Als Plato de hedendaagse academie zou aanschouwen, zou hij niet alleen stomverbaasd zijn over de massificatie en de byzantijnse bureaucratie, maar gezien het ethische doel van de universiteit zou hij ook reden hebben om bezorgd te zijn.

As artefacts, the worlds of digital games are designed and developed to fulfil certain expressive, functional, and experiential objectives. During play, players infer these purposes and aspirations from various aspects of their engagement with the gameworld. Influenced by their sociocultural backgrounds, sensitivities, gameplay preferences, and familiarity with game conventions, players construct a subjective interpretation of the intentions with which they believe the digital game in question was created. By analogy with the narratological notion of the implied author, we call the (...) figure to which players ascribe these intentions ‘the implied designer’. In this article, we introduce the notion of the implied designer and present an initial account of how appreciators ascribe meaning to interactive, fictional gameworlds and act within them based on what they perceive to be the designer’s intentions. (shrink)

Bernard Williams argued that historical and philosophical inquiry were importantly linked in a number of ways. This introductory chapter distinguishes four different connections he identified between philosophy and history. (1) He believed that philosophy could not ignore its own history in the way that science can. (2) He thought that when engaging with philosophy’s history primarily to produce history, one still had to draw on philosophy. (3) Even doing history of philosophy philosophically, i.e. primarily to produce philosophy, required a keen (...) sense of how historically distant from us past philosophers were, on his view, because the point of reading them was to confront something different from the present. (4) He held that systematic philosophy itself needed to be done historically, engaging not necessarily with its own history, but with that of the concepts it sought to understand. The chapter closes with an overview of the volume’s structure and content. (shrink)

In dit artikel wordt de dominante metafysische oriëntatie in de hedendaagse meta-ethiek kritisch onder de loep genomen. Het hedendaagse debat, dat zich voornamelijk richt op de vraag hoe moraliteit metafysisch gezien 'in de werkelijkheid past', wordt gekenmerkt door een reeks complexe en soms esoterische discussies die, zo wordt betoogd, weinig bijdragen aan ons filosofische begrip van ethiek. Deze focus op metafysische grondslagen heeft geleid tot een tunnelvisie, waarin het debat gevangen zit tussen steeds ingewikkeldere vormen van non-cognitivisme, herconceptualisaties van 'objectiviteit' (...) en metafysische acrobatiek. Als alternatief wordt voorgesteld de aandacht in de meta-ethiek te verleggen naar het domein van praktisch redeneren. Door ons te concentreren op de patronen van geldige praktische argumentatie en het soort overwegingen dat mensen daadwerkelijk overtuigt, kunnen we wellicht een beter inzicht krijgen in de aard van ethische normativiteit en de rol ervan in ons leven. Het artikel pleit voor een meer pragmatische en minder metafysisch beladen benadering van de meta-ethiek, die zich richt op de daadwerkelijke praktijken van moreel redeneren en argumenteren. (shrink)

The paper by Monteiro, Musten and Compson (2014) is to be commended for providing a comprehensive discussion of the compatibility issues arising from the integration of mindfulness – a 2,500-year-old Buddhist practice – into research and applied psychological domains. Consistent with the observations of various others (e.g., Dunne, 2011; Kang & Whittingham, 2010), Monteiro and colleagues have not only highlighted that there are differences in how Buddhism and contemporary mindfulness interventional approaches interpret and contextualize mindfulness, but there are also differing (...) interpretations of mindfulness within Buddhism. These apparent differences within Buddhism are arguably more noticeable when making comparisons across Buddhist vehicles (i.e., Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), but to a lesser extent intra-vehicular differences can also be said to exist (i.e., differences between Buddhist traditions of the same vehicle). This commentary investigates the validity of some of these different Buddhist constructions of mindfulness, and then discusses how a better understanding of their scriptural and conceptual soundness (or lack thereof) may help to reconcile some of the actual and perceived incompatibility between Buddhist practice and contemporary secular mindfulness-based approaches. (shrink)

Starting from the plurality of explanatory strategies in the actual practice of socialscientists, I introduce a framework for explanatory pluralism – a normative endorsement of the plurality of forms and levels of explanation used by social scientists. Equipped with thisframework, central issues in the individualism/holism debate are revisited, namely emergence,reduction and the idea of microfoundations. Discussing these issues, we notice that in recentcontributions the focus has been shifting towards relationism, pluralism and interaction, awayfrom dichotomous individualism/holism thinking and a winner-takes-all approach. (...) Then, thechallenge of the debate is no longer to develop the ultimate individualistic approach ordefending the holist approach, but rather how to be combine individualism and holism; howcan they co-exist, interact, be integrated or develop some division of labour, while making thebest out of the strengths and limitations of the respective explanatory strategies of holists andindividualists? Thus, the debate shifts to how exactly pluralism should be understood as thenext leading question, going beyond the current individualism/holism debate. The paper endswith a discussion and evaluation of different understandings of explanatory pluralismdefended in the literature. (shrink)

