In this paper, we argue that solutions to normative challenges associated with autonomous driving, such as real-world trolley cases or distributions of risk in mundane driving situations, face the problem of reasonable pluralism: Reasonable pluralism refers to the fact that there exists a plurality of reasonable yet incompatible comprehensive moral doctrines within liberal democracies. The corresponding problem is that a politically acceptable solution cannot refer to only one of these comprehensive doctrines. Yet a politically adequate solution to the normative challenges (...) of autonomous driving need not come at the expense of an ethical solution, if it is based on moral beliefs that are (1) shared in an overlapping consensus and (2) systematized through public reason. Therefore, we argue that a Rawlsian justificatory framework is able to adequately address the normative challenges of autonomous driving and elaborate on how such a framework might be employed for this purpose. (shrink)

An important objection to signaling approaches to representation is that, if signaling behavior is driven by the maximization of usefulness, then signals will typically carry much more information about agent-dependent usefulness than about objective features of the world. This sort of considerations are sometimes taken to provide support for an anti-realist stance on representation itself. The author examines the game-theoretic version of this skeptical line of argument developed by Donald Hoffman and his colleagues. It is shown that their argument only (...) works under an extremely impoverished picture of the informational connections that hold between agent and world. In particular, it only works for cue-driven agents, in Kim Sterelny’s sense. In cases in which the agents’ understanding of what is useful results from combining pieces of information that reach them in different ways, and that complement one another, maximizing usefulness involves construing first a picture of agent-independent, objective matters of fact. (shrink)

In 2021, the men’s English national football team reached their first final at a major international tournament since winning the World Cup in 1966. This success followed their previous achievement of reaching the semi-finals (knocked-out by Croatia) at the 2018 World Cup. True to form, the defeats proved unfalteringly English; with the 2021 final echoing previous tournament defeats, as England lost to Italy on penalties. However, what resonated with the predictability of an English defeat, was the accompanying chant, ‘it’s coming (...) home’. A ubiquitous presence throughout the course of both tournaments—while chanted at England football matches, it was also repeated across social media, the press and commercial advertising—the chant originates from the 1996 single, Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home), performed by David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seeds. In what follows critical attention will be given to examining how the song offers what will be argued is a melancholic outlook. By re-approaching examples of English nostalgia and hubris, this chapter will expose how illustrations of English melancholy offer the potential for promoting collective forms of expression, which, when contextualized alongside England’s lack of footballing success (for the men’s team, at least), can be offset against a melancholic mediation that is cognizant of the centrality of loss—both for the subject and our collective sporting endeavours. (shrink)

A primary goal of this chapter is to highlight neglected epistemic parallels between dualism and physicalism. Both dualist and physicalist arguments employ a combination of empirical data and armchair reflection; both rely on considerations stemming from how we conceptualize certain phenomena; and both aim to establish views that are compatible with scientific results but go well beyond the deliverances of empirical science. -/- I begin the chapter by fleshing out the distinctive commitments of dualism, in a way that illuminates the (...) interplay of epistemic and metaphysical elements within the dualist position. Section 2 outlines two influential arguments for dualism and explains how dualists defend those arguments from key criticisms. Sections 3 and 4 examine the most powerful objections to dualism: that it is inferior to physicalism as regards the theoretical virtue of simplicity, and that it cannot explain mental causation. I show that each of these objections to dualism depends on substantial assumptions that cannot be empirically justified. The objection from mental causation additionally rests on an ambitious assumption about how we conceptualize physical phenomena. Section 5 briefly reviews how epistemic considerations inform arguments on both sides of this debate. (shrink)

Two separate research programs have revealed two different factors that feature in our judgments of whether some entity persists. One program—inspired by Knobe—has found that normative considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when the changes it undergoes lead to improvements. The other program—inspired by Kelemen—has found that teleological considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when it preserves its purpose. Our goal (...) in this paper is to determine what causes persistence judgments. Across four studies, we pit normative considerations against teleological considerations. And using causal modeling procedures, we find a consistent, robust pattern with teleological and not normative considerations directly causing persistence judgments. Our findings put teleology in the driver’s seat, while at the same time shedding further light on our folk notion of an object. (shrink)

