Rapid advances in AI-based automation have led to a number of existential and economic concerns. In particular, as automating technologies develop enhanced competency they seem to threaten the values associated with meaningful work. In this article, we focus on one such value: the value of achievement. We argue that achievement is a key part of what makes work meaningful and that advances in AI and automation give rise to a number achievement gaps in the workplace. This could limit people’s ability (...) to participate in meaningful forms of work. Achievement gaps are interesting, in part, because they are the inverse of the (negative) responsibility gaps already widely discussed in the literature on AI ethics. Having described and explained the problem of achievement gaps, the article concludes by identifying four possible policy responses to the problem. (shrink)

As an important view in the epistemology of perception, dogmatism proposes that for any experience, if it has a distinctive kind of phenomenal character, then it thereby provides us with immediate justification for beliefs about the external world. This paper rejects dogmatism by looking into the epistemology of imagining. In particular, this paper first appeals to some empirical studies on perceptual experiences and imaginings to show that it is possible for imaginings to have the distinctive phenomenal character dogmatists have in (...) mind. Then this paper argues that some of these imaginings fail to provide us with immediate justification for beliefs about the external world at least partly due to their inappropriate etiology. Such imaginings constitute counterexamples to dogmatism. (shrink)

It is often claimed that there is an explanatory divide between an expressivist account of normative discourse and a realist conception of normativity: more precisely, that expressivism and realism offer conflicting explanations of (i) the metaphysical structure of the normative realm, (ii) the connection between normative judgment and motivation, (iii) our normative beliefs and any convergence thereof, or (iv) the content of normative thoughts and claims. In this paper I argue that there need be no such explanatory conflict. Given a (...) minimalist approach to the relevant metaphysical and semantic notions, expressivism is compatible with any explanation that would be acceptable as a general criterion for realism. (shrink)

According to a thesis famously associated with Anscombe'sIntention, knowledge is a necessary condition of intentional action: when acting intentionally, we know what we are doing. Call this the Agential Knowledge thesis. The Agential Knowledge thesis remains, of course, controversial. Furthermore, as even some of its proponents acknowledge, it can appear puzzling: Why should acting intentionally require knowing what you are doing? My aim in this paper is to propose an explanation and defence of the Agential Knowledge thesis, based on the (...) idea that acting intentionally is exercising control, in a relevant sense. My argument rests on two things: first, articulating a modal conception of the relevant sense of control, and, secondly, arguing that agential knowledge is distinctively practical. As I explain, the truth of the Agential Knowledge thesis opens promising paths for future work in the philosophy of action. (shrink)

What exactly is reasoning? While debate on this question is ongoing, most philosophers seem to agree on at least the following: reasoning is a mental process operating on contents, which consists in adopting or revising some of your attitudes in light of others. In this paper, I argue that this characterisation is mistaken: there is no single mental phenomenon that satisfies both of these conditions. Instead, I characterise two distinct mental phenomena, which I call ‘deducing’, on the one hand, and (...) ‘reasoning’ or ‘inference’ on the other, to play each of these roles. Recognising this division of labour is essential to developing a better understanding of our rational economy. (shrink)

Historically, the hypothesis that our world is a computer simulation has struck many as just another improbable-but-possible “skeptical hypothesis” about the nature of reality. Recently, however, the simulation hypothesis has received significant attention from philosophers, physicists, and the popular press. This is due to the discovery of an epistemic dependency: If we believe that our civilization will one day run many simulations concerning its ancestry, then we should believe that we are probably in an ancestor simulation right now. This essay (...) examines a troubling but underexplored feature of the ancestor-simulation hypothesis: the termination risk posed by both ancestor-simulation technology and experimental probes into whether our world is an ancestor simulation. This essay evaluates the termination risk by using extrapolations from current computing practices and simulation technology. The conclusions, while provisional, have great implications for debates concerning the fundamental nature of reality and the safety of contemporary physics. (shrink)

Many of us think human extinction would be a very bad thing, and that we have moral reasons to prevent it. But there is disagreement over what would make extinction so bad, and thus over what grounds these moral reasons. Recently, several theorists have argued that our reasons to prevent extinction stem not just from the value of the welfare of future lives, but also from certain additional values relating to the existence of humanity itself (for example, humanity’s “final” value, (...) or the value of humanity in itself). In this paper, I argue against these “additional value” views. Despite their initial appeal, these views will inevitably face conflicts between the additional values to which they appeal, and the value of the welfare of future lives. And, I argue, the views cannot plausibly resolve these conflicts. In contrast, these conflicts do not arise for a rival view, on which our reasons to prevent extinction stem just from the value of the welfare of future lives. I conclude that this gives us reason to prefer the latter view, despite the greater initial plausibility of additional value views. (shrink)