This paper challenges the two aims of Michael Cholbi’s Rational Will View (RWV) which are to (1) offer an account of why paternalism is presumptively or pro tanto wrong and (2) relate the relative wrongness of paternalistic interventions to the rational powers that such interventions target (Sections 1 and 2). Some of a paternalizee’s choices harm their future selves in ways that would be wrong if they were done to others. I claim this challenges Cholbi’s second aim (2) because the (...) cases his account deems particularly wrong turn out to be not to be as wrongful as expected (Section 3). When this second aim is challenged, it has knock-on effects on the capacity of the RWV to discern which cases of paternalism are generally more wrongful than others, which undermines Cholbi’s first aim (1). I consider responses on behalf of Cholbi’s view but conclude that the account is insufficient on its own to vindicate its two aims (Section 4). Finally, I draw on recent work that adopts ideas from the practical reasoning literature to help determine paternalism’s wrongness (Section 5). I argue this helps Cholbi’s view withstand my objections, but we must remain skeptical of why interceding with rational powers is particularly wrong. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has now well and truly established itself as one of the main normative theories. It is now quite common, and indeed, expected, for virtue ethics to be included, alongside deontology and consequentialism, in any Moral Philosophy syllabus worth its salt. Students are typically introduced to virtue ethics only after studying the other two normative theories, and this often sets the scene for various sorts of misunderstandings, with students expecting virtue ethics to be based on the same set of (...) rules and assumptions as its rivals. Or at least, that is my experience. In this paper I want to focus on one such misunderstanding, which arises when trying to apply virtue ethics to our judgments of other people’s actions and behaviour. Although there are countless ways in which a theory can be misunderstood, it is worth guarding against this one in particular, given that it can lead someone who takes virtue ethics seriously to act in ways that are not virtuous, or even vicious. I begin by making a few remarks about the role of normative theory, and then go on to give four examples of how applying virtue ethics can lead to poor behaviour. In the final section I identify the mistake in question and conclude by noting how it can be avoided. (shrink)

This paper investigates conceptions of explanation, teleology, and analogy in the works of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Richards (2000, 2002) and Zammito (2006, 2012, 2018) have argued that Kant’s philosophy provided an obstacle for the project of establishing biology as a proper science around 1800. By contrast, Russell (1916), Outram (1986), and Huneman (2006, 2008) have argued, similar to suggestions from Lenoir (1989), that Kant’s philosophy influenced the influential naturalist Georges Cuvier. In this article, I wish to (...) expand on and further the work of Russell, Outram, and Huneman by adopting a novel perspective on Cuvier and considering (a) the similar conceptions of proper science and explanation of Kant and Cuvier, and (b) the similar conceptions of the role of teleology and analogy in the works of Kant and Cuvier. The similarities between Kant and Cuvier show, contrary to the interpretation of Richards and Zammito, that some of Kant’s philosophical ideas, whether they derived from him or not, were fruitfully applied by some life scientists who wished to transform life sciences into proper sciences around 1800. However, I also show that Cuvier, in contrast to Kant, had a workable strategy for transforming the life sciences into proper sciences, and that he departed from Kant’s philosophy of science in crucial respects. (shrink)

I argue that psychology and epistemology should posit distinct cognitive attitudes of religious credence and factual belief, which have different etiologies and different cognitive and behavioral effects. I support this claim by presenting a range of empirical evidence that religious cognitive attitudes tend to lack properties characteristic of factual belief, just as attitudes like hypothesis, fictional imagining, and assumption for the sake of argument generally lack such properties. Furthermore, religious credences have distinctive properties of their own. To summarize: factual beliefs (...) are practical setting independent, cognitively govern other attitudes, and are evidentially vulnerable. By way of contrast, religious credences have perceived normative orientation, are susceptible to free elaboration, and are vulnerable to special authority. This theory provides a framework for future research in the epistemology and psychology of religious credence. (shrink)

Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an established method for integrating values into technical design. It has been applied to different technologies and, more recently, to artificial intelligence (AI). We argue that AI poses a number of challenges specific to VSD that require a somewhat modified VSD approach. Machine learning (ML), in particular, poses two challenges. First, humans may not understand how an AI system learns certain things. This requires paying attention to values such as transparency, explicability, and accountability. Second, ML (...) may lead to AI systems adapting in ways that ‘disembody’ the values embedded in them. To address this, we propose a threefold modified VSD approach: 1) integrating a known set of VSD principles (AI4SG) as design norms from which more specific design requirements can be derived; 2) distinguishing between values that are promoted and respected by the design to ensure outcomes that not only do no harm but also contribute to good; and 3) extending the VSD process to encompass the whole life cycle of an AI technology in order to monitor unintended value consequences and redesign as needed. We illustrate our VSD for AI approach with an example use case of a SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing app. (shrink)

This essay surveys the main objections to aesthetic hedonism, the view that aesthetic value is reducible to the value of aesthetic pleasure or experience. Hedonism is the dominant view of aesthetic value, but a spate of recent criticisms has drawn its accuracy into question. I introduce some distinctions crucial to the criticisms, before using the bulk of the essay to identify and review six major lines of argument that hedonism's critics have employed against it. Whether or not these arguments suffice (...) to refute hedonism decisively, I argue that its privileged status, as the sole contender in aesthetic value theory, is detrimental to downstream research on aesthetic phenomena. The essay concludes with an overview of current work and promising avenues of inquiry into non-hedonic alternatives. (shrink)

