While children’s experiences of online risks and harm is a growing area of research in New Zealand, public discussion on the matter has largely been informed by mainstream media’s fixation on the dangers of technology. At best, debate on risks online has relied on overseas evidence. However, insights reflecting the New Zealand context and based on representative data are still needed to guide policy discussion, create awareness, and inform the implementation of prevention and support programmes for children. This research report (...) presents findings from a quantitative study regarding different aspects related to risks and online safety. It looks at the online experiences that children find bothersome and upsetting and explores the hurtful behaviours they encounter or engage in, both online and in person. Evidence regarding exposure to different types of potentially harmful online content is also presented. Another relevant contribution is the insights related to excessive internet use.The findings presented in this report are based on data from 2,061 New Zealand children aged 9-17. We hope the findings will contribute to the development of policies, practices and services designed to support New Zealand children to safely take advantage of the opportunities available to them online. (shrink)

Research and practice about self-determination in the context of disability has centred on teaching skills and providing support to help people with impairments to be independent. However, limited research exists about the impact of Information and Communication Technologies, in particular social media and mobile devices, on the development of self-determination skills among people with disabilities. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study which collected data from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews and data from social media. (...) The focus of the study was on young people with vision impairments who were transitioning to university life. The study found that the participants developed self-determination skills by using and adapting collaborative and interactive online tools and mobile devices according to their transition needs. This finding expands the understanding of the implications of new technologies for young people with disabilities’ personal development and the enhancement of self-determination. (shrink)

The fear that business corporations have claimed unwarranted constitutional protections which have entrenched corporate power has produced a broad social movement demanding that constitutional rights be restricted to human beings and corporate personhood be abolished. We develop a critique of these proposals organized around the three salient rationales we identify in the accompanying narrative, which we argue reflect a narrow focus on large business corporations, a misunderstanding of the legal concept of personhood, and a failure to distinguish different kinds of (...) constitutional rights and the reasons for assigning them. Corporate personhood and corporate constitutional rights are not problematic per se once these notions are decoupled from biological, metaphysical, or moral considerations. The real challenge is that we need a principled way of thinking about the priority of human over corporate persons which does not reduce the efficacy of corporate institutions or harm liberal democracies. (shrink)

While children’s interaction with digital technologies is a matter of interest around the world, evidence based on nationally representative data about how integrated these tools are in children’s everyday life is still limited in New Zealand. This research report presents findings from a study that explores children’s internet access, online skills, practices, and opportunities. This report is part of Netsafe’s research project Ngā taiohi matihiko o Aotearoa - New Zealand Kids Online, and our first publication as a member of Global (...) Kids Online. Generating insightful, reliable evidence about New Zealand children’s online experiences is vital to develop adequate support that reflects children’s experiences and needs. This, in turn, will help them to manage online risks and potential harm from behaviours such as cyberbullying, harassment, and other forms of abuse and intimidation. (shrink)

We motivate a picture of social epistemology that sees forgetting as subject to epistemic evaluation. Using computer simulations of a simple agent-based model, we show that how agents forget can have as large an impact on group epistemic outcomes as how they share information. But, how we forget, unlike how we form beliefs, isn’t typically taken to be the sort of thing that can be epistemically rational or justified. We consider what we take to be the most promising argument for (...) this claim and find it lacking. We conclude that understanding how agents forget should be as central to social epistemology as understanding how agents form beliefs and share information with others. (shrink)

Research on transition to higher education and young people with disabilities has increased in recent years. However, there is still limited understanding of transition issues and how digital technologies, such as social media and mobile devices, are used by this group of students to manage these issues. This article presents the findings of an empirical study that addressed this matter based on young people’s views and experiences. The qualitative study was conducted in the context of a group of students with (...) vision impairments transitioning to a New Zealand university. The findings draw from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews, and data from social media. The study shows that, like their non-disabled peers, the students actively engaged with interactive and collaborative digital technologies to make sense, individually and collectively, of different transition issues before, during and after the first academic trimester of their university journey. (shrink)

Over the last ten years the sharing of nude images or videos (sometimes known as “sexting”) by young people has emerged as a concern. Despite this, no research had been conducted on the prevalence of the sharing of nudes among young New Zealanders. This study addresses this and raises important questions for all those with a role in supporting young people’s healthy development. We believe this report makes an important contribution to the overall understanding of young people’s experience of these (...) behaviours. However, it only provides a snapshot, and more work is required to understand how best to support young people as they navigate the challenges and potential risks. This report is being released as part of a larger project exploring young people’s experiences of digital risk and harm, carried out by a partnership between Netsafe and the Ministry for Women. (shrink)

