This response addresses the excellent responses to my book provided by Heather Douglas, Janet Kourany, and Matt Brown. First, I provide some comments and clarifications concerning a few of the highlights from their essays. Second, in response to the worries of my critics, I provide more detail than I was able to provide in my book regarding my three conditions for incorporating values in science. Third, I identify some of the most promising avenues for further research that flow out (...) of this interchange. (shrink)

Algorithms wield increasing control over our lives—over the jobs we get, the loans we're granted, the information we see online. Algorithms can and often do wield their power in a biased way, and much work has been devoted to algorithmic bias. In contrast, algorithmic neutrality has been largely neglected. I investigate algorithmic neutrality, tackling three questions: What is algorithmic neutrality? Is it possible? And when we have it in mind, what can we learn about algorithmic bias?

Dubourg and Baumard mention a potential role for the human drive to systemise as a factor motivating interest in imaginary worlds. Given that hyperexpression of this trait has been linked with autism (Baron-Cohen, 2002, 2006), we think this raises interesting implications for how those on the autism spectrum may differ from the neurotypical population in their engagement with imaginary worlds.

‘Sentience’ sometimes refers to the capacity for any type of subjective experience, and sometimes to the capacity to have subjective experiences with a positive or negative valence, such as pain or pleasure. We review recent controversies regarding sentience in fish and invertebrates and consider the deep methodological challenge posed by these cases. We then present two ways of responding to the challenge. In a policy-making context, precautionary thinking can help us treat animals appropriately despite continuing uncertainty about their sentience. In (...) a scientific context, we can draw inspiration from the science of human consciousness to disentangle conscious and unconscious perception (especially vision) in animals. Developing better ways to disentangle conscious and unconscious affect is a key priority for future research. (shrink)

One of the primary concerns in animal research is ensuring the welfare of laboratory animals. Modern views on animal welfare emphasize the role of animal sentience, i.e. the capacity to experience subjective states such as pleasure or suffering, as a central component of welfare. The increasing official recognition of animal sentience has had large effects on laboratory animal research. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low et al., University of Cambridge, 2012) marked an official scientific recognition of the presence of sentience (...) in mammals, birds, and cephalopods. Animal sentience has furthermore been recognized in legislation in the European Union, UK, New Zealand and parts of Australia, with discussions underway in other parts of the world to follow suit. In this paper, we analyze this shift towards recognition of sentience in the regulation and practice in the treatment of laboratory animals and its effects on animal welfare and use. (shrink)

If business requires ethical solutions that are viable in the liminal landscape between concepts and corporate office, then business ethics and corporate social responsibility should offer tools that can survive the trek, that flourish in this well-traveled, but often unarticulated, environment. Indeed, feminist ethics produces, accesses, and engages such tools. However, work in BE and CSR consistently conflates feminist ethics and feminine ethics and care ethics. I offer clarification and invoke the analytic power of three feminist ethicists 'in action' whose (...) investigations into the "grey zones" of harms; identity and representational conventions; and "asymmetrical reciprocity" harmonize with business ethics' requirements. (shrink)

Families play an essential role in deceased organ procurement. As the person cannot directly communicate his or her wishes regarding donation, the family is often the only source of information regarding consent or refusal. We provide a systematic description and analysis of the different roles the family can play, and actions the family can take, in the organ procurement process across different jurisdictions and consent systems. First, families can inform or update healthcare professionals about a person’s donation wishes. Second, families (...) can authorize organ procurement in the absence of deceased’s preferences and the default is not to remove organs, and oppose donation where there is no evidence of preference but the default is to presume consent; in both cases, the decision could be based on their own wishes or what they think the deceased would have wanted. Finally, families can overrule the known wishes of the deceased, which can mean preventing donation, or permitting donation when the deceased refused it. We propose a schema of 4 levels on which to map these possible family roles: no role, witness, surrogate, and full decisional authority. We conclude by mapping different jurisdictions onto this schema to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the consent system for organ donation and some important nuances about the role of families. This classificatory model aims to account for the majority of the world’s consent systems. It provides conceptual and methodological guidance that can be useful to researchers, professionals, and policymakers involved in organ procurement. (shrink)

Katz (2022) provides a range of arguments drawn from the environmental philosophy literature to criticize the conceptualisation and practice of de-extinction. The discussion is almost completely de...

