vorliegenden Beitrag im Kontext der Evolutionsgeschichte gesucht, angefangen bei der Entwicklung einfacher Formen phänomenalen Bewusstseins lange vor der Entstehung des Menschen, und endend bei der von den außerordentlichen kommunikativen und kognitiven Leistungen des Menschen, kurz gesagt von seiner Sprache und seinem Geist geprägten Geschichte von Kultur und Technik. Mitbetrachtet wird dabei ein wichtiger Aspekt, der oft falsch eingeschätzt wird und für den Menschen wenig schmeichelhaft ist: Die Schattenseite seiner Rolle als Erschaffer von Kunst und Technik ist diejenige als Zerstörer der Natur. Entgegen einer verbreiteten Ansicht ist dem Menschen diese Rolle in gewisser Weise in die Wiege gelegt, in vollkommenem Einklang mit der Natur hat er nie gelebt. Die schwerwiegenden Probleme, die mit der Naturzerstörung verbunden sind, sind uns allerdings erst im Laufe des letzten Jahrhunderts schmerzlich bewusst geworden, was den modernen Menschen dazu zwingt, noch eine weitere Rolle zu übernehmen: Diejenige des Beschützers des natürlich Gewachsenen vor sich selbst. (shrink)

We identify a particular type of causal reasoning ability that we believe is required for the possession of episodic memories, as it is needed to give substance to the distinction between the past and the present. We also argue that the same causal reasoning ability is required for grasping the point that another person's appeal to particular past events can have in conversation. We connect this to claims in developmental psychology that participation in joint reminiscing plays a key role in (...) memory development. (shrink)

Cultural Attraction Theory (CAT), also referred to as cultural epidemiology, is an evolutionary theory of culture. It provides conceptual tools and a theoretical framework for explaining why and how ideas, practices, artifacts and other cultural items spread and persist in a community and its habitat. It states that cultural phenomena result from psychological or ecological factors of attraction.

Clare Batty has recently argued that the content of human olfactory experience is 'a very weak kind of abstract, or existentially quantified content', and so that 'there is no way things smell'. Her arguments are based on two claims. Firstly, that there is no intuitive distinction between olfactory hallucination and olfactory illusion. Secondly, that olfaction 'does not present smell at particular locations', and 'seems disengaged from any particular object'. The present article shows both of these claims to be false. It (...) shows that naïve subjects find it quite natural to draw a distinction between olfactory hallucination and olfactory illusion. And it argues that the phenomenology of normal olfactory experience is of particular objects as having smells. Two confusions are responsible for Batty thinking otherwise: (1) Batty's examples are cases of extreme pungency, and she mistakes a peculiarity of intense perceptions for a property of olfaction more generally; (2) Batty focuses on very short time slices and so confuses limitations on the information carried by a single sniff for a limitation on the logical form of all olfactory content. (shrink)

In this book some options concerning the greenhouse effect are assessed from a welfarist point of view: business as usual, stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions and reduction by 25% and by 60%. Up to today only economic analyses of such options are available, which monetize welfare losses. Because this is found to be wanting from a moral point of view, the present study welfarizes (among others) monetary losses on the basis of a hedonistic utilitarianism and other, justice incorporating, welfare ethics. (...) For these welfarist evaluations information about the social consequences of the four options are collected from the literature and eventually corrected; then the consequences for individual well-being are assessed based on psychological research about well-being dependent on the social situation of the individual; finally the aggregation formulas of the respective welfare ethics are applied to these data. Assessments by other types of ethics, e.g. Kantian ethic, are included. The strongest abatement option is found to be optimum with great unanimity. - In addition a cost-welfare analysis of greenhouse gas abatement is undertaken revealing efficient cost-welfare ratios for these measures and the most efficient ratio for the strongest option. - A final, more theoretical part discusses the moral obligations following from such evaluations. The notion of 'moral obligation' is explained in a way that, apart from moral goodness of the required act, reinforcement by formal or informal sanctions is another necessary condition for moral obligations. This leads to a conception of a historical morality according to which the demands of morality rise in the long run. Applying this conception to the greenhouse effect implies that presently we have the moral duty to raise the standards of greenhouse gas abatement as much as is politically feasible. (shrink)