This article introduces Transition 2.0, a paradigm shift designed to study and support students with disabilities' transition to higher education. Transition 2.0 is the result of a qualitative study about how a group of young people with vision impairments used digital technologies for their transition to university. The findings draw from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews, and data from social media. The article discusses a conventional view of transition, referred to here as Transition 1.0, which has dominated (...) disability-related research and service provision in higher education. It counters this view by further developing the conceptual framework for Transition 2.0. The findings expand current conceptual approaches to transition by incorporating in the analysis the role played by digital tools such as social media and mobile devices. They also provide a new lens through which to study and understand student engagement in higher education. (shrink)

Online hate speech has been a topic of public concern and research interest for some time. Initially the focus of this centred on the proliferation of online groups and websites promoting and distributing discriminatory content. Since the introduction of more interactive tools and platforms in the mid-2000s that enabled new and faster ways of disseminating content in a relatively anonymous fashion, concerns about online hate speech becoming a pervasive behavior have increased. Current research and analysis acknowledge the complex nature of (...) online hate, the mediating role of technology and the influence of other contextual factors (e.g. social or political events). However, despite the growing attention on the topic, New Zealand-based research looking at personal experiences and/or exposure to online hate is surprisingly absent. This study seeks to address this gap. It builds on existing international research on young people’s experiences to explore those of the adult New Zealand population based on a nationally representative sample. The research instrument used for this study was an online survey. (shrink)

Since transition to higher education emerged as a research topic in the early 1970s, scholarly inquiry has focused on students without impairments and, what is more, little attention has been paid to the role of digital technologies. This article seeks to address this knowledge gap by looking at the university experiences of a group of first-year students with vision impairments from New Zealand, and the way they use digital tools, such as social media and mobile devices, to manage their transition-related (...) challenges. The article summarises the findings from a longitudinal qualitative project which was methodologically informed by action research (AR). The article explores and discusses scholarly inquiry of transition to university and introduces a conceptual framework which includes five overlapping stages, the transition issues faced by the students and the roles played by digital technologies. The article updates and expands the theoretical understanding of transition to higher education and provides empirical evidence for practitioners to support the needs, inclusion, and participation of young people with disabilities in the tertiary setting. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A number of authors have recently advanced a ‘disjunctivist’ view of the rationalising explanation of action, on which rationalisations of the form ‘S A’d because p’ are explanations of a fundamentally different kind from rationalisations of the form ‘S A’d because she believed that p’. Less attempt has been made to explicitly articulate the case against this view. This paper seeks to remedy that situation. I develop a detailed version of what I take to be the basic argument against (...) disjunctivism, drawing on a framework of explanatory proportionality. The disjunctivist cannot reject this framework, I argue, because they need it to respond to another challenge, from psychological individualism. As I explain, however, the proportionality-based challenge is not in principle insurmountable, and I outline a number of ways in which a case for disjunctivism might be developed in response to it. The paper thus clarifies the dialectic around disjunctivism about the rationalisation of action and, specifically, what advocates of the view must do in order to make a compelling case for it. (shrink)

The nature and extent of adults’ engagement in diverse manifestations of technology-facilitated aggression is not yet well understood. Most research has focused on victimization. When explored, engagement in online aggression and abuse has centered on children and young people, particularly in school and higher education settings. Drawing on nationally representative data from New Zealand adults aged 18 and over, this chapter explores the overall prevalence of online aggression with a focus on gender and age. Our findings support the need to (...) also understand adult aggressors’ behaviors to better address the distress and harm caused to targets through digital communications. The chapter discusses the implications of the results for policy and practice and proposes some directions for future research. (shrink)

About thirty years ago, when the Internet started to be commercialised, access to the medium became a topic of research and debate. Up-to-date evidence about key predictors, such as age, is crucial because of the Internet's ever-changing nature and the challenges associated with gaining access to it. This paper aims to give an overview of New Zealand's Internet access trends and how they relate to age. It is based on secondary analysis of data from a larger online panel survey with (...) 1,001 adult respondents. The Chi-square test of independence and Cramer's V were used in the analysis. The study provides new evidence to understand the digital divide. Specifically, it uncovers a growing disparity in the quality of Internet connectivity. Even though fibre is the most common type of broadband connection at home, older adults are less likely to have it and more likely to use wireless broadband, which is a slower connection type. Additionally, a sizable majority of people in all age categories have favourable opinions on the Internet. Interestingly, this was more prevalent among older people, although they report an increased concern about the security of their personal information online. The implications of the results are discussed and some directions for future research are proposed. (shrink)

To explore social media use in New Zealand, a sample of 1001 adults aged 18 and over were surveyed in November 2021. Participants were asked about the frequency of their use of different social media platforms (text message included). This report describes how often each of the nine social media sites and apps covered in the survey are used individually on a daily basis. Differences based on key demographics, i.e., age and gender, are tested for statistical significance, and findings summarised.