The keeping of captive animals in zoos and aquariums has long been controversial. Many take freedom to be a crucial part of animal welfare and, on these grounds, criticise all forms of animal captivity as harmful to animal welfare, regardless of their provisions. Here, we analyse what it might mean for freedom to matter to welfare, distinguishing between the role of freedom as an intrinsic good, valued for its own sake and an instrumental good, its value arising from the increased (...) ability to provide other important resources. Too often, this debate is conducted through trading intuitions about what matters for animals. We argue for the need for the collection of comparative welfare data about wild and captive animals in order to settle the issue. Discovering more about the links between freedom and animal welfare will then allow for more empirically informed ethical decisions regarding captive animals. (shrink)

This paper examines visual representation from a distinctive, interdisciplinary perspective that draws on ethics, visual studies and critical race theory. Suggests ways to clarify complex issues of representational ethics in marketing communications and marketing representations, suggesting an analysis that makes identity creation central to societal marketing concerns. Analyzes representations of the exotic Other in disparate marketing campaigns, drawing upon tourist promotions, advertisements, and mundane objects in material culture. Moreover, music is an important force in marketing communication: visual representations in music (...) promotions are also explored as data for inquiry. Offers an alternative to phenomenologically based approaches in marketing and consumer research scholarship that use consumer responses to generate data. Contributes additional insight into societal marketing and places global marketing processes within the intersection of ethics, aesthetics and representation. (shrink)

Decision theory and folk psychology both purport to represent the same phenomena: our belief-like and desire- and preference-like states. They also purport to do the same work with these representations: explain and predict our actions. But they do so with different sets of concepts. There's much at stake in whether one of these two sets of concepts can be accounted for with the other. Without such an account, we'd have two competing representations and systems of prediction and explanation, a dubious (...) dualism. Folk psychology structures our daily lives and has proven fruitful in the study of mind and ethics, while decision theory is pervasive in various disciplines, including the quantitative social sciences, especially economics, and philosophy. My interest is in accounting for folk psychology with decision theory -- in particular, for believe and wanting, which decision theory omits. Many have attempted this task for belief. (The Lockean Thesis says that there is such an account.) I take up the parallel task for wanting, which has received far less attention. I propose necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in terms of decision theory, for when you're truly said to want; I give an analogue of the Lockean Thesis for wanting. My account is an alternative to orthodox accounts that link wanting to preference (e.g. Stalnaker (1984), Lewis (1986)), which I argue are false. I argue further that want ascriptions are context-sensitive. My account explains this context-sensitivity, makes sense of conflicting desires, and accommodates phenomena that motivate traditional theses on which 'want' has multiple senses (e.g. all-things-considered vs. pro tanto). (shrink)

Our reluctance to demystify grief is a sign of the distinctive obligation and discomfort that people feel towards those who have died. These feelings, however, are instructive about the nature of grief. As a vehicle of a living person’s relation to the dead, grief is mysterious—and we are rightly reluctant to take that mystery away. But grief is not to be avoided by philosophy on that account. I defend a less Romantic view of grief, in which a grieving person’s experience (...) of “normal” grief: 1) is felt to require an objectively recognized loss; 2) is felt to be dedicated to that lost object; 3) seems to most people to be something that she ought to feel; and 4) probably ought not to be medicalized, nor consequently medicated. This view of grief affords an understanding and appreciation of this rather special and important emotion without reducing its mystery. (shrink)

Metaethical expressivism is typically characterised as the view that normative statements express desire-like attitudes instead of beliefs. However, in this paper I argue that expressivists should claim that normative statements express beliefs in normative propositions, and not merely in some deflationary sense but in a theoretically robust sense explicated by a theory of propositional attitudes. I first argue that this can be achieved by combining an interpretationist understanding of belief with a nonfactualist view of normative belief content. This results in (...) a view I call ‘interpretative expressivism’. I then argue that traditional arguments employed by expressivists that normative statements express noncognitive attitudes can just as well support the claim that normative statements express nonfactual or nonrepresentational beliefs. Finally, I argue that this view has a number of advantages to versions of expressivism that deny that normative statements express non-deflationary normative beliefs. (shrink)