This study aims to determine driving factors significantly influencing the purchase intention and to identify impediments creating the intention –behavior gap regarding organic food consumption in Vietnam. The chosen driving factors affecting the organic food purchase intention in this study are health benefits, environmental awareness, and social norms, whereas trust, price, and convenience as well as availability are investigated as deterrent factors of the link between intention and behavior. A structured online questionnaire with snow-balling sampling method was distributed to collect (...) a representative sample of 466 Vietnamese consumers nationwide. A five-point likert scale was used for the level of approval for 36 statements. Statistical tools of SPSS 22.0 including descriptive analysis, principal component analysis, and multiple regression analysis models were used for data analysis. The results showed that health benefits, environmental awareness, and social norms were facilitators of organic food purchase intention. Although high intention to purchase organic foods was identified in Vietnam, it was not translated into actual purchase behavior. The main barriers for the inconsistency were premium price and low availability of organic products or inconvenience to buy in the market. Lack of trust insignificantly impacted on organic food choices among Vietnamese consumers in this study. These empirical findings and suggestions are beneficial for all players across supply chains. (shrink)

In § 6 of his General Psychopathology (1st edition 1913) Jaspers distinguished between drives, wants and volitions as three different and irreducible kinds of motivational phenomena which are involved in human decision making and which may lead to successful actions. He has characterized the qualitative differences between volitions in comparison with basic vital drives and emotional wants such as being (a.) intentional, (b.) content-specific and (b.) directed towards concrete objects and actions as goals. Furthermore, Jaspers has presented and discussed three (...) kinds of pathological problems about motivation and willing. (1.) The first kind is impulsive action or impulsive behaviour, as e.g. in psychoses or personality disorders, which he compares with instinctive action which are both without any previous hesitation, deliberation and reflection of any presumable consequences, but still very different with respect to their motivational content. (2.) The second kind of pathological problems about motivation and willing are the inhibitions of the will and Jaspers is discussing two major kinds of them: (a.) the energetic or motivational inhibition of the will which is an inability of willing due to the mere lack of any drives and motives, as in the case of any severe and pathological depression; (b.) the cognitive inhibition of the will which is due to the pathological inability to be aware of and understand properly the complexity and difficulty of real life situations in order to solve some given tasks by appropriate decision making, as e.g. in some cases of schizophrenia. (3.) The third kind is a pathological weakness of the will which is extraordinary and not familiar to normal human adults. This pathological kind of weakness of the will consist in the complete causal ineffectiveness of the subjectively felt impulse of willing which is not leading to any inward and outward observable action, such as e.g. as a movement of the limbs or some verbal utterance. This pathological weakness of the will is a complete ineffectiveness of the volitional impulse and therefore different from what philosophers discuss under the heading of weakness of the will which presuppose some evaluation of the intended resp. realized action as ethically, morally or religiously right or wrong. Finally, there are three kinds of normal or non-pathological weakness of the will, as discussed by philosophers: (A.) ethical weakness of the will as in Aristotle’s disagreement about akrasia with the Platonic Socrates; (B) moral weakness of the will as in Kant’s analysis of the absence or failure of any specific moral reasoning by pure practical reason as opposed to mere strategic and pragmatic reason or as the occurrence of a self-deceptive “dialectics of the exception“; (C.) religious weakness of the will as in Pauls personal insight about the incoherence between his high spiritual aspirations and his factual ethical achievements. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic and thorough philosophical analysis of the ways in which driving automation crosses path with ethical values. Upon introducing the different forms of driving automation and examining their relation to human autonomy, it provides readers with in-depth reflections on safety, privacy, moral judgment, control, responsibility, sustainability, and other ethical issues. Driving is undoubtedly a moral activity as a human act. Transferring it to artificial agents such as connected and automated vehicles necessarily raises many philosophical questions. When (...) driving is automated, what happens to its ethical dimensions? Could artificial agents accomplish ethical objectives on our behalf, take moral decisions in our place, and drive us into a more ethical transportation future? In doing so, would they be “moral” as we are or in a way that is similar to, but also remarkably different from, our own? And what role is yet to be played by human responsibility and commitment? The book addresses these questions with the aim of stimulating an interdisciplinary dialogue between different stakeholders. They include automotive engineers, computer scientists, and moral philosophers, as well as industry representatives, policymakers, regulators, transportation experts, and the general public. Indeed, connected and automated vehicles will not take the high road for us . We must drive them there. (shrink)