This chapter offers an interpretation of Jaspers’ distinction between explaining and understanding, which relates this distinction to that between general and singular causal claims. Put briefly, I suggest that when Jaspers talks about (mere) explanation, what he has in mind are general causal claims linking types of events. Understanding, by contrast, is concerned with singular causation in the psychological domain. Furthermore, I also suggest that Jaspers thinks that only understanding makes manifest what causation between one element of a person’s mental (...) life and another ultimately consists in – that is, the particular way in which one psychic event can emerge from or arise out of another. I contrast the resulting view both with a view on causation in psychiatry recently put forward by John Campbell, and also with another view that is the target of Campbell’s attack, which is due to Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch held that states of mind and character are of the first moral importance, and that attention to one's states of mind and character are a widespread source of moral failure. Maintaining both of these claims can lead to problems in the account of how one could become good. This paper explains the way in which Murdoch negotiated those problems, focusing, in particular on /The Sovereignty of Good/ and /The Nice and The Good/.

Over the last eighty years, studies in play have carved out a small, but increasingly significant, niche within the social sciences and a rich repository has been built which underscores the importance of play to social, cultural, and psychological development. The general point running through these works is a philosophical recognition that play should not be separated from the trappings of everyday life, but instead should be seen as one of the more primordial aspects of human existence. Gadamer is one (...) philosopher frequently associated with interest in play. In his magnum opus, Truth and Method (1960), Gadamer insisted the significance of play to human understanding is not merely recreational, but rather it discloses the full context of any given situation by promoting a freedom of possibilities within the horizon of one’s own life-world (i.e. the world directly and immediately experienced). As such, his philosophical analysis of play was essential to his overall project of philosophical hermeneutics as it can explain how meaning is not derived from something essential within a text, but rather considered from a full range of possibilities. There are good reasons to expand on that understanding of play within philosophical studies and we suggest one way to do so is to compare Gadamer’s treatment of play with similar ideas from thinkers often associated with other philosophical schools. Although there are other candidates (e.g. Wittgenstein’s language games) for such an analysis, we limit our comparison here to the notion of transaction, as treated by the American pragmatist John Dewey in his volume Knowing and the Known (co-authored with Arthur Bentley in 1949). Because Dewey tied his conception of transaction to an overarching philosophy of inquiry, we believe comparing it to Gadamer’s use of play can highlight the deep philosophical import of this concept to the understanding of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

The coherence objection to the doctrine of the Incarnation maintains that it is impossible for one individual to have both the attributes of God and the attributes of a human being. This article examines Thomas Aquinas’s answer to this objection. I challenge the dominant, mereological interpretation of Aquinas’s position and, in light of this challenge, develop and defend a new alternative interpretation of Aquinas’s response to this important objection to Christian doctrine.

This handbook article gives a critical overview of recent discussions of epistemic authority. It favors an account that brings into balance the dictates of rational deference with the ideals of intellectual self-governance. A plausible starting point is the conjecture that neither should rational deference to authorities collapse into total epistemic submission, nor the ideal of mature intellectual self-governance be conflated with (illusions of) epistemic autarky.