This research report presents findings about the extent and nature of digital self-harm among New Zealand teens. Digital self-harm is broadly defined here as the anonymous online posting or sharing of mean or negative online content about oneself. The report centres on the prevalence of digital self-harm (or self-cyberbullying) among New Zealand teens (aged 13-17), the motivations, and outcomes related to engaging in this behaviour. The findings described in this report are representative of the teenage population of New Zealand by (...) gender, ethnicity and age. Key findings are: Overall, 6% of New Zealand teens have anonymously posted mean or negative content online about themselves in the past year. Teenagers’ top reasons for this behaviour were: making a joke, wanting to show resilience, looking for friends’ sympathy, and seeking reassurance of friendship. By exploring the nature and extent of this behaviour, we are providing the online safety community, schools and parents with insights about a complex and, to some extent, hidden phenomenon involving New Zealand teens. (shrink)

In its recent statement 'Sex Selection and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis', the Ethics Committee of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine concluded that preimplantation genetic diagnosis for sex selection for non-medical reasons should be discouraged because it poses a risk of unwarranted gender bias, social harm, and results in the diversion of medical resources from genuine medical need. We critically examine the arguments presented against sex selection using preimplantation genetic diagnosis. We argue that sex selection should be available, at least within (...) privately funded health care. (shrink)

A growing number of young people with disabilities is pursuing university education. Available research on the impact of Information and Communication Technologies on this matter has mainly focused on assistive technologies and their compensatory role for the adjustment of this group of students to the tertiary setting. However, limited research has looked at the role played by digital technologies such as social media and mobile devices in the transition to university, a critical period of change for all students but more (...) challenging for those with impairments. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study that investigated the experiences of students with vision impairments aged 18 to 24 who were transitioning to a New Zealand university. The findings draw from observations, a researcher diary, focus groups, individual interviews, and data from social media. The study found that new technologies play several enabling roles that help students to manage diverse transition challenges. These roles not only include aspects such as impairment compensation, communication, information, and learning but also support arrangement, collaboration, and social connection and participation. By incorporating in the analysis the potential of digital tools, the article updates and expands the understanding of the role of ICTs in higher education from experiences and views of young people with vision impairments. (shrink)

Polarization is a topic of intense interest among social scientists, but there is significant disagreement regarding the character of the phenomenon and little understanding of underlying mechanics. A first problem, we argue, is that polarization appears in the literature as not one concept but many. In the first part of the article, we distinguish nine phenomena that may be considered polarization, with suggestions of appropriate measures for each. In the second part of the article, we apply this analysis to evaluate (...) the types of polarization generated by the three major families of computational models proposing specific mechanisms of opinion polarization. (shrink)

Government agencies in New Zealand are not required to systematically collect data on online hate speech, thus, there is a lack of longitudinal evidence regarding this phenomenon. This report presents trends in personal experiences of and exposure to online hate speech among adult New Zealanders based on nationally representative data. The findings from this study are also compared with results from a similar research study conducted in 2018. In addition, this report explores people’s perceptions about other issues related to hate (...) speech. The goal of this study is to fill some knowledge gaps regarding the extent and nature of hate speech in New Zealand. It also seeks to provide reliable and robust evidence to inform public conversation on the topic and the implementation of strategies and activities to ensure all New Zealanders, no matter what their characteristics, are safe online to benefit from the multiple opportunities of the digital environment. (shrink)

Research suggests that parents tend to largely underestimate their child’s engagement in risky and/or hurtful behaviours as well as their experiences of harm online. While helpful, the available international evidence is not only limited but also does not reflect the New Zealand context. In addition, understanding parental knowledge of the online experiences of children is important as parents play a critical role in helping their child to prevent or deal with bothering experiences and risky behaviours as well as providing children (...) with emotional support when things go wrong online. To help close the gap of New Zealand-based evidence on the topic, this factsheet presents findings from a quantitative study conducted with New Zealand parents and their children. The objectives of the study are to measure parental knowledge of children’s experiences of risks and harm online, and to compare parents’ level of awareness with their child’s self-reported experiences. The study found a mismatch between parents’, caregivers’ and whānau awareness and their children’s reports of bothering or upsetting experiences online. (shrink)