In the late 1960s Matthew Lipman and his colleagues at IAPC developed an educational philosophy he called Philosophy for Children. At the heart of Philosophy for Children is the community of Inquiry, with its emphasis on classroom dialogue, in the form of collaborative philosophical inquiry. In this paper we explore the development of educational practice that has grown out of Philosophy for Children in the context of Australia. -/- Australia adapted Lipman’s ideas on the educational value of practicing philosophy with (...) children in order to advance children’s social and intellectual capacities and dispositions. This has subsequently led to its development by both scholars and practitioners in directions that may or may not have been what Lipman had initially intended and to discussions on the nature and educational value of varied approaches that have been implemented in the classroom. To understand fully the effects of these changes requires an understanding of the towering influences that Peirce and especially Dewey were to Lipman. Whilst Lipman developed his own educational philosophy, he freely acknowledged that philosophy for children owes a debt to Peirce for the concept of the community of inquiry and to Dewey for his guidelines on education. -/- We will explore various ways in which the practice of philosophy for children has been implemented and analyse its expansion. This will achieve a better understanding of the possible future directions for classroom practice and research. (shrink)

Research studies increasingly use genomic sequencing to draw inferences based on comparisons between the genetic data of a set of purportedly related individuals. As use of this method progresses, it will become much more common to discover that the assumed biological relationships between the individuals are mistaken. Consequently, researchers will have to grapple with decisions about whether to return incidental findings of misattributed parentage on a much larger scale than ever before. In this paper we provide an extended argument for (...) the view that the default position for researchers ought to be the non-disclosure of misattributed parentage. (shrink)

In this paper we will explore how Albert Camus has much to offer philosophers of education. Although a number of educationalists have attempted to explicate the educational implications of Camus’ literary works (Denton, 1964; Oliver, 1965; Götz, 1987; Curzon-Hobson, 2003; Marshall, 2007, 2008; Weddington, 2007; Roberts, 2008, 2013; Gibbons, 2013; Heraud, 2013; Roberts, Gibbons & Heraud, 2013) these analyses have not attempted to extrapolate pedagogical guidelines to develop an educational framework for children’s philosophical practice in the way Matthew Lipman did (...) from John Dewey’s philosophy of education, which informed his philosophy for children curriculum and pedagogy. To this end we offer comparisons and contrasts between Camus and the pragmatist educational discourse centred on communities of philosophical inquiry (or, more broadly, collaborative philosophical inquiry). In particular we focus on the phenomenology of inquiry, namely, that “inquiry must begin with a problem, question, or doubt and must aim at a solution or resolution, both of which are genuinely felt—something in which the inquirer actually has a stake” (Gregory & Granger, 2012: 13). We conclude that what Camus calls lucidity has implications for the notion of reconstruction, prominent in Dewey’s thoughts on education, and central to Lipman’s focus on philosophy functioning educationally. (shrink)

Well-known results due to David Makinson show that there are exactly two Post complete normal modal logics, that in both of them, the modal operator is truth-functional, and that every consistent normal modal logic can be extended to at least one of them. Lloyd Humberstone has recently shown that a natural analog of this result in congruential modal logics fails, by showing that not every congruential modal logic can be extended to one in which the modal operator is truth-functional. As (...) Humberstone notes, the issue of Post completeness in congruential modal logics is not well understood. The present article shows that in contrast to normal modal logics, the extent of the property of Post completeness among congruential modal logics depends on the background set of logics. Some basic results on the corresponding properties of Post completeness are established, in particular that although a congruential modal logic is Post complete among all modal logics if and only if its modality is truth-functional, there are continuum many modal logics Post complete among congruential modal logics. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, although Alvin Plantinga’s Felix Culpa theodicy appears on only two pages of his recent book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism (2011) (i.e. 58-59), it is of pivotal importance for the book as a whole. Plantinga argues that there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and monotheism, and that there is superficial concord but deep conflict between science and naturalism. I contend that the weakness of the Felix Culpa theodicy (...) lends support to the view that there is more than superficial conflict between science and monotheism, and offer an alternative response to the challenge of evil which suggests that there might be, after all, concord between science and (religious) naturalism. (shrink)

A commentary on “Models of Consent to Return of Incidental Findings in Genomic Research,” by Paul S. Appelbaum, Erik Parens, Cameron R. Waldman, Robert Klitzman, Abby Fyer, Josue Martinez, W. Nicholson Price II, and Wendy K. Chung, in the July‐August 2014 issue.

This is the Guest Editor's Introduction to a volume of Philosophia Reformata that considers Jaap Klapwijk's book in which he seeks to discuss evolutionary biology in relation to Christian philosophy.