Zunächst werden die Kernthesen von Habermas' Diskursethik vorgestellt, insbesondere der Universalisierungsgrundsatz U und das diskursethische Prinzip D. Eine ausführliche Analyse zeigt dann, daß Habermas' Argumentationen für diese Prinzipien in mehrfacher Hinsicht ungültig sind. Die Betrachtung früherer Varianten dieser Argumentationen und späterer Kommentare Habermas' macht zudem eine gewisse Wendung Habermas' weg von der Transzendentalpragmatik hin zum Intuitionismus und eine Abschwächung seines Begründungsanspruchs bis hin zu dessen Annullierung deutlich. Eine Kritik an vier Interpretationen von U selbst und an den beiden Hauptinterpretationen von (...) D erweist diese Moralkriterien als in vielerlei Hinsicht unbrauchbar und als bloß formelhafte Vereinigung schwer zu vereinender Ideale. (shrink)

We commonly explain the distinctive prudential and moral status of persons in terms of our mental capacities. I draw from recent work to argue that the common explanation is incomplete. I then develop a new explanation: We are ethically important because we are the object of a pattern of self-concern. I argue that the view solves moral problems posed by permissive ontologies, such as the recent personite problem.

According to commonsense psychology, one is conscious of everything that one pays attention to, but one does not pay attention to all the things that one is conscious of. Recent lines of research purport to show that commonsense is mistaken on both of these points: Mack and Rock (1998) tell us that attention is necessary for consciousness, while Kentridge and Heywood (2001) claim that consciousness is not necessary for attention. If these lines of research were successful they would have important (...) implications regarding the prospects of using attention research to inform us about consciousness. The present essay shows that these lines of research are not successful, and that the commonsense picture of the relationship between attention and consciousness can be. (shrink)

The question of the holistic structure of an organism is a recurring theme in the philosophy of biology and has been increasingly discussed again in recent years. Organisms have recently been described as complex systems that autonomously create, maintain and reproduce themselves while constantly interacting with their environment. Key focal points include their autopoiesis, autonomy, agency and teleological structure. This perspective marks a significant advancement from the 20th-century viewpoint, which predominantly saw organisms as genetically programmed, randomly generated and blindly selected (...) survival-machines. However, crucial questions about the shape and development of organisms still lack answers. Shape and development are deeply interconnected and seem to require a holistic approach. Here, I will briefly outline a phenomenological perspective which could provide a framework for seeking answers to these fundamental questions. In particular, I propose a common four-fold phenomenal structure of the developing organism and the cognising consciousness, which makes it possible to observe the agential and teleological structure of the organism "from within". This fourfold structure also describes the molecular level and thus provides a general organismic concept. It furthermore corresponds to the four Aristotelian "causes" (conditions). (shrink)

Much of the debate about Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato has focused on the separability of the Forms. Here the dispute has to do with the ontological status of the Forms, in particular Plato’s claim for their ontological priority in relation to perceptible objects. Aristotle, however, also disputes the explanatory and causal roles that Plato claims for the Forms. This second criticism is independent of the first; even if the problem of the ontological status of the Forms were resolved to Aristotle’s (...) satisfaction, this second criticism would still stand. The problem here is not that there is no room for Aristotle’s four causes in Plato’s ontology; on the contrary, antecedents for all four can be found in Plato’s works. The problem, instead, is that Plato’s Forms fail to meet the general requirements that Aristotle sets out for the material, efficient, formal, and final causes of perceptible objects. Hence, even if the Forms were immanent in perceptible objects, they would still explain nothing about them. (shrink)

Ectogestation involves the gestation of a fetus in an ex utero environment. The possibility of this technology raises a significant question for the abortion debate: Does a woman’s right to end her pregnancy entail that she has a right to the death of the fetus when ectogestation is possible? Some have argued that it does not Mathison & Davis. Others claim that, while a woman alone does not possess an individual right to the death of the fetus, the genetic parents (...) have a collective right to its death Räsänen. In this paper, I argue that the possibility of ectogestation will radically transform the problem of abortion. The argument that I defend purports to show that, even if it is not a person, there is no right to the death of a fetus that could be safely removed from a human womb and gestated in an artificial womb, because there are competent people who are willing to care for and raise the fetus as it grows into a person. Thus, given the possibility of ectogestation, the moral status of the fetus plays no substantial role in determining whether there is a right to its death. (shrink)