The performance of natural behavior is commonly used as a criterion in the determination of animal welfare. This is still true, despite many authors having demonstrated that it is not a necessary component of welfare –some natural behaviors may decrease welfare, while some unnatural behaviors increase it. Here I analyze why this idea persists, and what effects it may have. I argue that the disagreement underlying this debate on natural behavior is not one about which conditions affect welfare, but a (...) deeper conceptual disagreement about what the state of welfare actually consists of. Those advocating natural behavior typically take a “teleological” view of welfare, in which naturalness is fundamental to welfare, while opponents to the criterion usually take a “subjective” welfare concept, in which welfare consists of the subjective experience of life by the animal. I argue that as natural functioning is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding welfare, we should move away from the natural behavior criterion to an alternative such as behavioral preferences or enjoyment. This will have effects in the way we understand and measure welfare, and particularly in how we provide for the welfare of animals in a captive setting. (shrink)

Understanding science requires appreciating the values it presupposes and its social context. Both the values that scientists hold and their social context can affect scientific communication. Philosophers of science have recently begun studying scientific communication, especially as it relates to public policy. Some have proposed “guiding principles for communicating scientific findings” to promote trust and objectivity. This paper contributes to this line of research in a novel way using behavioural experimentation. We report results from three experiments testing judgments about the (...) trustworthiness, competence and objectivity of scientists. More specifically, we tested whether such judgments are affected by three factors: consulting or not consulting nonscientists, conducting research under a restrictive or non-restrictive governmental communication policy, and the source of a lab’s funding (i.e., government funding, private funding, or a combination of the two). We found that each of these factors affects ordinary judgments of trustworthiness, competence and objectivity. These findings support several recommendations that could help improve scientific communication and communication policies. (shrink)

You want to see the concert, but don’t want to take a long drive (even though the concert is far away). Such *strongly conflicting desire ascriptions* are, I show, wrongly predicted incompatible by standard semantics. I then object to possible solutions, and give my own, based on *some-things-considered desire*. Considering the fun of the concert, but ignoring the drive, you want to see the concert; considering the boredom of the drive, but ignoring the concert, you don’t want to take the (...) drive. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a unique set of challenges for national governments regarding how to deal with a major international pandemic of almost unprecedented scope. As the pandemic consti...

When Mill published The Subjection of Women in 1869 he wanted to replace the domination of one sex by the other laws based on ‘a principle of perfect equality’. It is widely complained, however, that even advanced countries have still failed to achieve equality between the sexes. Power and wealth and influence are still overwhelmingly in the hands of men. But equalities of these kinds are not the ones required by the principle of equality that Mill had in mind; and, (...) furthermore, a principle that demanded them would actually be incompatible with Mill’s. The conclusion is not, however, that social policies dealing with men and women are all they should be. It is just that although the fundamental problems of feminism could be – and to a considerable extent still can be – expressed in terms of requirements for justice and equality, we have now reached a stage where concentrating on these ideas can distort the real problems, and may actually impede the kind of progress that is needed. (shrink)

Internet of Things (IoT) devices have transformed various industries, enabling advanced functionalities across domains such as healthcare, smart cities, and industrial automation. However, the increasing number of connected devices has raised significant concerns regarding their security. IoT networks are highly vulnerable to a wide range of cyber threats, making Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) critical for identifying and mitigating malicious activities. This paper proposes a hybrid approach for intrusion detection in IoT networks by combining Machine Learning (ML) techniques with Signature-Based Methods. (...) The hybrid model leverages the strengths of both methodologies to achieve high detection accuracy, reduced false positives, and the ability to identify both known and unknown threats. We explore the integration of ML classifiers such as Random Forest, Support Vector Machines, and k-Nearest Neighbors with traditional signature-based techniques to create a robust IDS solution. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated using a publicly available IoT dataset, demonstrating its capability to detect a wide variety of attacks with high precision and recall. (shrink)

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has introduced a range of opportunities for enhanced connectivity, automation, and efficiency. However, the vast array of interconnected devices has also raised concerns regarding cybersecurity, particularly due to the limited resources and diverse nature of IoT devices. Intrusion detection systems (IDS) have emerged as critical tools for identifying and mitigating security threats. This paper proposes a Multi-Layer Intrusion Detection Framework for IoT systems, leveraging Ensemble Machine Learning (EML) techniques to improve the accuracy (...) and effectiveness of detecting intrusions. The proposed framework integrates multiple layers of defense, including data preprocessing, feature extraction, classification, and post-processing, to provide a robust solution to IoT security challenges. This research explores the application of EML methods such as Random Forests, AdaBoost, and Gradient Boosting, combining them into a unified model to detect and mitigate various types of attacks in IoT environments. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed framework in terms of detection accuracy, false positive rate, and computational efficiency. (shrink)