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, philosophers including Kant and Hegel draw a sharp distinction between the human and the animal. The human is self-conscious, the animal is not; the human has moral worth, the animal does not. By the mid to late nineteenth century, these claims are widely rejected. As scientific and philosophical work on the cognitive and motivational capacities of animals increases in sophistication, many philosophers become suspicious of the idea that there is any divide between (...) human beings and other animals. This paper traces the transitions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thought about animals. My focal point is the notion of drive or instinct (Trieb, Instinkt). Although in sporadic usage during earlier times, the drive concept explodes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It begins playing central roles in three distinct areas: embryology, ethology, and metaphysics. In embryology, drive describes a force, inaccessible in itself but whose results are visible and susceptible to scientific and philosophical study, governing organic development. In ethology, drives are the sources of seemingly deliberate, highly articulated, yet non-conscious activities, which are directed at ends of which the animal is ignorant. In metaphysics, drive describes the human essence. I focus on the way in which the emergence of the drive concept in each of these three domains undermines the idea that there is any sharp distinction between the human and the animal. I conclude by considering how, in light the collapse of the human/animal divide, ethical theories are reshaped. (shrink)

Mosquito-borne diseases represent a significant global disease burden, and recent outbreaks of such diseases have led to calls to reduce mosquito populations. Furthermore, advances in ‘gene-drive’ technology have raised the prospect of eradicating certain species of mosquito via genetic modification. This technology has attracted a great deal of media attention, and the idea of using gene-drive technology to eradicate mosquitoes has been met with criticism in the public domain. In this paper, I shall dispel two moral objections that (...) have been raised in the public domain against the use of gene-drive technologies to eradicate mosquitoes. The first objection invokes the concept of the ‘sanctity of life’ in order to claim that we should not drive an animal to extinction. In response, I follow Peter Singer in raising doubts about general appeals to the sanctity of life, and argue that neither individual mosquitoes nor mosquitoes species considered holistically are appropriately described as bearing a significant degree of moral status. The second objection claims that seeking to eradicate mosquitoes amounts to displaying unacceptable degrees of hubris. Although I argue that this objection also fails, I conclude by claiming that it raises the important point that we need to acquire more empirical data about, inter alia, the likely effects of mosquito eradication on the ecosystem, and the likelihood of gene-drive technology successfully eradicating the intended mosquito species, in order to adequately inform our moral analysis of gene-drive technologies in this context. (shrink)

This study systematically examined people’s protective behaviors against COVID-19 in China, and particular attention was given to people’s perceived threat and information-processing strategies. This study constructed a conceptual model and used structural equation modeling to explore this issue, and a questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data involving 4,605 participants during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. The results showed that people’s initial information acquisition played an essential role in their behavioral responses; acquiring more initial information about (...) COVID-19 would make them perceive a higher threat and present a higher demand for information, then making them more likely to seek and process information, and subsequently motivating their protective behaviors. (shrink)

Today’s organizations are operating in a highly competitive and changing environment ‎that ‎pushes them to adapt their organizational structures to such ‎environments continuously. ‎However, the ethical behavior of employees is considered a bridge to the organization’s success ‎, driven by positive beliefs. This study's purpose of examining the psychological and ethical ‎beliefs' that influence employees' behavior at the workplace through a literature review. This ‎paper uses two terms: "ethical beliefs” and “psychological beliefs.” They both ‎are different but can significantly influence (...) the behavior of employees. Positive psychological and ‎strong ethical beliefs drive ethical behaviors at the workplace, such as honesty, accountability, ‎fairness, responsibility, trust, and integrity, which lead to better performance, a productive team, and ‎positivity in the workplace. It helps to develop a professional relationship with employees, ‎effective communication, accountability, and professionalism at work. While negative ‎psychological and weak ethical beliefs drive unethical behavior, including taking credit for other ‎hard work, abuse, verbal harassment, violence, lack of ambitions and professionalism, theft, ‎corrupt practices, etc. Finally, the arguments demonstrate that some ethical beliefs are perceived ‎to be more objective and appropriate than psychological beliefs. The ethical beliefs of workers ‎considered more formal than psychological beliefs. ‎. (shrink)