Although contemporary metaphysics has recently undergone a neo-Aristotelian revival wherein dispositions, or capacities are now commonplace in empirically grounded ontologies, being routinely utilised in theories of causality and modality, a central Aristotelian concept has yet to be given serious attention – the doctrine of hylomorphism. The reason for this is clear: while the Aristotelian ontological distinction between actuality and potentiality has proven to be a fruitful conceptual framework with which to model the operation of the natural world, the distinction between (...) form and matter has yet to similarly earn its keep. In this chapter, I offer a first step toward showing that the hylomorphic framework is up to that task. To do so, I return to the birthplace of that doctrine - the biological realm. Utilising recent advances in developmental biology, I argue that the hylomorphic framework is an empirically adequate and conceptually rich explanatory schema with which to model the nature of organisms. (shrink)

Lake et al. propose three criteria which, they argue, will bring artificial intelligence (AI) systems closer to human cognitive abilities. In this paper, we explore the application of these criteria to a particular domain of human cognition: our capacity for moral reasoning. In doing so, we explore a set of considerations relevant to the development of AI moral decision-making. Our main focus is on the relation between dual-process accounts of moral reasoning and model-free/model-based forms of machine learning. We also discuss (...) how work in embodied and situated cognition could provide a valu- able perspective on future research. (shrink)

Organisms receded from view in much of twentieth-century biology, only to undergo a sort of renaissance at the start of the twenty-first. The story of why this should be so is complicated and fascinating, but belongs primarily to the history of biology. On the other hand, to the extent that it is so, a question naturally arises: what, after all, are organisms? This question has a long and complicated history of its own, both within and without of biology; an investigation (...) of this history yields some guidance as to how organisms might yet be conceived today. One suggestion borne of these investigations is this: organisms are, for better or worse, normatively delineated unities. (shrink)

Decision-making has traditionally been modelled as a serial process, consisting of a number of distinct stages. The traditional account assumes that an agent first acquires the necessary perceptual evidence, by constructing a detailed inner repre- sentation of the environment, in order to deliberate over a set of possible options. Next, the agent considers her goals and beliefs, and subsequently commits to the best possible course of action. This process then repeats once the agent has learned from the consequences of her (...) actions and subsequently updated her beliefs. Under this interpretation, the agent’s body is considered merely as a means to report the decision, or to acquire the relevant goods. However, embodied cognition argues that an agent’s body should be understood as a proper part of the decision-making pro- cess. Accepting this principle challenges a number of commonly held beliefs in the cognitive sciences, but may lead to a more unified account of decision-making. This thesis explores an embodied account of decision-making using a recent frame- work known as predictive processing. This framework has been proposed by some as a functional description of neural activity. However, if it is approached from an embodied perspective, it can also offer a novel account of decision-making that ex- tends the scope of our explanatory considerations out beyond the brain and the body. We explore work in the cognitive sciences that supports this view, and argue that decision theory can benefit from adopting an embodied and predictive perspective. (shrink)

Common mental health disorders are rising globally, creating a strain on public healthcare systems. This has led to a renewed interest in the role that digital technologies may have for improving mental health outcomes. One result of this interest is the development and use of artificial intelligence for assessing, diagnosing, and treating mental health issues, which we refer to as ‘digital psychiatry’. This article focuses on the increasing use of digital psychiatry outside of clinical settings, in the following sectors: education, (...) employment, financial services, social media, and the digital well-being industry. We analyse the ethical risks of deploying digital psychiatry in these sectors, emphasising key problems and opportunities for public health, and offer recommendations for protecting and promoting public health and well-being in information societies. (shrink)

We argue that while digital health technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, smartphones, and virtual reality) present significant opportunities for improving the delivery of healthcare, key concepts that are used to evaluate and understand their impact can obscure significant ethical issues related to patient engagement and experience. Specifically, we focus on the concept of empowerment and ask whether it is adequate for addressing some significant ethical concerns that relate to digital health technologies for mental healthcare. We frame these concerns using five key (...) ethical principles for AI ethics (i.e. autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and explicability), which have their roots in the bioethical literature, in order to critically evaluate the role that digital health technologies will have in the future of digital healthcare. (shrink)

A collection of original and innovative essays that compare the justice issues raised by climate engineering to the justice issues raised by competing approaches to solving the climate problem.