Goal: To assess public knowledge and attitudes towards the family’s role in deceased organ donation in Europe. -/- Methods: A systematic search was conducted in CINHAL, MEDLINE, PAIS Index, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science on December 15th, 2017. Eligibility criteria were socio-empirical studies conducted in Europe from 2008 to 2017 addressing either knowledge or attitudes by the public towards the consent system, including the involvement of the family in the decision-making process, for post-mortem organ retrieval. Screening and data collection (...) were performed by two or more independent reviewers for each record. -/- Results: Of the 1482 results, 467 studies were assessed in full-text form, and 33 were included in this synthesis. When the deceased has not expressed any preference, a majority of the public support the family's role as a surrogate decision-maker. When the deceased expressly consented, the respondents' answers depend on whether they see themselves as potential donors or as a deceased's next-of-kin. Answers also depend on the relationship between the deceased and the decision-maker(s) within the family, and on their ethnic or cultural background. -/- Conclusions: Public views on the authority of the family in organ donation decision-making require further research. A common conceptual framework and validated well-designed questionnaires are needed for future studies. The findings should be considered in the development of Government policy and guidance regarding the role of families in deceased organ donation. (shrink)

According to the Desiderative Lockean Thesis, there are necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in the terms of decision theory, for when one is truly said to want. What one is truly said to want, it turns out, varies remarkably by context—and to an underappreciated degree. To explain this context-sensitivity, and closure properties of wanting, I advance a Desiderative Lockean view that is distinctive in having two context-sensitive parameters.

hroughout medieval Christianity, religious works of art emerged to illustrate the teachings of the Bible for the largely illiterate population. What, then, is the significance of the psychoactive mushrooms hiding in plain sight in the artwork and icons of many European and Middle-Eastern churches? Does Christianity have a psychedelic history? -/- Providing stunning visual evidence from their anthropological journey throughout Europe and the Middle East, including visits to Roslyn Chapel and Chartres Cathedral, authors Julie and Jerry Brown document the role (...) of visionary plants in Christianity. They retrace the pioneering research of R. Gordon Wasson, the famous “sacred mushroom seeker,” on psychedelics in ancient Greece and India, and among the present-day reindeer herders of Siberia and the Mazatecs of Mexico. Challenging Wasson’s legacy, the authors reveal his secret relationship with the Vatican that led to Wasson’s refusal to pursue his hallucinogen theory into the hallowed halls of Christianity. -/- Examining the Bible and the Gnostic Gospels, the authors provide scriptural support to show that sacred mushrooms were the inspiration for Jesus’ revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven and that he was initiated into these mystical practices in Egypt during the Missing Years. They contend that the Trees of Knowledge and of Immortality in Eden were sacred mushrooms. -/- Uncovering the role played by visionary plants in the origins of Judeo-Christianity, the authors invite us to rethink what we know about the life of Jesus and to consider a controversial theory that challenges us to explore these sacred pathways to the divine. (shrink)

This article draws in particular on existential-phenomenological notions of “witnessing.” Witnessing, often conceived in the context of testimony, obviously involves epistemological concerns, such as how we come to know through the experiences and reports of others. I shall argue, however, that witnessing as a mode of intersubjectivity offers understandings that involve questions about how people come to be. More specifically, I want to consider the positive potential of “witnessing” to disrupt intersubjective completeness or closure, particularly as this relates to work (...) on organizing subjectivities, as well as, in the field of organization studies. (shrink)

Are properties perfectly natural (or not) relative to worlds, or are they perfectly natural (or not) tout court? That is, could there be a property P that is instanti-ated at worlds w1 and w2, and is perfectly natural at w1 but not at w2? Here, we offer an original argument for the non-world-relativity of perfect naturalness. Along the way, we reply to a prima facie compelling argument for the contin-gency of perfect naturalness, based upon the connection between natural prop-erties and (...) laws of nature. (shrink)