A speaker's use of a declarative sentence in a context has two effects: it expresses a proposition and represents the speaker as knowing that proposition. This essay is about how to explain the second effect. The standard explanation is act-based. A speaker is represented as knowing because their use of the declarative in a context tokens the act-type of assertion and assertions represent knowledge in what's asserted. I propose a semantic explanation on which declaratives covertly host a "know"-parenthetical. A speaker (...) is thereby represented as knowing the proposition expressed because that is the semantic contribution of the parenthetical. I call this view parentheticalism and defend that it better explains knowledge representation than alternatives. As a consequence of outperforming assertoric explanations, parentheticalism opens the door to eliminating the act-type of assertion from linguistic theorizing. (shrink)

What sort of epistemic positions are compatible with inquiries driven by interrogative attitudes like wonder and puzzlement? The ignorance norm provides a partial answer: interrogative attitudes directed at a particular question are never compatible with knowledge of the question’s answer. But some are tempted to think that interrogative attitudes are incompatible with weaker positions like belief as well. This paper defends that the ignorance norm is exhaustive. All epistemic positions weaker than knowledge directed at the answer to a question are (...) compatible with having an interrogative attitude towards that question. We offer two arguments for this conclusion. The first is based on considerations about the role of hedging in inquiry. The second is conditional on considerations related to the aim of inquiry as a goal-directed activity. (shrink)

This essay argues that there are theoretical benefits to keeping distinct—more pervasively than the literature has done so far—the psychological states of imagining that p versus believing that in-the-story p, when it comes to cognition of fiction and other forms of narrative. Positing both in the minds of a story’s audience helps explain the full range of reactions characteristic of story consumption. This distinction also has interesting conceptual and explanatory dimensions that haven’t been carefully observed, and the two mental state (...) types make distinct contributions to generating emotional responses to stories. Finally, the differences between the mental states illuminate how a given story can be both shared with others and at the same time experienced as personal. (shrink)

Objectives. The purpose of this study was to conduct the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of a second-generation mindfulness-based intervention (SG-MBI) for treating fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). Compared to first generation mindfulness-based interventions, SG-MBIs are more acknowledging of the spiritual aspect of mindfulness. Design. A RCT employing intent-to-treat analysis. Methods. Adults with FMS received an 8-week SG-MBI known as meditation awareness training (MAT; n = 74) or an active control intervention known as cognitive behaviour theory for groups (...) (n = 74). Assessments were performed at pre-, post-, and 6-month follow-up phases. Results. Meditation awareness training participants demonstrated significant and sustained improvements over control group participants in FMS symptomatology, pain perception, sleep quality, psychological distress, non-attachment (to self, symptoms, and environment), and civic engagement. A mediation analysis found that (1) civic engagement partially mediated treatment effects for all outcome variables, (2) non-attachment partially mediated treatment effects for psychological distress and sleep quality, and (3) non-attachment almost fully mediated treatment effects for FMS symptomatology and pain perception. Average daily time spent in meditation was found to be a significant predictor of changes in all outcome variables. Conclusions. Meditation awareness training may be a suitable treatment for adults with FMS and appears to ameliorate FMS symptomatology and pain perception by reducing attachment to self. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu tiến hành khảo sát 258 đối tượng là khách hàng đã hoặc đang tham gia bảo hiểm y tế (BHYT) tại 3 thành phố thuộc tỉnh Đồng Tháp (TP. Cao Lãnh, TP. Sa Đéc và TP. Hồng Ngự) để đánh giá mức độ ảnh hưởng của các nhân tố đến sự hài lòng của khách hàng về chất lượng dịch vụ BHYT tại Bảo hiểm xã hội (BHXH) tỉnh Đồng Tháp. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, 4 nhân (...) tố: Viên chức; Quy trình thủ tục; Sự tin cậy; Năng lực phục vụ đều có tác động khá chặt chẽ (sắp xếp theo mức độ giảm dần) đến Sự hài lòng của khách hàng đối với dịch vụ BHYT tại BHXH tỉnh Đồng Tháp. Từ đó, đề xuất một số hàm ý quản trị nhằm nâng cao chất lượng dịch vụ BHYT tại BHXH tỉnh Đồng Tháp trong thời gian tới. [The study conducted a survey of 258 customers who were or are currently participating in health insurance in three cities of Dong Thap province (Cao Lanh City, Sa Dec City and Hong Ngu City) so as to evaluate the influence of factors on customer satisfaction with the quality of health insurance services in Dong Thap province’s Social Insurance. Research results show that four factors (arranged in descending order of influence) including Officials, Procedures, Trust and Service capacity have a fairly close impact on customer satisfaction. From this finding, some management implications are proposed to improve the quality of health insurance services in Dong Thap province’s Social Insurance in the coming time.]. (shrink)

Editors van Ditmarsch, Hendriks and Verbrugge of this special issue of topiCS on lying describe some recent trends in research on lying from a multidisciplinary perspective, including logic, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, behavioral economics, and artificial intelligence. Furthermore, they outline the seven contributions to this special issue.