For all their differences, the “pro-choice” and the “pro-life” views of abortion are largely in agreement about one aspect of abortion decisions: where an abortion is morally legitimate, the pregnant woman should be permitted to decide whether or not to have an abortion. But I argue in this paper that if the man who will become the father of the fetus is known, if he believes that he will not be able (or permitted) to simply walk away from his biological (...) offspring, and if he does not think it would be a good idea for him to a) become a parent, b) with this woman, or c) at this time, then the woman should have an abortion. Given the life-altering moral obligations involved in raising a child, a woman should not decide to make her (sexual) partner a father without his full consent. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has seen a striking rise in interest in the notion of normality, including in the analysis of justified belief, defeasible reasoning, and knowledge. In the analysis of knowledge in particular, normality has been used to support modal analyses of knowledge, according to which knowledge is safely true belief. In this paper, I sound a note of caution regarding this proposal. As I will argue, the counterexamples that originally seemed to threaten the safety analysis of knowledge in its more (...) traditional formulations have natural counterparts that continue to threaten the newer, normality-based formulations. Moreover, these reformulated counterexamples seem to exploit structural features of the notion of normality itself, rather than one or another particular conception of normality. (shrink)

In a famous passage in The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans suggests a procedure for self-ascribing beliefs: roughly, to answer the psychological question whether you believe that p, you only need to consider the world-directed question whether p (Evans, 1982 p. 225). This is what has become known in the literature as the “transparency procedure”. Despite the intense interest surrounding Evans’s suggestion, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the larger project of which it is part. Evans’s discussion of transparency (...) appears deep within a book whose topic is the nature of reference, and halfway through a chapter titled “Self-Identification”. The transparency procedure is just one part of his account of first personal thought, which is itself only a part of his account of thought about particulars. This neglect is something of a missed opportunity: not only is Evans’s account interesting in its own right, it can help provide context and motivation for focusing on the transparency procedure of a sort that might otherwise appear to be lacking. The aim of this chapter is to make good on this missed opportunity, by providing an interpretation of the role of transparency within Evans’s larger philosophical project. (shrink)

La filosofía de Emmanuel Lévinas es catalogada, casi exclusivamente, dentro del campo de la ética a pesar de que él mismo confesó que su auténtico interés se ha dirigido siempre hacia lo santo, a la ‘santidad de lo santo’ en tanto fuente de todo valor. El término ‘santidad’ mienta la infinitud de la separación que hace posible el mismo discurso ético. La presente investigación asume, en primer lugar, el principio hegeliano según el cual, las grandes religiones pertenecen a la historia (...) de la razón misma y sostiene, en consecuencia, que es necesario mostrar la interna conexión que las vincula a las modalidades modernas de pensamiento. Se centra, sobre todo, en el pensamiento fecundo de Emmanuel Lévinas, uno de los pensadores más atrayentes a la hora de diseñar la integridad de la existencia y del pensamiento humano en torno al contenido fundamental del fenómeno religioso. Trata de explicar, en segundo lugar, el peculiar modo en el que ha planteado el problema filosófico de Dios, intentando entablar, sobre todo, un diálogo directo con sus textos tanto filosóficos, como no-filosóficos. El resultado final muestra el camino levinasiano hacia un ‘humanismo del otro hombre’ cuyo contenido esencial está diseñado en el ‘me voici’ que significa la absoluta responsabilidad y pasividad del sujeto, pero también la imposibilidad de escapar de Dios, como el gran mártir o el testigo por antonomasia de la ética. (shrink)

Since the development of representative democracy, parties have been a near-universal feature. Yet at the same time, they have been consistently critiqued. Today, they face challenges to their legitimacy as insurgent anti-system parties rise, leading to a return of these old critiques. This article builds on work by Rosenblum and Mouffe, among others, in exploring the political philosophy behind parties and differing perspectives on the purpose of politics. Doing so in tandem with the empirical literature on the contemporary challenges of (...) political parties in Israel and Germany, this article builds a concrete normative and practical justification for the centrality of parties in contemporary politics. The article argues that political parties in partisan conflict are the best tool for creating agonistic politics out of antagonistic conflict; they achieve this by managing conflict rather than ignoring it or letting it remain antagonistic. Further, the article argues that parties are the only practical tool available for governing modern states democratically. Finally, this article challenges contemporary pessimism surrounding political parties by focusing on the historical power of party systems to adapt to changing conditions to win votes and to become more representative and agonistic. Indeed, the rise of new parties, ordinarily considered a sign of decay, should be taken as a sign of the adaptability of party systems. (shrink)

Uma ética centrada nas virtudes é incontornável na discussão moral dos dias atuais. Tendo em vista esta observação, o presente volume buscará oferecer uma série de discussões que possibilitem vislumbrar seus principais conceitos, suas noções fundamentais, bem como teorias alternativas da virtude que possam acrescentar elementos à discussão que encontraremos a seguir.