Derrida suggests in Speech a n d Phenomena that for Husserl subjectivity is constituted and entails no identity with itself at the level of the living present. He further suggests that Husserl’s understanding of absolute subjectivity is “as absolutely present and absolutely self-present being, only in its opposition to the object.”’ In making such claims, Derrida is not giving as much weight to Husserl’s manuscripts from the 1930s as those warrant. The manuscripts may serve to draw Derrida’s claims into question.2 (...) They provide a n interesting look at the question of subjectivity in light of intersubjectivity and present the possibility of conceiving identity and alterity within the streaming living present. The ambiguity and complexity we find in Husserl’s manuscripts in particular suggests that Husserl was prepared t o address absence even at the most fundamental level of phenomenological discovery. In the following, I will explore several of Husserl’s manuscripts in order to indicate how he might escape Derrida’s ~ r i t i q u e . ~ This will raise several questions with respect to the phenomenological subject and its relation to the alterity of the other. Through such an investi- gation, we will see how it is possible to accept Derrida’s criticism of a metaphysics of presence, while recognizing that the criticism does not mean we must reject Husserlian phenom- enology as an example of such. (shrink)

The mathematical developments of the 19th century seemed to undermine Kant’s philosophy. Non-Euclidean geometries challenged Kant’s view that there is a spatial intuition rich enough to yield the truth of Euclidean geometry. Similarly, advancements in algebra challenged the view that temporal intuition provides a foundation for both it and arithmetic. Mathematics seemed increasingly detached from experience as well as its form; moreover, with advances in symbolic logic, mathematical inference also seemed independent of intuition. This paper considers various philosophical responses to (...) these changes, focusing on the idea of modifying Kant’s conception of intuition in order to accommodate the increasing abstractness of mathematics. It is argued that far from clinging to an outdated paradigm, programs based on new conceptions of intuition should be seen as motivated by important philosophical desiderata, such as the truth, apriority, distinctiveness and autonomy of mathematics. (shrink)

The context of international health research involving human subjects, and this should appear obvious, is the human community. As such, basic questions of how human beings should be treated by other human beings, particularly in situations of unequal power – e.g., in the form of control, choice, or opportunity – lay at the foundations of related ethical discourse when ethics are discussed at all. I trace a narrative that follows upon a recent revision process of international guidelines for biomedical research (...) involving human subjects. I focus in particular upon the issue of a standard of care. In the second section, I draw upon philosophers John Rawls, Claudia Card, and Allen Buchanan to discuss concerns regarding the 'least advantaged members of society' in the context of global inequality. The paper includes reflections upon pedagogy in courses focused upon international health research involving human subjects. (shrink)

One of the biggest problems in applications of animal welfare science is our ability to make comparisons between different individuals, particularly different species. Although welfare science provides methods for measuring the welfare of individual animals, there’s no established method for comparing measures between individuals. This problem occurs because of the underdetermination of the conclusions given the data, arising from two sources of variation that we cannot distinguish – variation in the underlying target variable (welfare experience) and in the relationship of (...) measured indicators to the target. In this paper I describe the similarity assumptions that underlie our current applications of interspecies comparisons and examine in which cases they are justified, as well as describing alternative methods we may use when they are not. In the end, all our available options for making interspecies comparisons are imperfect, and we need to make explicit context-specific decisions about which will be best for the task at hand while acknowledging their potential limitations. Future developments in our understanding of the biology of sentience will help strengthen our methods of making welfare comparisons. (shrink)

Being sure of each other is the blossoming of Kimberley Brownlee’s earlier work on the intrinsic value and qualities of human connection (2013, 2016c, 2016b), opening with a scene from A. A. Milne’s House at Pooh Corner: lost in the woods together, Piglet takes Pooh’s paw ‘just to be sure’ of his friend. The importance of social connection is often overlooked because it is central to our lives, like breathable air. Brownlee’s work highlights the need for social connection, as deserving (...) of more philosophical attention and practical protection through rights. But her key insight is that receiving relational goods isn’t all that matters: being able and permitted to provide relational goods to others, as Piglet and Pooh receive and offer each other reassurance, is just as essential for our wellbeing. Brownlee argues these interests are strong enough to ground rights (2016c: 28). (shrink)