Dit werkstuk betrekt zich op de vraag of de de facto legitimiteit van Knoet de Grote als koning van Angelsaksisch Engeland, te verklaren is aan de hand van de theorieën over legitimiteit zoals gepostuleerd door Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (1864—1920). Bestaande literatuur over Knoet de Grote zijn troonsbestijging, zoals dat van vooraanstaand 19e-eeuws historicus Edward Augustus Freeman, zou een ‘geromantiseerd’ beeld hebben geschetst van de kwestie. Dit werkstuk zal kijken of dit beeld, aan de hand van Webers theorie over waar (...) legitimiteit in gegrond kan zijn, ten eerste terecht te noemen is en, ten tweede, of het Knoets status als legitiem vorst van het ‘Angelsaksische’ volk goed kan verklaren. (shrink)

Propositions are traditionally regarded as performing vital roles in theories of natural language, logic, and cognition. This chapter offers an opinionated survey of recent literature to assess whether they are still needed to perform three linguistic roles: be the meaning of a declarative sentence in a context, be what is designated by certain linguistic expressions, and be the content of illocutionary acts. After considering many of the relevant choice-points, I suggest that there remains a linguistic basis for propositions, but not (...) for some of the traditional reasons. (shrink)

Toon van Eijk: Spinoza in het licht van bewustzijnsontwikkeling De beroemde filosoof Spinoza is moeilijk te doorgronden. Emeritus hoogleraar Maarten van Buuren heeft in 2016 twee boeken over Spinoza gepubliceerd, waarin hij diens filosofie op nauwgezette en verhelderende manier analyseert. Volgens Van Buuren is de kern van Spinoza’s ethiek de bevrijding van bevoogding en het streven om in overeenstemming te leven met de wereld en met zichzelf. Een aantal sleutelbegrippen in Spinoza’s filosofie zijn de immanente, in de natuur-inwonende God, zelfbeschikking, (...) de rede, intuïtie, macht en zelftoe-eigening. In dit boek bespreekt Toon van Eijk deze sleutelbegrippen aan de hand van de analyse van Van Buuren en de filosofie van Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, de grondlegger van de Transcendente Meditatie (TM) techniek. Filosofische begrippen blijven echter tandeloos zonder mogelijkheden om deze ideeën te verwerkelijken. Een synthese van filosofisch redeneren en praktijken voor bewustzijnsontwikkeling is nodig. Hoewel Spinoza een ethiek zonder metafysica voorstond, is Van Eijk van mening dat daadwerkelijk wijs handelen moeilijk zonder enige metafysische bagage kan. (shrink)

I identify two versions of the scientific anti-realist’s selectionist explanation for the success of science: Bas van Fraassen’s original and K. Brad Wray’s newer interpretation. In Wray’s version, psycho-social factors internal to the scientific community – viz. scientists’ interests, goals, and preferences – explain the theory-selection practices that explain theory-success. I argue that, if Wray’s version were correct, then science should resemble art. In art, the artwork-selection practices that explain artwork-success appear faddish. They are prone to radical change over time. (...) Theory-selection practices that explain theory-success in science are however not faddish. They are mostly stable; that is, long-lived and consistent over time. This is because scientists (explicitly or implicitly) subscribe to what I will call the testability norm: scientific theories must make falsifiable claims about the external physical world. The testability norm and not psycho-sociology explains the theory-selection practices that explain theory-success in science. Contra Wray, scientific anti-realists can then maintain that the external physical world (as expressed in the testability norm) explains theory-success. (shrink)

In dit hoofdstuk presenteer ik de belangrijkste bevindingen en uitspraken uit mijn diepte-interviews met de respondenten. Ik geef hiermee antwoord op de deelvragen ‘Wat voor beeld wordt er gevormd in Nederlandse kranten over geweldpleging door de Staat in Nederlands-Indië?’, ‘Welk beeld in Nederlandse kranten is exemplarisch voor positieve of negatieve berichtgeving over geweldpleging door de Staat in Nederlands-Indië?’, ‘Wat zijn de belangrijkste reacties geweest van media, Staat of andere betrokkenen op de berichtgeving in kranten over Nederlandse oorlogsmisdaden in Indië?’ en (...) ‘Hoe kijken representatoren voor media, Staat, betrokkenen en/of nabestaanden zelf aan tegen de beeldvorming over de misdragingen in Nederlands-Indië?’ De vijf geïnterviewde experts hebben zich uiteraard uitgelaten over beeldvorming in Nederlandse kranten over verschillende perioden. Ik heb de paragrafen daar voor het gemak tevens chronologisch naar ingedeeld. (shrink)