There is emerging empirical evidence showing that people who identify as gender diverse and/or non-heterosexual report higher rates of risks and harm online. To expand the available evidence, this factsheet presents new insights based on longitudinal data exploring and comparing the extent of four types of unwanted digital communications in the last two to three years. The factsheet looks at the prevalence of being the target and the sender of unwanted, potentially harmful digital communications that included physical threats, seeking to (...) embarrass, stalking, and making a sexual advance. (shrink)

Government agencies in New Zealand are not required to systematically collect data on online hate speech, thus, there is a lack of longitudinal evidence regarding this phenomenon. This report presents trends in personal experiences of and exposure to online hate speech among adult New Zealanders based on nationally representative data. The findings from this study are also compared with results from a similar research study conducted in 2018. In addition, this report explores people’s perceptions about other issues related to hate (...) speech. The goal of this study is to fill some knowledge gaps regarding the extent and nature of hate speech in New Zealand. It also seeks to provide reliable and robust evidence to inform public conversation on the topic and the implementation of strategies and activities to ensure all New Zealanders, no matter what their characteristics, are safe online to benefit from the multiple opportunities of the digital environment. (shrink)

The transport sector is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand. To address this issue, the government is planning a set of actions to be implemented in the next 15 years. One of these actions deals with transport emissions and targets for a reduction in light vehicle travel. However, to achieve this goal, there is a need for both an updated assessment of effective interventions and an analysis of their relevance and applicability to the New (...) Zealand context. This report seeks to close the gap by conducting a narrative literature review of a collection of existing literature, supplemented with some targeted searches. With the focus on evidence relevant to New Zealand’s largest and fastest growing urban environments, the report identified 24 publicly available research outputs from around the world (mainly from Western European countries). The papers assessed differ not only in the type of research method and analysis applied but also the form of intervention (s) evaluated, the duration of the intervention and follow-up periods, the characteristics of the population groups or intervention sites studied, the measures, results and metrics relevant to New Zealand, and the outcomes of the interventions. Although these differences may represent a challenge in terms of comparability and transferability, they also provide opportunities and lessons for policy-and decision-makers. Finally, the report discusses the implications of the review and its findings and provides some directions and recommendations for future research, policy and practice for the measurement and evaluation of interventions. (shrink)

Logical reflection in early modern philosophy (EMP) is marked by the instability of the period, although it is more lasting (the Port-Royal Logic was nevertheless used as a handbook in philosophy courses until the end of the nineteenth century). It started in the sixteenth century and ended in the nineteenth century, a period of 300 years during which there were deep transformations in the conceptions of authority and scientific method. For the history of twentieth-century philosophy, it was the period of (...) “classical logic,” which lasted from the Renaissance to the linguistic turn conducted by Gottlob Frege. The period was used to be thought of as centuries of little or no original contribution to logic, in which conceptions of logic were tainted by rhetoric, epistemology, and psychologism in the worst sense (Kneale and Kneale 1962; Michael 1997). From the last decades of the twentieth century, however, scholars began to regard this period more accurately with respect to reflection and changes in logic and semantics. It has recently become a promising field for historical and conceptual research; today we can say that the legacy of early modern logical reformism has a philosophical, logical, and semantic value in itself. (shrink)

Parents play a critical role in their child’s personal development and day-to-day experiences. However, as digital technologies are increasingly embedded in most New Zealand children’s everyday life activities parents face the task of ensuring their child’s online safety. To do so, they need to understand the way their child engages with and through these tools and make sense of the rapidly changing, and more technically complex, nature of digital devices. This presents a digital parenting dilemma: maximising children’s online opportunities while (...) minimising online risks and potential harm. This factsheet presents evidence about digital parenting in New Zealand based on nationally representative data collected from parents, caregivers and whānau and their children aged 9-17. It uses measures from the Global Kids Online project to explore the prevalence of different practices used by New Zealand parents to influence or mediate children’s internet use. (shrink)

In this paper I introduce some of the key elements of Daniel Dennett’s theory of intentional attribution and their relation with his notion of rationality. While doing so I will show that Dennett’s approach implies a circularity in the process of attribution of rationality, and that his resource to evolutionary arguments for trying to avoid an infinite regress does not help him to avoid the problem. My presentation will include a revision of Dennett’s arguments for epistemic intentional ascription and rationality (...) attribution as well as some criticisms developed against his proposal. At the end of the article I will extend the criticisms and present my view about his proposal for ideal rationality attribution. (shrink)