Animal welfare has a long history of disregard. While in recent decades the study of animal welfare has become a scientific discipline of its own, the difficulty of measuring animal welfare can still be vastly underestimated. There are three primary theories, or perspectives, on animal welfare - biological functioning, natural living and affective state. These come with their own diverse methods of measurement, each providing a limited perspective on an aspect of welfare. This paper describes a perspectival pluralist account of (...) animal welfare, in which all three theoretical perspectives and their multiple measures are necessary to understand this complex phenomenon and provide a full picture of animal welfare. This in turn will offer us a better understanding of perspectivism and pluralism itself. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that most or all perceptual experiences are infused with imaginative contributions. While the idea is not new, it has few supporters. I begin by developing a framework for the underlying debate. Central to that framework is the claim that a perceptual experience is infused with imagination if and only if there are self-generated contributions to that experience that have ampliative effect on its phenomenal and directed elements. Self-generated ingredients to experience are produced by the subject as (...) opposed to being received from the world. Some form of stored content is an obvious starting point. Ampliative effects are aspects of perceptual experience that outstrip the content the senses get from the world. This conceptual framework is applied to three case studies: object-sameness and object-kind recognition (section 2), memory colour (section 3), and perceptual constancy and amodal completion (section 4). If the three cases and my overall analysis are accepted (a substantive if), then we have a forceful inductive argument for perception being infused with imagination. (shrink)

A compositional semantics for anankastic conditionals (‘If you want p, you must φ’) has been elusive. Condoravdi and Lauer (2016) decisively object to all semantics that precede their own. CL's view rests on a response to *the problem of conflicting goals*; CL use an interpretation of 'want' on which an agent's desires don't conflict with her beliefs. But a proper response requires lack of conflict with the facts. CL's view fails. Anankastic conditionals are still a mystery.

Joshua Matthan Brown contrasts the concept of God assumed by most analytic philosophers, what he refers to as theistic personalism, with that of the apophatic conception of God endorsed by Eastern Christian thinkers. He maintains that the most powerful and economical response to contemporary arguments for atheism is to reject theistic personalism and adopt apophatic theism. Apophatic theists believe there is a lot we cannot say about God, taking the divine nature to be completely ineffable. Brown develops a coherent account (...) of divine ineffability and provides reasons for adopting this oft misunderstood view. Importantly, he draws upon apophatic theology, and its commitment to divine ineffability, to proffer an undercutting defeater for virtually every contemporary argument for the nonexistence of God. Along the way he anticipates and responds to several significant objections. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 5, May 2022.

What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to be sick? These two questions are much closer to one another than has hitherto been acknowledged. Indeed, both raise a number of related, albeit very complex, philosophical problems. In recent years, the phenomenology of health and disease has become a major topic in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine, owing much to the work of Havi Carel (2007, 2011, 2018). Surprisingly little attention, however, has been given to (...) the phenomenology of animal health and suffering. This omission shall be remedied here, laying the groundwork for the phenomenological evaluation of animal health and suffering. (shrink)

Meet Tega. Blue, fluffy, and AI-enabled, Tega is a relational robot: a robot designed to form relationships with humans. Created to aid in early childhood education, Tega talks with children, plays educational games with them, solves puzzles, and helps in creative activities like making up stories and drawing. Children are drawn to Tega, describing him as a friend, and attributing thoughts and feelings to him ("he's kind," "if you just left him here and nobody came to play with him, he (...) might be sad"). Scholars and members of the public alike have raised the alarm about relational robots, worrying that the relationships that people, and especially children, form with such robots are objectionably inauthentic. We, members of an interdisciplinary team that developed and studies Tega, make this inauthenticity worry precise and offer practical recommendations for addressing it. We distinguish two kinds of (in)authenticity -- inauthenticity as unreality, and inauthenticity as deception -- arguing that neither is just what others have thought it is. With our distinction in hand, we argue that the authenticity concern can be met only through co-design methods -- methods that give stakeholders of all kinds (e.g. parents, educators, and children themselves) a genuine say in how relational robots are built. (shrink)

In this commentary we advance Jagiello et al.'s proposal by zooming in on the possible evolutionary origins of the “bifocal stance” that may have enabled a major transition in human cultural evolution, arguing that the evolution of the bifocal stance was driven by an explosion in cultural complexity arising from cooperative foraging, which led to a feedback loop between the ritual and instrumental stances.