The guiding premise of this chapter is that we, as teachers in higher education, must consider how the content and form of our teaching can foster inclusivity through a responsiveness to neurodiverse learning styles. A narrow pedagogical focus on lectures, textual engagement, and essay-writing threatens to exclude neurodivergent students whose ways of learning and making sense of the world may not be best supported through these traditional forms of pedagogy. As we discuss in this chapter, we, as engineering ethics educators, (...) designed and implemented a new engineering ethics exercise with which we aimed to promote inclusivity at the levels of form and content. At the content level, students were invited to critically engage with inclusivity-undermining ableist assumptions in technology development. This took shape, at the formal level, through a hands-on ‘material tinkering’ workshop in which students collaboratively and creatively altered (or ‘hacked’) artifacts used in contexts of disability and healthcare, so as to operationalize values of inclusivity and accessibility. Our hunch was that this hands-on tinkering workshop would simultaneously encourage a meaningful way of engagement with these ethical issues and values, while also enacting a more inclusive learning environment by enriching the range of pedagogical activities and learning formats available to our students. As we aim to show in this chapter, we believe this hunch largely panned out - though there are clear areas for future improvement pertaining to the pilot exercise itself and the research we conducted on the exercise. We begin by offering a description of our tinkering exercise. We discuss the exercise’s source of inspiration (2.1) and its implementation (2.2), which is visually captured via photographic documentation. We then discuss (3) how we utilized a triangulated research method to assess the pedagogical value of the exercise. After we discuss our findings, we conclude by identifying areas for future improvement (4). (shrink)

Ernst Mayr argued that the emergence of biology as a special science in the early nineteenth century was possible due to the demise of the mathematical model of science and its insistence on demonstrative knowledge. More recently, John Zammito has claimed that the rise of biology as a special science was due to a distinctive experimental, anti-metaphysical, anti-mathematical, and anti-rationalist strand of thought coming from outside of Germany. In this paper we argue that this narrative neglects the important role played (...) by the mathematical and axiomatic model of science in the emergence of biology as a special science. We show that several major actors involved in the emergence of biology as a science in Germany were working with an axiomatic conception of science that goes back at least to Aristotle and was popular in mid-eighteenth-century German academic circles due to its endorsement by Christian Wolff. More specifically, we show that at least two major contributors to the emergence of biology in Germany—Caspar Friedrich Wolff and Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus—sought to provide a conception of the new science of life that satisfies the criteria of a traditional axiomatic ideal of science. Both C.F. Wolff and Treviranus took over strong commitments to the axiomatic model of science from major philosophers of their time, Christian Wolff and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, respectively. The ideal of biology as an axiomatic science with specific biological fundamental concepts and principles thus played a role in the emergence of biology as a special science. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is frequently billed as a remedy to the problems of deontological and consequentialist ethics that Bernard Williams identified in his critique of “the morality system.” But how far can virtue ethics be relied upon to avoid these problems? What does Williams’s critique of the morality system mean for virtue ethics? To answer this question, we offer a more principled characterisation of the defining features of the morality system in terms of its organising ambition—to shelter life against luck. This (...) reveals the system to be multiply realisable: the same function can be served by substantively different but functionally equivalent ideas. After identifying four requirements that ethical thought must meet to function as a morality system, we show that they can also be met by certain constellations of virtue-ethical ideas. We thereby demonstrate the possibility of virtue-ethical morality systems raising problems analogous to those besetting their deontological and consequentialist counterparts. This not only widens the scope of Williams’s critique and brings out the cautionary aspect of his legacy for virtue ethics. It also offers contemporary virtue ethicists a more principled understanding of the functional features that mark out morality systems and lie at the root of their problems, thereby helping them to avoid or overcome these problems. (shrink)

A philosophical analysis of the future of art must explicate art’s nature, as well as discuss the historical nature of art practice. Only so can one explain those contemporary developments in art which have led many people to doubt whether art even has a future. Arguably, art practice as we know it started with the installing of the modern system of the fine arts. I explain the pragmatics of art so understood, and suggest that we can define art, internally. We (...) need not resort to a nominalist approach that claims that something is a work of art if some representative of the art world says it is. Instead of such empty proceduralism, I explain how all art’s focal objects, persons and activities are mutually adjusted and can only be understood in light of the whole. Within that whole of art practice, the contemporary samples of art’s alleged failure can be assessed. Now the modern system treats the arts as aesthetic, and prescribes that to judge a work one has to experience it for oneself. Why this should be so, I explain in terms of the perceivability of the artist in the work. Next, art develops as a whole rather than in a piecemeal manner. Particular contemporary works may alienate the audience from art practice, yet once they are recognisably in a procedure which has clear artistic potency they can be incorporated fruitfully in the modern system as explained. In all, the future of art is the future of the modern system, unless the system as a whole goes. We see this happen with the Taliban, but do not ourselves seem to be vulnerable to such onslaught. Yet, our culture may be in the process of eliminating the human mind from the objective reality, and if nothing stops us, art too will come to an end. Luckily, by then we will not be such as to lament that demise. (shrink)

In an effort to inform the discussion surrounding existential risks from AI, we formulate Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law as “Virtually any goal specification, pursued to the extreme, will result in the extinction of humanity”, and we aim to understand which formal models are suitable for investigating this hypothesis. Note that we remain agnostic as to whether Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law holds or not. As our key contribution, we identify a set of conditions that are necessary for a model that aims to be (...) informative for evaluating specific arguments for Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law. Since each of the conditions seems to significantly contribute to the complexity of the resulting model, formally evaluating the hypothesis might be exceedingly difficult. This raises the possibility that whether the risk of extinction from artificial intelligence is real or not, the underlying dynamics might be invisible to current scientific methods. (shrink)

There is a noticeable gap between results of cognitive neuroscientific research into basic mathematical abilities and philosophical and empirical investigations of mathematics as a distinct intellectual activity. The paper explores the relevance of a Wittgensteinian framework for dealing with this discrepancy.