This factsheet presents findings from a quantitative study looking at adults’ experiences of sending and sharing potentially harmful digital communications in New Zealand. Typically research into harmful digital communications focuses on the experiences of those on the receiving end – the victims. However, to better address the distress and harm caused, information is needed about the people sending and sharing potentially harmful messages and posts. In this study we asked adult New Zealanders whether they had sent potentially harmful digital communications (...) in the previous year and if so, how often they had done this, who they were sent to, the channel(s) they used, and the reason for doing this. (shrink)

I have argued that the central Christian doctrine of general resurrection (with particular reference to the Pauline corpus) can and should be understood in a scientifically and philosophically informed context, and have proposed a personalist-phenomenological model of general resurrection as a personally continuous transformative re-embodiment by the grace of God within an interpretative framework that respects the methods and findings of science while rejecting scientism and associated physicalist metaphysical claims. I have considered and rejected the re-assembly model of resurrection on (...) theological, philosophical and scientific grounds. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article distinguishes nine senses of polarization and provides formal measures for each one to refine the methodology used to describe polarization in distributions of attitudes. Each distinct concept is explained through a definition, formal measures, examples, and references. We then apply these measures to GSS data regarding political views, opinions on abortion, and religiosity—topics described as revealing social polarization. Previous breakdowns of polarization include domain-specific assumptions and focus on a subset of the distribution’s features. This has conflated multiple, (...) independent features of attitude distributions. The current work aims to extract the distinct senses of polarization and demonstrate that by becoming clearer on these distinctions we can better focus our efforts on substantive issues in social phenomena. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: -/- Preconception sex selection for non-medical reasons raises serious moral, legal and social issues. The main concern is based on the assumption that a freely available service for sex selection will distort the natural sex ratio and lead to a severe gender imbalance. However, for a severe gender imbalance to happen, at least two conditions have to be met. First, there must be a significant preference for children of a particular sex, and second, there must be a considerable demand (...) for preconception sex selection. To ascertain whether or not these two conditions are met, we have conducted a survey in Germany. METHODS: -/- As a representative sample of the German population, 1094 men and women aged 18-45 years were asked about their gender preferences and whether or not they could imagine selecting the sex of their children through flow cytometric separation of X- and Y-bearing sperm followed by intrauterine insemination. RESULTS: -/- 58% of respondents stated that they do not care about the sex of their offspring. 30% wish to have a family with an equal number of boys and girls. 4% would like to have more boys than girls, 3% more girls than boys, 1% only boys and 1% only girls. For first-borns, however, there is still a preference for boys over girls. While 75.6% claimed to have no gender preference, 14.2% would like their first child to be a boy and 10.1% would like their first child to be a girl. Whereas 6% could imagine taking advantage of preconception sex selection, 92% found this to be out of the question. Even in the hypothetical case that a medication for sex selection were ever to become available, 90% stated that they would not want to use it. CONCLUSION: -/- Given that a majority does not seem to care about the sex of their offspring and only a minority seem to be willing to select the sex of their children, a freely available service for preconception sex selection for non-medical reasons is rather unlikely to cause a severe gender imbalance in Germany. (shrink)

Symposium on Christopher Bennet's The Apology Ritual. A Philosophical Theory of Punishment [Cambridge University Press, 2008].

There is too much that we do not know about COVID-19. The longer we take to find it out, the more lives will be lost. In this paper, we will defend a principle of risk parity: if it is permissible to expose some members of society (e.g. health workers or the economically vulnerable) to a certain level of ex ante risk in order to minimize overall harm from the virus, then it is permissible to expose fully informed volunteers to a (...) comparable level of risk in the context of promising research into the virus. We apply this principle to three examples of risky research: skipping animal trials for promising treatments, human challenge trials to speed up vaccine development, and low-dose controlled infection or “variolation.” We conclude that if volunteers, fully informed about the risks, are willing to help fight the pandemic by aiding promising research, there are strong moral reasons to gratefully accept their help. To refuse it would implicitly subject others to still graver risks. (shrink)

This brief paper summarizes a series of postal investigations on the acceptance of selection for X or Y spermatozoa. These were conducted mainly in Germany but also in the UK, the Netherlands and the US. Selected families were approached with a series of questions about their wish to use sperm selection, and their choice of boys or girls. In general, large majorities opposed this approach for family balancing or sex selection on the basis of cost and inconvenience of the treatment. (...) The view was expressed that its use in medicine was more acceptable. Care was taken to compose a series of open questions to particular sections of the population, e.g.men versus women, differing ages, and families with imbalanced sex ratios. More favourable responses arose, for example in pregnant women. Overall, all four nations had large majorities against the use of sex selection. (shrink)