The aim of the paper is to develop general criteria of argumentative validity and adequacy for probabilistic arguments on the basis of the epistemological approach to argumentation. In this approach, as in most other approaches to argumentation, proabilistic arguments have been neglected somewhat. Nonetheless, criteria for several special types of probabilistic arguments have been developed, in particular by Richard Feldman and Christoph Lumer. In the first part (sects. 2-5) the epistemological basis of probabilistic arguments is discussed. With regard to (...) the philosophical interpretation of probabilities a new subjectivist, epistemic interpretation is proposed, which identifies probabilities with tendencies of evidence (sect. 2). After drawing the conclusions of this interpretation with respect to the syntactic features of the probability concept, e.g. one variable referring to the data base (sect. 3), the justification of basic probabilities (priors) by judgements of relative frequency (sect. 4) and the justification of derivative probabilities by means of the probability calculus are explained (sect. 5). The core of the paper is the definition of '(argumentatively) valid derivative probabilistic arguments', which provides exact conditions for epistemically good probabilistic arguments, together with conditions for the adequate use of such arguments for the aim of rationally convincing an addressee (sect. 6). Finally, some measures for improving the applicability of probabilistic reasoning are proposed (sect. 7). (shrink)

Background: Smart sensors have been developed as diagnostic tools for rehabilitation to cover an increasing number of geriatric patients. They promise to enable an objective assessment of complex movement patterns. -/- Objective: This research aimed to identify and analyze the conflicting ethical values associated with smart sensors in geriatric rehabilitation and provide ethical guidance on the best use of smart sensors to all stakeholders, including technology developers, health professionals, patients, and health authorities. -/- Methods: On the basis of a systematic (...) literature search of the scientific databases PubMed and ScienceDirect, we conducted a qualitative document analysis to identify evidence-based practical implications of ethical relevance. We included 33 articles in the analysis. The practical implications were extracted inductively. Finally, we carried out an ethical analysis based on the 4 principles of biomedical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. The results are reported in categories based on these 4 principles. -/- Results: We identified 8 conflicting aims for using smart sensors. Gains in autonomy come at the cost of patient privacy. Smart sensors at home increase the independence of patients but may reduce social interactions. Independent measurements performed by patients may result in lower diagnostic accuracy. Although smart sensors could provide cost-effective and high-quality diagnostics for most patients, minorities could end up with suboptimal treatment owing to their underrepresentation in training data and studies. This could lead to algorithmic biases that would not be recognized by medical professionals when treating patients. -/- Conclusions: The application of smart sensors has the potential to improve the rehabilitation of geriatric patients in several ways. It is important that patients do not have to choose between autonomy and privacy and are well informed about the insights that can be gained from the data. Smart sensors should support and not replace interactions with medical professionals. Patients and medical professionals should be educated about the correct application and the limitations of smart sensors. Smart sensors should include an adequate representation of minorities in their training data and should be covered by health insurance to guarantee fair access. (shrink)

A phenomenological turn has occurred in contemporary philosophy of mind. Some philosophers working on the nature of intentionality and consciousness have turned away from views that construe the basic ingredients of intentionality in terms of naturalistic tracking relations that hold between thinkers and external conditions in their environment in favor of what has been called the “Phenomenal Intentionality Theory” (PIT). According to PIT, all “original” intentionality is either identical to or partly grounded in phenomenal consciousness. A central claim for PIT (...) is the inseparatism thesis, which asserts that the phenomenal and the intentional are inseparable. In this article, I will situate this thesis within a methodological context I call “analytic phenomenology” and then show why proponents of PIT should take seriously our phenomenology of temporal experience. But I am not aiming to disprove PIT or defend it against views of intentionality that reject inseparatism. Rather, I want to understand what PIT says and how to approach the view, assuming that our goal is to test the theory using the assumptions and methods endorsed by proponents of the theory. (shrink)