This article asks whether states have a right to close their borders because of their right to self-determination, as proposed recently by Christopher Wellman, Michael Walzer, and others. It asks the fundamental question whether self-determination can, in even its most unrestricted form, support the exclusion of immigrants. I argue that the answer is no. To show this, I construct three different ways in which one might use the idea of self-determination to justify immigration restrictions and show that each of these (...) arguments fails. My conclusion is that the nature and value of self-determination have to do with the conditions of genuine self-government, not membership of political society. Consequently, the demand for open borders is fully consistent with respect to self-determination. (shrink)

Despite their success in describing and predicting cognitive behavior, the plausibility of so-called ‘rational explanations’ is often contested on the grounds of computational intractability. Several cognitive scientists have argued that such intractability is an orthogonal pseudoproblem, however, since rational explanations account for the ‘why’ of cognition but are agnostic about the ‘how’. Their central premise is that humans do not actually perform the rational calculations posited by their models, but only act as if they do. Whether or not the problem (...) of intractability is solved by recourse to ‘as if’ explanations critically depends, inter alia, on the semantics of the ‘as if’ connective. We examine the five most sensible explications in the literature, and conclude that none of them circumvents the problem. As a result, rational ‘as if’ explanations must obey the minimal computational constraint of tractability. (shrink)

Cảm xúc là yếu tố cơ bản thúc đẩy con người đưa ra quyết định và xử lý thông tin. Sợ hãi là một trong những cảm xúc phổ biến nhất ảnh hưởng đến hành vi của nhà đầu tư cá nhân trên thị trường chứng khoán. Mặc dù nhiều nghiên cứu đã được thực hiện để khám phá tác động của nỗi sợ hãi đối với hiệu quả đầu tư và hành vi giao dịch của nhà đầu tư cá (...) nhân, nhưng vẫn còn rất ít thông tin về các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến nỗi sợ hãi của nhà đầu tư cá nhân trong thời kỳ thị trường sụt giảm (hoặc những giai đoạn cực kỳ biến động). Vì thế, nghiên cứu này được thực hiện để tìm hiểu liệu các nguồn thông tin ảnh hưởng đến quyết định đầu tư của nhà đầu tư có ảnh hưởng đến sự sợ hãi của họ khi khủng hoảng xảy ra hay không. Nghiên cứu đã sử dụng phương pháp phân tích Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) trên bộ dữ liệu từ 1526 nhà đầu tư Trung Quốc và Việt Nam. Kết quả nghiên cứu chỉ ra rằng các nhà đầu tư tiếp cận các loại thông tin khác nhau khi đưa ra quyết định đầu tư sẽ ảnh hưởng đến tần suất phản ứng sợ hãi khác nhau. Cụ thể, các nhà đầu tư tham khảo thông tin từ chuyên gia hoặc tự phân tích khi đưa ra quyết định đầu tư ít bị đóng băng (biểu hiện của tâm lý sợ hãi) hơn trong thời kỳ thị trường sụt giảm. Ngược lại, những người đưa ra quyết định đầu tư dựa trên thông tin từ người quen hay bạn bè và trực giác sẽ bị đóng băng thường xuyên hơn. Kết quả nghiên cứu này giúp gợi ý nhà đầu tư cá nhân nên trang bị cho mình các kiến thức về tài chính cũng như tham khảo các ý kiến chuyên gia trên thị trường, hoặc những nguồn thông tin đáng tin cậy, khi đưa ra quyết định đầu tư. Bên cạnh đó, cơ quan quản lý thị trường cần có hoạt động phổ cập kiến thức về thị trường chứng khoán, hạn chế ảnh hưởng của các kênh thông tin không chính thống, và khuyến khích nhà đầu tư ít kinh nghiệm mua chứng chỉ quỹ của các quỹ đầu tư. (shrink)