The increasing application of artificial intelligence (AI) to healthcare raises both hope and ethical concerns. Some advanced machine learning methods provide accurate clinical predictions at the expense of a significant lack of explainability. Alex John London has defended that accuracy is a more important value than explainability in AI medicine. In this article, we locate the trade-off between accurate performance and explainable algorithms in the context of distributive justice. We acknowledge that accuracy is cardinal from outcome-oriented justice because it helps (...) to maximize patients’ benefits and optimizes limited resources. However, we claim that the opaqueness of the algorithmic black box and its absence of explainability threatens core commitments of procedural fairness such as accountability, avoidance of bias, and transparency. To illustrate this, we discuss liver transplantation as a case of critical medical resources in which the lack of explainability in AI-based allocation algorithms is procedurally unfair. Finally, we provide a number of ethical recommendations for when considering the use of unexplainable algorithms in the distribution of health-related resources. (shrink)

This essay is an introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour. Why has the examination of many different aspects of colour been a prominent feature in philosophy, to such an extent that the topic is worthy of a handbook? Here are two related answers. First, colours are exceedingly familiar, seemingly simple features that become enigmatic under scrutiny, and they are difficult to capture in any familiar-sounding, unsophisticated theory. Second, through colour one can confront various problems that span the (...) breadth of philosophy, including problems pertaining to perception, the mind-body relation, the nature of science, scepticism, vagueness, meta-ethics, and aesthetics. In this introduction we elaborate and guide the reader to the essays in the rest of this volume. (shrink)

In modern zoos, enrichment programs have become a standard part of animal care routines. Although 'higher' primates usually receive complex enrichment programs, encompassing many types of enrichment, these are less common for prosimians. These animals often largely receive food-based enrichment, as was previously the case at Auckland Zoo, where the ring-tailed lemur enrichment schedule contained only three different items, all food-related. Lemurs tend to be considered less curious and quick to learn than other primates, as well as being less manually (...) dextrous, and for these reasons can be overlooked for complex enrichment. However, they have strong sensory abilities, in particular an acute sense of smell (Sauther et al 1999). This paper describes an enrichment program designed for the lemurs at Auckland Zoo with the aim of stimulating all senses. (shrink)

As a result of the world-wide COVID-19 epidemic, an internal tension in the goals of medicine has come to the forefront of public debate. Medical professionals are continuously faced with a tug of...

In the study of syntactic variation, genre has been an unstable term: fluctuating in the level of generality at which it is applied; intuiting rather than ascertaining the social situations it suggests. In contrast, rhetorical studies of genre have fixed genre at a low level of generality, in local socio-historical scenes, and claimed priority for situation over form. This chapter reviews the debates which led to genres rhetorical definition as "social action" (Miller 1984), and the benefit and also the cost (...) in disavowing form as definitive of genre. Rhetorical and variation studies of genre can seem fundamentally incompatible in their perspectives on form, yet there may be fertile meeting ground for them. Both invoke function for form, but each in ways incomplete for the study of genre: While rhetorical studies insist on the functionality of form in situation, they do not inquire into form itself; syntactic-variation studies also assume function for form, but define function at such a high level of generality as to fail to capture the social motives in genre's domain. By revisiting function as acutely sensitive to situation—responding to local exigencies and also indicating them—rhetorical and variation studies can meet on the common ground of form, each contributing to the others discoveries of genre as a site of social differentiation. (shrink)

Kevin Elliott’s A Tapestry of Values is a terrific book, chock full of valuable case studies and incisive analyses. It aims to be useful not only to students of philosophy of science and the other areas of science studies but also to practicing scientists, policymakers, and the public at large—a tall order. And it succeeds admirably for many of these folks. In my comments I suggest what it would need for the rest.

Internet of Things (IoT) devices have transformed various industries, enabling advanced functionalities across domains such as healthcare, smart cities, and industrial automation. However, the increasing number of connected devices has raised significant concerns regarding their security. IoT networks are highly vulnerable to a wide range of cyber threats, making Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) critical for identifying and mitigating malicious activities. This paper proposes a hybrid approach for intrusion detection in IoT networks by combining Machine Learning (ML) techniques with Signature-Based Methods. (...) The hybrid model leverages the strengths of both methodologies to achieve high detection accuracy, reduced false positives, and the ability to identify both known and unknown threats. We explore the integration of ML classifiers such as Random Forest, Support Vector Machines, and k-Nearest Neighbors with traditional signature-based techniques to create a robust IDS solution. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated using a publicly available IoT dataset, demonstrating its capability to detect a wide variety of attacks with high precision and recall. (shrink)