This chapter serves as an introduction to the edited collection of the same name, which includes chapters that explore digital well-being from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, psychology, economics, health care, and education. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide a short primer on the different disciplinary approaches to the study of well-being. To supplement this primer, we also invited key experts from several disciplines—philosophy, psychology, public policy, and health care—to share their thoughts on what they (...) believe are the most important open questions and ethical issues for the multi-disciplinary study of digital well-being. We also introduce and discuss several themes that we believe will be fundamental to the ongoing study of digital well-being: digital gratitude, automated interventions, and sustainable co-well-being. (shrink)

Das spezifische Ziel von Argumentationen ist nicht einfach, den Adressaten etwas glauben zu machen - dies wäre bloße Rhetorik ﷓, sondern: den Adressaten beim Erkennen der Akzeptabilität (insbesondere der Wahrheit) der These anzuleiten und ihn so zu begründetem Glauben, zu Erkenntnis zu führen. Argumentationen leiten das Erkennen an, indem sie in ihren Argumenten hinreichende Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen der These als erfüllt beurteilen und so den Adressaten implizit auffordern, diese Bedingungen zu überprüfen. Argumentationen sind gültig, wenn sie prinzipiell das Erkennen anleiten können; d. (...) h. wenn die genannten Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen hinreichend sind, wenn sie tatsächlich erfüllt (die Argumente also wahr) sind und wenn es irgendjemanden gibt, der zwar die Akzeptabilität der Argumente, nicht aber die der These erkannt hat. Eine gültige Argumentation ist adäquat, um einen bestimmten Adressaten rational zu überzeugen, wenn dieser u. a. die Akzeptabilität der Argumente, nicht aber die der These erkannt hat. Die in gültigen Argumentationen als erfüllt beurteilten Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen sind Konkretisierungen allgemeiner Erkenntnisprinzipien für die spezifische These, z. B. des deduktiven Erkenntnisprinzips: 'Eine Proposition ist wahr, wenn sie von wahren Propositionen logisch impliziert wird.' oder des erkenntnisgenetischen Erkenntnisprinzips: 'Eine Proposition ist wahr, wenn sie korrekt verifiziert worden ist.' Eine Konkretisierung des deduktiven Prinzips für eine These p wäre z. B.: 'p ist wahr, 1. wenn q und r wahr sind und 2. wenn q und r zusammen p logisch implizieren.' Sind beide Bedingungen erfüllt, so könnte 'q; r; also p.' eine gültige deduktive Argumentation sein. Die verschiedenen Argumentationstypen unterscheiden sich danach, auf welchem Erkenntnisprinzip sie basieren. Das argumentativ angeleitete Erkennen der Akzeptabilität der These funktioniert so: Der Adressat benutzt das von ihm (zumindest implizit) gewußte allgemeine Erkenntnisprinzip als Checkliste, auf der er nach dem Vorbringen der Argumente abhakt, welche Akzeptabilitätsbedingung des Erkenntnisprinzips durch das Zutreffen des Arguments jeweils erfüllt wird. Auf der Basis dieser Funktionsbestimmung werden in der "Praktischen Argumentationstheorie" (erstmalig) präzise Gültigkeitskriterien für Argumentationen allgemein und für mehrere spezielle Argumentationstypen entwickelt, erkenntnistheoretisch begründet und auf komplexe Argumentationsbeispiele aus Philosophie, Wissenschaft, Technik und Kultur angewendet. Die Analyse der erkenntnistheoretischen Grundlagen - der zugrundeliegenden Erkenntnisprinzipien - vor allem der interpretierenden und praktischen Argumentationen ist zudem von erheblicher Bedeutung weit über die Argumentationstheorie hinaus: für die Interpretationstheorie, die Handlungstheorie und die praktische Philosophie. (shrink)