Enzo Traverso menciona que Portbou se ha convertido en un lugar de memoria. En ese pequeño pueblo de la frontera franco-española murió Walter Benjamin cuando huía del terror nazi desde Francia. Desde el otro lado de la frontera, en sentido contrario al de Benjamin, muchos republicanos huyeron del franquismo durante la Guerra Civil Española. Estos dos fenómenos hacen de Portbou un lugar de memoria, pues recuerda los desplazamientos forzados de hombres y mujeres que trataban de escapar del horror. Sin embargo, (...) ese mismo pueblo también es hoy un objeto privilegiado del turismo que, como también señala Traverso, ha sabido hacer de la memoria una mercancía, explotada por la lógica del neoliberalismo, fortaleciendo además aquella perspectiva de Uwe Steiner, según la cual “cada moda académica ha descubierto hasta ahora a su propio Walter Benjamin”. En el Libro de los pasajes, o en las notas que hoy componen las páginas que han llegado hasta nosotros bajo ese título, el mismo Benjamin sentenciaba que “la moda prescribe el ritual con el que el fetiche mercancía quiere ser adorado”, y que el afán de novedad se presenta siempre como “la quintaesencia de la falsa conciencia, cuyo agente incansable es la moda”. Memoria y mercancía confluyen en una tensión que acompaña a los homenajes y cantidad de trabajos académicos que todos los años desde hace algunas décadas se refieren a la figura de Benjamin. Quizás este trabajo sea uno más en la lista de compendios que engrosan la lista de la “moda Benjamin”. Sin embargo, las características que definen sus motivaciones están lejos de una empresa de beneficio comercial o de ínfula académica. Aunque no por ello puede decirse que el destino de lo que aquí se ofrece tenga su declive precisamente en la afirmación de estas tendencias. Ante ello, queremos manifestar que lo que creemos un aporte al ya rico campo de estudio de la teoría crítica en lengua castellana, solo se propone alcanzar un estatus modesto en medio de una rigurosa presentación de problemas, conceptos y contextos que la vida y obra de Benjamin permite seguir pensando en la actualidad, pues estudiarlas no es un trabajo sencillo y desafía constantemente la búsqueda de sentidos en medio de todo aquello que todavía hoy rodea su legado. Organizar la vida, más allá de fechas y lugares, supone el esfuerzo de la interpretación conceptual de Benjamin. (shrink)

Since philosophical problems are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put it, due to the lack of perspicuity of language, they run throughout human discourse and behavior, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, politicalscience, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology. It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what (...) the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever-present and Wittgenstein, arguably the greatest intuitive psychologist of all time, has laid it before us long ago, beginning with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s. I present 57 quotes from Wittgenstein, Searle and Darwin, which provide insight into philosophy and psychology and which lead to a picture of the logicalstructure of language(thought, intentionality) which is summarized in two tables which result from the analysis of language games and of decision making. I then make some remarks on the tables. These ideas are discussed in greater detail in my other books and papers. (shrink)

En la teoría epistémica de Tomás de Aquino la lumen rationis desempeña la función de causa última del inventario completo del conocimiento humano natural. La tesis de acuerdo a la cual esa luz es puesta en nosotros por Dios justifica, de acuerdo al autor, la aserción de que la divinidad es el único y auténtico maestro interior del hombre. Ahora bien, en la visión beatífica la lumen naturale es perfeccionada por una luz sobrenatural, y la unión cognitiva con lo conocido (...) tiene lugar por la presencia real de Dios mismo en el entendimiento humano, única instancia en la que resulta conocido tal como es. Restringidos, en cambio, al modus intelligendi natural, la presencia cognitiva de la realidad divina solo puede ser representacional y, por lo tanto, según el autor, limitada, lo que repugna esencialmente a la divinidad. La esencia divina, en este caso, solo puede ser concebida de manera deficiente: por espejo y en enigma. En este trabajo intentamos explorar las diferencias entre ambos tipos de cogniciones tomando en cuenta los dos modos correlativos en que Dios nos enseñaría acerca de sí: ya de manera perfecta, como en la visión beatífica, ya de manera obscura, es decir, en enigma. (shrink)

Serious games are an effective method of reproducing aspects of the complex interplay between environments and stakeholders in business situations. In the game we describe here, The Sustainable Port, players experience what it is like to make decisions in such a complex environment. Their aim in the game is to grow the Port of Rotterdam while keeping economic growth in balance with sustainability goals. In this study, we assessed whether experienced Port of Rotterdam employees (PoR employees) show different psychophysiological patterns, (...) and more specifically EAR-derived features, compared to students. We did this on the assumption that physiological patterns will tell us something about how people who are familiar with the environment of the Port of Rotterdam, more specifically Port of Rotterdam employees, make decisions compared to those lacking such familiarity.Our sample consisted of 28 PoR employees and 65 students, all of whom played The Sustainable Port game and had their faces recorded with a camera. The Eye Aspect Ratio was extracted from these recordings and then from those we extracted EAR-derived features. Our results show that Port of Rotterdam employees perform better than students and that the two groups are characterized by different physiological variations in their EAR-derived features. A logistic regression model used to identify PoR employees and students obtained an F1 score of 0.62, a PR AUC score of 0.64, and a ROC AUC score of 0.70. performing significantly above baseline suggesting the effectiveness of using EAR-derived features for this task. Our interpretation was further confirmed by a pseudo-R2 score used to evaluate the goodness of fit of a logistic regression model on the entire dataset. We found that Port of Rotterdam employees had a lower variation in blink rate per minute (blinks/m) and higher variation in the root mean square difference of successive difference in blinks (RMSSD), the consecutive difference between two continuous blinks. Moreover, this study shows that our methods were robust enough to negate the effects of confounders, such as biological sex and age that affect some other studies that analyze blinks. (shrink)