A critique of J. L. Schellenberg's argument from Divine Hiddenness: Schellenberg's conclusion that since apparently there are 'capable inculpable non-believers in God' the cognitive problem of divine hiddenness is actually an argument for the non-existence of God. Schellenberg's conclusion seems at least partly based on his misunderstanding or disregard of significant aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition and certain assumptions, especially regarding nature of religious belief as well as primacy and instrumentality of reason. I suggest that given the kind of God (...) proposed by the Judeo-Christian tradition it is not necessary that reasonable non-belief in His existence be impossible; moreover it may even be the case that possibility of reasonable non-belief is necessary given the nature and purposes of God as proposed by the Judeo-Christian tradition. (shrink)

In Bertrand Russell's 1903 Principles of Mathematics, he offers an apparently devastating criticism of the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen's Principle of the Infinitesimal Method and its History (PIM). Russell's criticism is motivated by his concern that Cohen's account of the foundations of calculus saddles mathematics with the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum, and thus threatens the very idea of mathematical truth. This paper defends Cohen against that objection of Russell's, and argues that properly understood, Cohen's views of limits and infinitesimals (...) do not entail the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum. Essential to that defense is an interpretation, developed in the paper, of Cohen's positions in the PIM as deeply rationalist. The interest in developing this interpretation is not just that it reveals how Cohen's views in the PIM avoid the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum. It also reveals some of what is at stake, both historically and philosophically, in Russell's criticism of Cohen. (shrink)

The Hong and Page ‘diversity trumps ability’ result has been used to argue for the more general claim that a diverse set of agents is epistemically superior to a comparable group of experts. Here we extend Hong and Page’s model to landscapes of different degrees of randomness and demonstrate the sensitivity of the ‘diversity trumps ability’ result. This analysis offers a more nuanced picture of how diversity, ability, and expertise may relate. Although models of this sort can indeed be suggestive (...) for diversity policies, we advise against interpreting such results overly broadly. (shrink)

Do university ethics classes influence students’ real-world moral choices? We aimed to conduct the first controlled study of the effects of ordinary philosophical ethics classes on real-world moral choices, using non-self-report, non-laboratory behavior as the dependent measure. We assigned 1332 students in four large philosophy classes to either an experimental group on the ethics of eating meat or a control group on the ethics of charitable giving. Students in each group read a philosophy article on their assigned topic and optionally (...) viewed a related video, then met with teaching assistants for 50-minute group discussion sections. They expressed their opinions about meat ethics and charitable giving in a follow-up questionnaire (1032 respondents after exclusions). We obtained 13,642 food purchase receipts from campus restaurants for 495 of the students, before and after the intervention. Purchase of meat products declined in the experimental group (52% of purchases of at least $4.99 contained meat before the intervention, compared to 45% after) but remained the same in the control group (52% both before and after). Ethical opinion also differed, with 43% of students in the experimental group agreeing that eating the meat of factory farmed animals is unethical compared to 29% in the control group. We also attempted to measure food choice using vouchers, but voucher redemption rates were low and no effect was statistically detectable. It remains unclear what aspect of instruction influenced behavior. (shrink)

Public health care interventions—regarding vaccination, obesity, and HIV, for example—standardly take the form of information dissemination across a community. But information networks can vary importantly between different ethnic communities, as can levels of trust in information from different sources. We use data from the Greater Pittsburgh Random Household Health Survey to construct models of information networks for White and Black communities--models which reflect the degree of information contact between individuals, with degrees of trust in information from various sources correlated with (...) positions in that social network. With simple assumptions regarding belief change and social reinforcement, we use those modeled networks to build dynamic agent-based models of how information can be expected to flow and how beliefs can be expected to change across each community. With contrasting information from governmental and religious sources, the results show importantly different dynamic patterns of belief polarization within the two communities. (shrink)

Preconception sex selection for non-medical reasons raises serious moral, legal and social issues. The main concerns include the threat of a sex ratio distortion due to a common preference for boys over girls, the charge of sexism, the danger of reinforcing gender stereotypical behaviour in sex selected children, and the fear of a slippery slope towards creating designer babies. This paper endeavours to show that none of the objections to preconception sex selection is conclusive and that there is no justification (...) for denying parents the right to choose the sex of their prospective children. (shrink)