Inspired by Bas van Fraassen’s Stance Empiricism, Anjan Chakravartty has developed a pluralistic account of what he calls epistemic stances towards scientific ontology. In this paper, I examine whether Chakravartty’s stance pluralism can exclude epistemic stances that licence pseudo-scientific practices like those found in Scientology. I argue that it cannot. Chakravartty’s stance pluralism is therefore prone to a form of debilitating relativism. I consequently argue that we need (1) some ground or constraint in relation to which epistemic stances can be (...) ranked by degrees, and (2) some way to demarcate science from pseudo-science so that we know what epistemic stances are about. Regarding (1), I argue that empirical detectability can serve as the ground in relation to which epistemic stances are ranked by degrees. Regarding (2), I argue for ranking sciences on a continuum according to established institutional criteria, rather than attempting to draw a strict demarcation. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly adopted in society, creating numerous opportunities but at the same time posing ethical challenges. Many of these are familiar, such as issues of fairness, responsibility and privacy, but are presented in a new and challenging guise due to our limited ability to steer and predict the outputs of AI systems. This chapter first introduces these ethical challenges, stressing that overviews of values are a good starting point but frequently fail to suffice due to the context (...) sensitivity of ethical challenges. Frequently, additional (ethical) values emerge for specific applications, as e.g. challenges with fraud detection are very different from those around language technologies. Second, methods to tackle these challenges are discussed. Main ethical theories (virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology) are shown to provide a starting point, but often lack the details needed for actionable AI Ethics. Instead, mid-level philosophical theories coupled to design-approaches such as Design for Values, together with interdisciplinary working methods, offer the best way forwards. The chapter aims to show how these approaches can lead to an ethics of AI that is actionable and that can be proactively integrated in the design of AI systems. (shrink)

Trước những lo ngại về khí hậu toàn cầu ngày càng gia tăng, các quốc gia trên thế giới đã ký kết thỏa thuận toàn cầu nhằm thể hiện sự cam kết mạnh mẽ để chung tay tìm kiếm các giải pháp sáng tạo để giảm thiểu phát thải khí nhà kính và tác động của nó đối với môi trường. Việt Nam là một trong những thành viên tích cực tham gia và có trách nhiệm, nhưng đồng thời cũng (...) là một nước bị ảnh hưởng nặng nề nhất của biến đổi khí hậu. Nhận thấy sự cần thiết phải giải quyết vấn đề biến đổi khí hậu, Việt Nam đang triển khai nghiên cứu việc thành lập thị trường các-bon trong nước, trong đó việc xây dựng và vận hành một hệ thống lưu ký các-bon được coi là một trụ cột quan trọng, trên cơ sở học hỏi kinh nghiệm từ các mô hình trên thế giới. Bài viết này đi sâu vào việc phân tích, đánh giá điều kiện, bối cảnh của Việt Nam và rút ra bài học kinh nghiệm từ các hệ thống lưu ký trên thế giới để đề xuất các giải pháp xây dựng một hệ thống lưu ký các- bon hiệu quả cho Việt Nam. (shrink)

Epistemic contextualism in the style of Lewis (1996) maintains that ascriptions of knowledge to a subject vary in truth with the alternatives that can be eliminated by the subject’s evidence in a context. Schaffer (2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2015), Schaffer and Knobe (2012), and Schaffer and Szabo ́ (2014) hold that the question under discussion or QUD always determines these alternatives in a context. This paper shows that the QUD does not perform such a role for "know" and uses this (...) result to draw a few lessons about the metasemantics of context- sensitivity. (shrink)

Psychological approaches to treating mental illness or improving psychological wellbeing are invariably based on the explicit or implicit understanding that there is an intrinsically existing ‘self’ or ‘I’ entity. In other words, regardless of whether a cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic, or humanistic psychotherapy treatment model is employed, these approaches are ultimately concerned with changing how the ‘I’ relates to its thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, and/or to its physical, social, and spiritual environment. Although each of these psychotherapeutic modalities have been shown to have (...) utility for improving psychological health, there are inevitably limitations to their effectiveness and there will always be those individuals for whom they are incompatible. Given such limitations, research continuously attempts to identify and empirically validate more effective, acceptable and/or diverse treatment approaches. One such approach gaining momentum is the use of techniques that derive from Buddhist contemplative practice. Although mindfulness is arguably the most popular and empirically researched example, there is also growing interest into the psychotherapeutic applications of Buddhism’s ‘non-self’ ontological standpoint (in which ontology is basically the philosophical study of the nature or essence of being, existence, or reality). (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing conceptual debate on responsible innovation, and provides innovation practices and processes that can help to implement responsible innovation in the business context. Based on a systematic literature review of 72 empirical scholarly articles, it was possible to identify, analyse and synthesise empirical findings reported in studies on social, sustainable and responsible innovation practices in the business context. The synthesis of the included articles resulted in a refined framework for responsible innovation in the (...) business context. This framework includes an overview of innovation practices and processes that can enhance the dimensions of responsible innovation: anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion, deliberation, responsiveness and knowledge management. Additionally, knowledge gaps are identified and a research agenda for responsible innovation is proposed. This review can therefore serve as a next step in the theoretical and practical development of responsible innovation in general, and in the business context in particular. (shrink)

Verrassend misschien voor filosofen buiten Frankrijk, maar in Parijs is wetenschap altijd een object van filosofische reflectie geweest – niet in de vorm van de analytische wetenschapsfilosofie zoals die buiten Frankrijk wordt onderwezen, maar onder de noemer van historische epistemologie, of soms ook wel kortweg épistémologie genoemd. Dit themanummer wil een inleiding zijn op deze traditie in haar denkers.