In this study, we analyzed the blinking behavior of players in a video game tournament. Our aim was to test whether spontaneous blink patterns differ across levels of expertise. We used blink rate, blink duration, blink frequency, and eyelid movements represented by the Eye Aspect Ratio (EAR) to train a machine learning classifier to discriminate between different levels of expertise. Classifier performance was highly influenced by features such as the mean, standard deviation and median EAR. Moreover, further analysis suggests that (...) blinking rate and blink duration are likely to increase along with the level of expertise. We speculate this may be indicative of a reduction in cognitive load and lowered stress of expert players. In general, our results suggest that EAR and blink patterns can be used to identify different levels of expertise of video game players. (shrink)

This study aimed to evaluate if eye blinks can be used to discriminate players with different performance in a session of Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Tetris. To that end, we developed a state-of-the-art method for blink extraction from EAR measures, which is robust enough to be used with data collected by a low-grade webcam such as the ones widely available on laptop computers. Our results show a significant decrease in blink rate per minute (blinks/m) during the first minute of playing (...) Tetris. After having defined 3 groups of proficiency based on in-game performance (Novices, Intermediates, and Experts) we found out that expert players display a significantly lower decrease in blinks/m compared to novices during the first minute of gameplay, which shows that Tetris players' proficiency can be detected by looking at eye blinks/m variations during the early phase of a game session. This difference in blinks/m is observed throughout the entire game session, which supports the general conclusion that proficient Tetris players have a lower decrease in blinks/m, even when playing more difficult levels. Finally, we offer some interpretations of this effect and the relationship that our results may have with the visual cognitive workload experienced during the gameplay. (shrink)

In this study, we predict the different levels of performance in a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Tetris session based on the score and the number of matches played by the players. Using the first 45 seconds of gameplay, a Random Forest Classifier was trained on the five keys used in the game obtaining a ROC_AUC score of 0.80. Further analysis revealed that the number of down keys (forced drop) and the number of left keys (left translation) are the most relevant (...) keys in this task, showing that by merely including the data from these two keys our Random Forest Classifier reached a ROC_AUC score of 0.83.We conclude that the keylogger data during the early phases of a game session can be successfully used to predict performance in longer sessions of Tetris. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch a socially situated account of responsible agency, the main tenet of which is that the powers that constitute responsible agency are themselves socially constituted. I explain in detail the constitution relation between responsibility-relevant powers and social context and provide detailed examples of how it is realized by focusing on what I call ‘expectations-generating social factors’ such as social practices, cultural scripts, social roles, socially available self-conceptions, and political and legal institutions. I then bring my account (...) to bear on the debate about the exculpatory potential of moral ignorance. I show that a prominent position in this debate – the position that denies that moral ignorance exculpates – is grounded on an individualistic and acontextualist conception of moral capacities, moral cognition, and blameworthiness, and that this conception leads those philosophers who endorse it to make a number of questionable claims regarding the ability of ordinary agents to overcome their moral ignorance and the culpability they bear for the latter. I conclude by indicating how my socially situated account addresses the issue of moral ignorance. (shrink)

In this article I discuss David Shoemaker’s recently published piece “Responsibility: The State of the Question. Fault Lines in the Foundations.” While agreeing with Shoemaker on many points, I argue for a more unified diagnosis of the seemingly intractable debates that plague (what I call) “responsibility studies.” I claim that, of the five fault lines Shoemaker identifies, the most basic one is about the role that the notion of deserved harm should play in the theory of moral responsibility. I argue (...) that the deep divide between those theorists who affirm and those who deny that moral responsibility is essentially about the justification of desert thus understood can be traced to the disagreement about whether the focus on the reactive attitudes by itself entails that moral responsibility has nothing to do with traditional questions about desert and free will. I then show that the seeming intractableness of the other four fault lines Shoemaker identifies is expectable and explicable in light of this more basic disagreement. After this diagnostic work, I conclude by suggesting a solution to the “morass” that has taken over responsibility studies: theorists working in the field should acknowledge that it has effectively bifurcated into two discrete subareas, which I suggest calling “retribution studies” and “interpersonal studies.” -/- . (shrink)