Within the next parliamentary term, the German government is expected to replace the current Embryo Protection Act with a new Human Reproductive Technology Act. Before introducing new legislation, policy makers may want to survey public attitudes towards novel applications of reproductive technology. In order to assess opinions and concerns about preconception sex selection for non-medical reasons, a social survey has been conducted in Germany. As a representative sample of the German population, 1005 men and women 18 years and older were (...) asked whether or not preconception sex selection should be made available. Of the respondents, 32% held that sex selection should be strictly prohibited, be it for medical or non-medical reasons, and 54% accepted the use of preconception sex selection for medical purposes. Only a minority of 11% approved of the use of preconception sex selection for non-medical reasons. The widespread opposition to a freely available service for non-medical sex selection is based on several claims: 87% of respondents hold that 'children are a gift and deserve to be loved regardless of any characteristics such as beauty, intelligence or sex'; 79% argue that choosing the sex of children is 'playing God'; 76% are opposed because it is seen as 'unnatural'; 49% are afraid that it is 'skewing the natural sex ratio'; and 40% consider it to be 'sexist'. (shrink)

Consider the claims that representations of physical laws are intersubjective, and that they ultimately provide the foundation for all other intersubjective knowledge. Those claims, as well as the deeper philosophical commitments that justify them, constitute rare points of agreement between the Marburg School neo-Kantians Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer and their positivist rival, Ernst Mach. This is surprising, since Natorp and Cassirer are both often at pains to distinguish their theories of natural scientific knowledge from positivist views like Mach’s, and (...) often from Mach’s views in particular. Thus the very fact of this agreement between the Marburg School neo-Kantians and their positivist stalking horse points to a deep current of ideas that runs beneath the whole of the post-Kantian intellectual context they shared. (shrink)

Agent-based models have played a prominent role in recent debates about the merits of democracy. In particular, the formal model of Lu Hong and Scott Page and the associated “diversity trumps ability” result has typically been seen to support the epistemic virtues of democracy over epistocracy (i.e., governance by experts). In this paper we first identify the modeling choices embodied in the original formal model and then critique the application of the Hong-Page results to philosophical debates on the relative merits (...) of democracy. In particular we argue that the “best-performing agents” in Hong-Page model should not be interpreted as experts. We next explore a closely related model in which best-performing agents are more plausibly seen as experts and show that the diversity trumps ability result fails to hold. However, with changes in other parameters (such as the deliberation dynamic) the diversity trumps ability result is restored. The sensitivity of this result to parameter choices illustrates the complexity of the link between formal modeling and more general philosophical claims; we use this debate as a platform for a more general discussion of when and how agent-based models can contribute to philosophical discussions. (shrink)

In her paper, The case for physician assisted suicide: not proven, Bonnie Steinbock argues that the experience with Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act fails to demonstrate that the benefits of legalising physician assisted suicide outweigh its risks. Given that her verdict is based on a small number of highly controversial cases that will most likely occur under any regime of legally implemented safeguards, she renders it virtually impossible to prove the case for physician assisted suicide. In this brief paper, we (...) suggest some ways that may enable us to weigh the risks and benefits of legalisation more fairly and, hopefully, allow us to close the case for physician assisted suicide. (shrink)

The physiologist Johannes Müller’s doctrine of specific nerve energies had a decisive influence on neo-Kantian conceptions of the objectivity of knowledge in the 1850s - 1870s. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Müller amassed a body of experimental evidence to support his doctrine, according to which the character of our sensations is determined by the structures of our own sensory nerves, and not by the external objects that cause the sensations. Neo-Kantians such as Hermann von Helmholtz, F.A. Lange, (...) and Otto Liebmann took Müller’s doctrine to have far-reaching consequences for their epistemologies. Over the course of the 1850s - 1870s, these three neo-Kantians, each in his own way, argued that reflection on Müller’s doctrine ruled out a certain conception of the objectivity of knowledge. It ruled out the view that knowledge is objective in virtue of affording us information about objects in a mind-independent external world. -/- This paper traces how Helmholtz, Lange, and Liebmann developed their arguments for this view, and how each developed his own alternative conception of objectivity, according to which objectivity has nothing to do with a mind-independent world. Finally, the paper concludes by considering why these arguments modelled on Müller’s doctrine would have been so powerful against rival post-Hegelian conceptions of objectivity, especially those of scientific materialists like Ludwig Büchner. (shrink)