In this paper, first the term 'prioritarianism' is defined, with some mathematical precision, on the basis of intuitive conceptions of prioritarianism, especially the idea that "benefiting people matters more the worse off these people are". (The prioritarian weighting function is monotonously ascending and concave, while its first derivation is smoothly descending and convex but positive throughout.) Furthermore, (moderate welfare) egalitarianism is characterized. In particular a new symmetry condition is defended, i.e. that egalitarianism evaluates upper and lower deviations from the social (...) middle symmetrically and equally negatively (as do e.g. variance and Gini). Finally, it is shown that this feature distinguishes egalitarianism also extensionally from prioritarianism. (shrink)

The plurality of definitions of life is often perceived as an unsatisfying situation stemming from still incomplete knowledge about ‘what it is to live’ as well as from the existence of a variety of methods for reaching a definition. For many, such plurality is to be remedied and the search for a unique and fully satisfactory definition of life pursued. In this contribution on the contrary, it is argued that the existence of such a variety of definitions of life undermines (...) the very feasibility of ever reaching a unique unambiguous definition. It is argued that focusing on the definitions of specific types of ‘living systems’ – somehow in the same way that one can define specific types of ‘flying systems’ – could be more fruitful from a heuristic point of view than looking for ‘the’ right definition of life, and probably more accurate in terms of carving Nature at its joints. (shrink)

Some critics of invasion biology have argued the invasion of ecosystems by nonindigenous species can create more valuable ecosystems. They consider invaded communities as more valuable because they potentially produce more ecosystem services. To establish that the introduction of nonindigenous species creates more valuable ecosystems, they defend that value is provisioned by ecosystem services. These services are derived from ecosystem productivity, the production and cycling of resources. Ecosystem productivity is a result of biodiversity, which is understood as local species richness. (...) Invasive species increase local species richness and, therefore, increase the conservation value of local ecosystems. These views are disseminating to the public via a series of popular science books. Conservationists must respond to these views, and I outline a method of rejecting such arguments against controlling invasive species. Ecological systems are valuable for more than local productivity and biodiversity is not accurately described by a local species count. (shrink)

This paper argues that we should replace the common classification of theories of welfare into the categories of hedonism, desire theories, and objective list theories. The tripartite classification is objectionable because it is unduly narrow and it is confusing: it excludes theories of welfare that are worthy of discussion, and it obscures important distinctions. In its place, the paper proposes two independent classifications corresponding to a distinction emphasised by Roger Crisp: a four-category classification of enumerative theories (about which items constitute (...) welfare), and a four-category classification of explanatory theories (about why these items constitute welfare). (shrink)

Many have claimed that legitimate constitutional democracy is either conceptually or practically impossible, given infinite regress paradoxes deriving from the requirement of simultaneously democratic and constitutional origins for legitimate government. This paper first critically investigates prominent conceptual and practical bootstrapping objections advanced by Barnett and Michelman. It then argues that the real conceptual root of such bootstrapping objections is not any specific substantive account of legitimacy makers, such as consent or democratic endorsement, but a particular conception of the logic of (...) normative standards—the determinate threshold conception—that the critic attributes to the putatively undermined account of legitimacy. The paper further claims that when we abandon threshold conceptions of the logic of legitimacy in favor of regulative-ideal conceptions, then the objections, from bootstrapping paradoxes to the very idea of constitutional democracy, disappear. It concludes with considerations in favor of adopting a more demanding conception of the regulative ideal of constitutional democracy, advanced by Habermas, focusing on potentials for developmental learning. (shrink)