Non‐reflectivist real self views claim that people are morally responsible for all and only those bits of conduct that express their true values and cares, regardless of whether they have endorsed them or not. A phenomenon that is widely cited in support of these views is inverse akrasia, that is, cases in which a person is praiseworthy for having done the right thing for the right reasons despite her considered judgment that what she did was wrong. In this paper I (...) show that non‐reflectivist real self views are problematic by focusing on the related but neglected phenomenon of inverse enkrasia, which occurs when an agent commits wrongdoing by following a mistaken evaluative judgment that, unbeknownst to her, runs contrary to her true values and cares. Intuitively, inverse enkratics are blameworthy for their actions although the latter don't express their real selves; therefore, non‐reflectivist real self views are false. I assess the implications of this result for the viability of the quality of will paradigm and conclude that the latter survives unscathed to the problems besetting real self views. The lesson is that defenders of the quality of will paradigm should stop talking about real selves altogether. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit Gregory Kavka’s Toxin Puzzle and propose a novel solution to it. Like some previous accounts, mine postulates a tight link between intentions and reasons but, unlike them, in my account these are motivating rather than normative reasons, i.e. reasons that explain (rather than justify) the intended action. I argue that sensitivity to the absence of possible motivational explanations for the intended action is constitutive of deliberation-based intentions. Since ordinary rational agents display this sensitivity, when placed (...) in the toxin scenario they will believe that there is no motivational explanation for actually drinking the toxin and this is why they can’t form the intention to drink it in the first place. I thus argue that my Motivating-Explanatory Reason Principle correctly explains the toxin puzzle, thereby revealing itself as a genuine metaphysical constraint on intentions. I also explore at length the implications of my account for the nature of intention and rational agency. (shrink)

Săn bắt tê tê là câu chuyện đã kéo dài nhiều thập niên. Tê tê bị săn bắt và kinh doanh lậu nhiều tới mức đã có không biết bao nhiêu phim ảnh, phóng sự điều tra và cả sách bàn về việc này. Một cuốn đáng đọc nói về săn bắt động vật hoang dã để tiêu thụ học theo kiểu cách xa hoa là Poached. Nhưng điều tra khảo sát 1017 cư dân tại 105 ngôi làng ở nông (...) thôn và vùng rừng của Nepal, được xuất bản cuối tháng 8-2023 trên ấn phẩm Conservation Science and Practice (Wiley), mới thực sự ở quy mô bộc lộ được quan niệm và nhận thức đại diên cho cư dân Nepal đối với loài động vật hiền lành này. (shrink)

In this paper, we report on the development of The Sustainable Port video game, which aims to simulate the complex dynamics and decisions occurring in the present and future development of a port area considering environmental aspects (CO2 emissions) and profit. To evaluate if this game fulfills its purpose, we asked 75 students and 34 employees at the Port of Rotterdam (PoR) to play The Sustainable Port. Our results show that PoR employees score higher than students suggesting a transfer between (...) real-life experience of being an employee in the port and performance in the game. Furthermore, port participants reported that The Sustainable Port can be successfully used to start discussions about the future of the Port of Rotterdam and to raise awareness about the complexity characterizing the decision-making processes occurring in a port environment. Our results, taken together, provide evidence of the effectiveness of The Sustainable Port in simulating dynamics occurring in port development and give us optimism about future applications. (shrink)

This study aimed to identify real-life experts working for a port authority and lay people (students) who played The Sustainable Port, a serious game aiming to simulate the dynamics occurring in a port area. To achieve this goal, we analyzed eye gaze data collected noninvasively using low-grade webcams from 28 participants working for the port authority of the Port of Rotterdam and 66 students. Such data were used for a classification task implemented using a MiniRocket classifier, an algorithm used for (...) time-series classification. The classifier reached an F1 score of 0.75 (SD = 0.07), a PR AUC of 0.73 (SD = 0.14), and an ROC AUC of 0.75 (SD = 0.15) providing evidence that it is possible to identify real-life experts about maritime port management using data that can be obtained from a webcam. We speculate that the gaze direction used to train the MiniRocket may contain relevant information about the cognitive processes and decisions occurring throughout the gameplay. We suggest that the methods here presented not only can be used to detect experts playing simulations, such as serious games, but also to identify experts tackling screen-presented tasks. (shrink)

Kuda Lumping, or ébég, is a deep spiritual traditional art form from Indonesia. Communities, especially in Java, are increasingly focused on preserving it. The dance is not just entertainment, but also has a spiritual dimension with frequent possessions. It involves dancers, horse-shaped vehicles made of animal skin or bamboo, and spiritual figures. As an intangible cultural heritage, Kuda Lumping serves to bind communities, educate, perform rituals, and express art. Evolving interpretations regarding its profane and sacred aspects will be unveiled through (...) cultural research. This research utilizes a literature review method with hermeneutics as an interpretative tool to understand related texts. Data is collected through readings and analyzed using content analysis. Hermeneutics, as a social-humanistic approach, focuses on the internal aspects of humans. In conclusion, Kuda Lumping expresses its spiritual function, provides entertainment and education, and conveys messages about awareness and goodness. Preservation requires attention to choreography and philosophy. Government, artists, society, and academics play an important role in promoting and developing this dance while considering the Tri Tangtu concept. (shrink)