Assertion is widely regarded as an act associated with an epistemic position. To assert is to represent oneself as occupying this position and/or to be required to occupy this position. Within this approach, the most common view is that assertion is strong: the associated position is knowledge or certainty. But recent challenges to this common view present new data that are argued to be better explained by assertion being weak. Old data widely taken to support assertion being strong has also (...) been challenged. This paper examines such challenges and finds them wanting. Far from diminishing the case for strong assertion, carefully considering new and old data reveals that assertion is as strong as ever. (shrink)

Background: Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, published research from Vietnam related to the pandemic was analysed using bibliometrics. -/- Objectives: To examine the status of research on COVID-19 by authors from Vietnam. -/- Methods: The following bibliometric aspects were considered in the analysis: international collaboration, institutions from Vietnam and their partner institutions worldwide, subjects and topics, types of documents, and individual authors. The basis of the study was data obtained from the Scopus database between 2020 and 2021. The (...) data were analysed using Microsoft Excel, R, and VOSviewer, and the emerging trends illustrated through descriptive analysis and science mapping. -/- Results: Between 2020 and 2021, researchers from Vietnam co-authored 1034 documents related to COVID-19, amounting to 0.35% of the total of 296,148 such documents published worldwide as ascertained from the Scopus database. Vietnam’s top country collaborators in that research were USA, Australia, the United Kingdom, India, and Taiwan ROC. The top Vietnam institutions were Duy Tan University, Ton Duc Thang University, and the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City. The research from Vietnam covered many subjects, from medicine and natural sciences to social sciences and economics. Eight clusters of topics related to COVID-19 were identified. In terms of citations, the most highly cited documents were the outcome of collaboration with international authors. Lastly, the study ranked top authors based on either the number of publications or the number of citations. -/- Conclusion: This study provides a preliminary picture of studies related to COVID-19 co-authored by researchers in Vietnam. The picture may help the Vietnam government in devising appropriate strategies for post-COVID-19 restoration of the country’s socio-economic status. (shrink)

Central to many discussions of motivated reasoning is the idea that it runs afoul of epistemic normativity. Reasoning differently about information supporting our prior beliefs versus information contradicting those beliefs, is frequently equated with motivated irrationality. By analyzing the normative status of belief polarization, selective scrutiny, biased assimilation and the myside bias, I show this inference is often not adequately supported. Contrary to what’s often assumed, these phenomena need not indicate motivated irrationality, even though they are instances of belief-consistent information (...) processing. Second, I engage with arguments purporting to show that belief-consistent information processing does not indicate motivated irrationality because of its mere differential treatment of confirming and non-confirming evidence, but rather because it reveals the undermining presence of an irrelevant influence, such as a desire or partisan identity-driven cognition. While linking belief-consistent reasoning to a deeper source of directional motivation to make good on the claim that it indicates motivated irrationality is indeed what’s needed, two prominent such arguments fail. The non-normativity of many reasoning processes often taken to indicate motivated irrationality is not in fact well established. (shrink)

Maarten Boudry and Jerry Coyne have written a piece, forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology, called “Disbelief in Belief,” in which they criticize my recent paper “Religious credence is not factual belief” (2014, Cognition 133). Here I respond to their criticisms, the thrust of which is that we shouldn’t distinguish religious credence from factual belief, contrary to what I say. I respond that their picture of religious psychology undermines our ability to distinguish common religious people from fanatics. My response will appear in (...) the same issue as their paper. (shrink)

Jill de Villiers has argued that children's mastery of sentential complements plays a crucial role in enabling them to succeed at false-belief tasks. Josef Perner has disputed that and has argued that mastery of false-belief tasks requires an understanding of the multiplicity of perspectives. This paper attempts to resolve the debate by explicating attributions of desires and beliefs as extensions of the linguistic practices of making commands and assertions, respectively. In terms of these linguistic practices one can explain why desire-talk (...) will precede belief-talk and why even older children will have difficulty attributing incompatible desires. (shrink)

Lying is standardly distinguished from misleading according to how a disbelieved proposition is conveyed. To lie, a speaker uses a sentence to say a proposition she does not believe. A speaker merely misleads by using a sentence to somehow convey but not say a disbelieved proposition. Front-and-center to the lying/misleading distinction is a conception of what-is-said by a sentence in a context. Stokke (2016, 2018) has recently argued that the standard account of lying/misleading is explanatorily inadequate unless paired with a (...) theory where what-is-said by a sentence is determined by the question under discussion or QUD. I present two objections to his theory, and conclude that no extant theory of what-is-said enables the standard account of the lying/misleading distinction to be explanatorily adequate. (shrink)

Indicative conditionals and tendency causal claims are closely related (e.g., Frosch and Byrne, 2012), but despite these connections, they are usually studied separately. A unifying framework could consist in their dependence on probabilistic factors such as high conditional probability and statistical relevance (e.g., Adams, 1975; Eells, 1991; Douven, 2008, 2015). This paper presents a comparative empirical study on differences between judgments on tendency causal claims and indicative conditionals, how these judgments are driven by probabilistic factors, and how these factors differ (...) in their predictive power for both causal and conditional claims. (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)