In this paper we make a simple theoretical point using a practical issue as an example. The simple theoretical point is that robustness is not 'all or nothing': in asking whether a system is robust one has to ask 'robust with respect to what property?' and 'robust over what set of changes in the system?' The practical issue used to illustrate the point is an examination of degrees of linkage between sub-networks and a pointed contrast in robustness and fragility between (...) the dynamics of (1) contact infection and (2) information transfer or belief change. Time to infection across linked sub-networks, it turns out, is fairly robust with regard to the degree of linkage between them. Time to infection is fragile and sensitive, however, with regard to the type of sub-network involved: total, ring, small world, random, or scale-free. Aspects of robustness and fragility are reversed where it is belief updating with reinforcement rather than infection that is at issue. In information dynamics, the pattern of time to consensus is robust across changes in network type but remarkably fragile with respect to degree of linkage between sub-networks. These results have important implications for public health interventions in realistic social networks, particularly with an eye to ethnic and socio-economic sub-communities, and in social networks with sub-communities changing in structure or linkage. (shrink)

Beyond belief change and meme adoption, both genetics and infection have been spoken of in terms of information transfer. What we examine here, concentrating on the specific case of transfer between sub-networks, are the differences in network dynamics in these cases: the different network dynamics of germs, genes, and memes. Germs and memes, it turns out, exhibit a very different dynamics across networks. For infection, measured in terms of time to total infection, it is network type rather than degree of (...) linkage between sub-networks that is of primary importance. For belief transfer, measured in terms of time to consensus, it is degree of linkage rather than network type that is crucial. Genes model each of these other dynamics in part, but match neither in full. For genetics, like belief transfer and unlike infection, network type makes little difference. Like infection and unlike belief, on the other hand, the dynamics of genetic information transfer within single and between linked networks are much the same. In ways both surprising and intriguing, transfer of genetic information seems to be robust across network differences crucial for the other two. (shrink)

A scientific community can be modeled as a collection of epistemic agents attempting to answer questions, in part by communicating about their hypotheses and results. We can treat the pathways of scientific communication as a network. When we do, it becomes clear that the interaction between the structure of the network and the nature of the question under investigation affects epistemic desiderata, including accuracy and speed to community consensus. Here we build on previous work, both our own and others’, in (...) order to get a firmer grasp on precisely which features of scientific communities interact with which features of scientific questions in order to influence epistemic outcomes. (shrink)

Introduction to the Special Volume, “Method, Science and Mathematics: Neo-Kantianism and Analytic Philosophy,” edited by Scott Edgar and Lydia Patton. At its core, analytic philosophy concerns urgent questions about philosophy’s relation to the formal and empirical sciences, questions about philosophy’s relation to psychology and the social sciences, and ultimately questions about philosophy’s place in a broader cultural landscape. This picture of analytic philosophy shapes this collection’s focus on the history of the philosophy of mathematics, physics, and psychology. The following (...) essays uncover, reflect on, and exemplify modes of philosophy that are engaged with these allied disciplines. They make the case that, to the extent that analytic philosophers are still concerned with philosophy’s ties to these disciplines, we would do well to pay attention to neo-Kantian views on those ties. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: -/- In its recent report 'Human Reproductive Technologies and the Law', the House of Commons' Select Committee on Science and Technology called for greater efforts to establish the potential demographic impact of sex selection across all sectors of UK society. Given the well-known preference for boys over girls among some communities, there is concern that a readily available service for social sex selection may upset the balance of the sexes. Of particular interest are the gender preferences and the demand (...) for sex selection among Pakistanis. METHODS: -/- We conducted a social survey on gender preferences and potential demand for preconception sex selection among 301 pregnant women in Karachi, Pakistan, using a self-report questionnaire consisting of 14 questions. RESULTS: -/- About 41.5% wish to have a family with an equal number of boys and girls; 3.3% would like to have only boys, 1.0% only girls, 27.6% more boys than girls and 4.3% more girls than boys, and 22.3% stated that they do not care about the sex composition of their family. Whereas 6.3% could imagine employing cytometric sperm separation for social sex selection, 76.1% could not and 17.6% were undecided. About 27.2% felt that social sex selection ought to be legal, 48.8% thought it ought to be illegal and 23.9% were undecided. CONCLUSIONS: -/- Although Pakistani women do show a statistically significant preference for boys over girls, the number of women willing to subject themselves to cytometric sperm separation appears to be too small to cause a severe imbalance of the sexes. However, further research among British citizens of Pakistani origin is needed to establish whether sex selection poses a serious threat to the sex ratio of UK communities. (shrink)