A gas in a box is perhaps the most important model system studied in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Usually, studies focus on the gas, whereas the box merely serves as an idealized confinement. The present article focuses on the box as the central object and develops a thermodynamic theory by treating the geometric degrees of freedom of the box as the degrees of freedom of a thermodynamic system. Applying standard mathematical methods to the thermody- namics of an empty box allows (...) equations with the same structure as those of cosmology and classical and quantum mechanics to be derived. The simple model system of an empty box is shown to have interesting connections to classical mechanics, special relativity, and quantum field theory. (shrink)

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is an emerging technology that enables computing directly at the edge of the cloud computing network. Therefore, it is important that MEC is applied with reliable transmission. The problem of reaching consensus in the distributed system is one of the most important issues in designing a reliable transmission network. However, all previous protocols for the consensus problem are not suitable for an MEC paradigm. It is the first time an optimal protocol of reaching consensus is pro- (...) posed for MEC paradigm. The protocol makes all fault-free nodes communicate with each other and collect the exchanged messages to decide a common value. Based on the common value, the protocol ensures all fault-free nodes reach consensus without the influence of unreliable transmission. Finally, we proved theoretically that the proposed protocol can tolerate the maximum number of faulty components and using only two rounds of message exchanges. (shrink)

Ignorance usually excuses from responsibility, unless the person is culpable for the ignorance itself. Since a lot of wrongdoing occurs in ignorance, the question of what makes ignorance culpable is central for a theory of moral responsibility. In this article I examine a prominent answer, which I call the ‘volitionalist tracing account,’ and criticize it on the grounds that it relies on an overly restrictive conception of responsibility‐relevant control. I then propose an alternative, which I call the ‘capacitarian conception of (...) control,’ and on the basis of it I advance an account of culpable ignorance that avoids the skeptical upshots of the volitionalist proposal. If correct, my account establishes three important truths: agents can be directly in control of their ignorance, they can be directly responsible for more than actions and omissions, and their moral obligations extend beyond the performance of intentional actions and omissions. (shrink)

The article explores similarities between the philosophies of Zhuangzi and Aristippus, focusing in particular on play and eudaimonism. The main thesis is that both authors encourage the cultivation of a playful mindset, defined in the paper as the “ludic self”, which operates as a strategy for leading a flourishing life. By shaping a fluid, unstructured identity, the ludic self promotes negative subtraction from the structuring power of social nexus and proactive adaptation to shifting circumstances. Furthermore, some aspects of these philosophies (...) present an inter-disciplinary convergence with scientific findings from the psycho-biology of play, concerned with the mobilization of cathected energies and the prevention, or resolution, of addictive states. These promising connections with the fields of psychology and biology also represent an original contribution in respect to the existing debates within Zhuangzi studies, and scholarship on the Cyrenaics. From a methodological point of view, the article pursues what Rorty defines as a “rational reconstruction”, which involves a re-interpretation of past philosophies in light of present debates, ideas and vocabularies with the aim of engaging a trans-cultural, trans-historical dialogue. The value of this operation relies upon the universality of human experience, which always allows re-interpretation and re-actualization of past philosophies as a dialogical exercise of questioning otherness within a hermeneutic framework. (shrink)

Hôm nay, ngày cận kề cuối năm, Tổng cục Thống kê đã công bố số liệu kinh tế ước tính cả năm 2023. Đây là những con số rất nhiều người trông ngóng, bao gồm cả nhà đầu tư, giới kinh doanh, thị trường chứng khoán, và lẽ tự nhiên rất nhiều hộ gia đình ở Việt Nam.

In the past years, many students had problems with their finances, especially their expenses for education. Many of the students are affected by the crisis financially, emotionally, and by their wellbeing. That is why the government provides programs that will help the students with their problems with school expenses, and that is through the Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). Further, the primary goal of this study is to explore the TES Grantees' lived experiences, challenges, (...) and coping mechanisms. Furthermore, these are the study's findings: (1) The grantees find the TES very helpful regarding finances that will tackle their academic needs, such as tuition fees and school learning materials. (2) Many students value government assistance that motivates them to maintain their grades. (shrink)

Mới đây, tại hội thảo “Những vấn đề kinh tế-xã hội nổi lên trong thời gian gần đây và giải pháp khắc phục”, các chuyên gia kinh tế, các nhà nghiên cứu chính sách đầu ngành đã tập trung thảo luận những vấn đề về các mối quan hệ kinh tế vĩ mô và phương thức điều hành, quản lý, quan hệ lạm phát - tăng trưởng, phối hợp giữa chính sách tài khóa và chính sách tiền tệ, xây dựng (...) thể chế điều hành các thị trường trọng yếu của nền kinh tế như chứng khoán, tiền tệ, ngân hàng, bất động sản, đầu tư trực tiếp nước ngoài, hiệu quả đầu tư công, xung đột các nhóm lợi ích tập đoàn kinh tế là những vấn đề được quan tâm nhất. (shrink)

Cuốn sách “Better Economics for the Earth: A Lesson from Quantum and Information Theories” (tạm dịch: Kinh tế học tốt hơn cho trái đất: Bài học từ lý thuyết lượng tử và thông tin”) là một đóng góp nhỏ của tác giả Vương Quân Hoàng và Nguyễn Minh Hoàng (Trường Đại học Phenikaa) cho nghị sự về bền vững môi sinh toàn cầu. Quyển sách kết hợp lý thuyết lượng tử và thông tin để đề xuất các ý tưởng kinh (...) tế đột phá, nhằm ứng phó với khủng hoảng môi trường và biến đổi khí hậu, hướng tới xây dựng một trái đất bền vững. (shrink)

Tao Te Ching sacred text, written in China around 600 BC, recommends cultivating non-action by observing the nature of the world. Tao Te Ching first articulated the idea of Wu Wei which means do that which consists in taking no action and order will prevail. The text explains the idea that we should stop trying to force action and get comfortable doing less. Taoism is widely understood to be a single (unity), unitary philosophy, social movement, and natural act. Then, when (...) we do move, our actions are natural and energetic. It can be summarized that Taoist principles are inaction or non-action, simplicity, and living in harmony with nature then everything accomplished the desired result. Tao Te Ching delivered a treatise on how to live in the world with goodness and integrity. Perhaps if we were more aware, we would worry less and could see better what actually needs doing. Therefore, Tao Te Ching reminds us that everyone has a choice to practice self-awareness and exercise their own power in and over the world for a present peaceful life. (shrink)

Human beings, according to Aristotle, are not the only political animals. Bees, wasps, ants and cranes are the other political species mentioned by Aristotle in the History of Animals. Politics, I, 2 confirms this point and makes the additional statement that human beings, if not the only political animals, are nevertheless more political than the other political animals. There has been a traditional scholarly agreement that the capacity for rational speech is the reason why human beings are more political. This (...) traditional view seems to have some support from the same chapter of Politics, where Aristotle addresses, right after having stated that human beings are more political, the role of language in human beings’ political life. This paper contests this traditional view about language and claims that it is the more political character of human beings which explains the political role of language and not vice versa. -/- . (shrink)

The article tries to prove that the famous formula "epekeina tês ousias" has to be understood in the sense of being beyond being and not only in the sense of being beyond essence. We make hereby three points: first, since pure textual exegesis of 509b8–10 seems to lead to endless controversy, a formal proof for the metaontological interpretation could be helpful to settle the issue; we try to give such a proof. Second, we offer a corollary of the formal proof, (...) showing that not only self-predication of the form of the Good, but of any form is not possible, that is: no form of F has the form of F. Third, we apply Spinoza’s distinction between an ens imaginarium and a chimaera to Plato’s Idea of the Good. (shrink)

GEOGRAPHICAL REFLECTIONS IN PANDEMIC TIMES -/- Held amid the impacts and mobilizations caused by the spatialization of the phenomenon of COVID-19, the book of an essayistic nature tries to make the moment feel, opening up issues geographically engaged by different geographers and from different philosophical perspectives. An invitation to experience longings, desires, defeats, hopes and mobilizations together in a pandemic world.

Là một nhà nghiên cứu kinh tế có nhiều thành tựu, một trong các nhà khoa học có chỉ số các bài báo khoa học được công bố quốc tế cao nhất cả nước, TS Vương Quân Hoàng (Trường ĐH Phenikaa) đã chia sẻ cùng Nhân Dân hằng tháng những quan điểm cá nhân về một năm kinh tế nhiều dấu ấn của đất nước.

Việc các khu vực thiên nhiên bị xâm lăng bởi các giống loài thực vật, động vật lạ khá phổ biến. Ở Việt Nam đã từng có nạn ốc bươu vàng gây điêu đứng, tới nay vẫn còn nhiều di chứng. Chẳng hạn, ngay hiện giờ nếu quan sát các ruộng đồng, đầm nước... vẫn bắt gặp rất nhiều trứng và cả ốc bươu lớn bé, đã lai tạp qua thời gian. Chúng tàn phá ruộng đồng, cả lúa, rau, lẫn (...) cỏ do rất phàm ăn. Tuy vậy, để có kết luận về mức tàn phá của nạn xâm nhập sinh học, trên phương diện kinh tế, nghiên cứu của Turbelin et al. [1] có giá trị thông tin quan trọng. (shrink)

Kể từ năm 2015, ngày 11 tháng 2 hàng năm đã chính thức được Đại hội đồng Liên hiệp quốc công nhận là Ngày Quốc tế Phụ nữ trong Khoa học. Sự kiện này được UNESCO và UN Women kết hợp cùng với các cơ quan đối tác tổ chức trên toàn thế giới nhằm khuyến khích sự tham gia của phái nữ trong khoa học.