If Clark and Dudrick have their way, gone will be the days of breezy writings on Nietzsche that recruit a phrase from here, a paragraph from there, and construct an interpretation from the resultant mélange. Clark and Dudrick advocate a meticulous, line-by-line study of Nietzsche’s text, with painstaking attention not only to the broader context of his claims, but even to the precise intent of the images and metaphors that he employs. Here, we find a level of textual scrutiny and (...) careful consideration of context that has been largely absent in Nietzsche scholarship. To get a flavor of the book, consider the fact that Clark and Dudrick spend no fewer than sixty-three pages on the preface and first four sections of .. (shrink)

The moral importance of liability to harm has so far been ignored in the lively debate about what self-driving vehicles should be programmed to do when an accident is inevitable. But liability matters a great deal to just distribution of risk of harm. While morality sometimes requires simply minimizing relevant harms, this is not so when one party is liable to harm in virtue of voluntarily engaging in activity that foreseeably creates a risky situation, while having reasonable alternatives. On plausible (...) assumptions, merely choosing to use a self-driving vehicle typically gives rise to a degree of liability, so that such vehicles should be programmed to shift the risk from bystanders to users, other things being equal. Insofar vehicles cannot be programmed to take all the factors affecting liability into account, there is a pro tanto moral reason not to introduce them, or restrict their use. (shrink)

Medicine is often thought of as a science of the body, but it is also a science of data. In some contexts, it can even be asserted that data drive health. This article focuses on a key piece of data technology central to contemporary practices of medicine: the medical record. By situating the medical record in the perspective of its history, we inquire into how the kinds of data that are kept at sites of clinical encounter often depend on (...) informational requirements that originate well outside of the clinic, in particular in health insurance records systems. Although this dependency of today's electronic medical records on billing requirements is widely lamented by clinical providers, its history remains little studied. Following the archaeology of medicine developed by Michel Foucault in The Birth of the Clinic and expanding his methodology in light of more recent contributions to the field of media archaeology, this article excavates some of the underexplored technological conditions that help constitute today's electronic medical record. If in some contexts, it is true that data drive health, then an archaeology of medical records helps reveal how health insurance records often impact clinical care and, by extension, health and disease. (shrink)

The primary explanatory items of Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology are the drives. Such drives, he holds, are arranged hierarchically in virtue of their entering dominance-obedience relations analogous to those obtaining in human societies. This view is puzzling for two reasons. First, Nietzsche’s idea of a hierarchical order among the drives is far from clear. Second, as it postulates relations among subpersonal items that mimic those among persons, Nietzsche’s view seems to trade on the homunculus fallacy. In this paper, I argue that (...) a Hume-inspired dispositional reading of the drives’ order successfully addresses these two problematic issues. Moreover, I argue that my reading is superior to the two main competing interpretations, which I call the vitalistic reading and the normative reading, for these ascribe to Nietzsche a view committed to the homunculus fallacy. (shrink)

The convergence of computing, sensing, and communication technology will soon permit large-scale deployment of self-driving vehicles. This will in turn permit a radical transformation of traffic control technology. This paper makes a case for the importance of addressing questions of social justice in this transformation, and sketches a preliminary framework for doing so. We explain how new forms of traffic control technology have potential implications for several dimensions of social justice, including safety, sustainability, privacy, efficiency, and equal access. Our central (...) focus is on efficiency and equal access as desiderata for traffic control design. We explain the limitations of conventional traffic control in meeting these desiderata, and sketch a preliminary vision for a next-generation traffic control tailored to address better the demands of social justice. One component of this vision is cooperative, hierarchically distributed self-organization among vehicles. Another component of this vision is a priority system enabling selection of priority levels by the user for each vehicle trip in the network, based on the supporting structure of non-monetary credits. (shrink)

Somatic diversification of antigen receptor genes depends on the activity of enzymes whose homologs participate in a mutagenic DNA repair in unicellular species. Indeed, by engaging error-prone polymerases, gap filling molecules and altered mismatch repair pathways, lymphocytes utilize conserved components of genomic stress response systems, which can already be found in bacteria and archaea. These ancient systems of mutagenesis and repair act to increase phenotypic diversity of microbial cell populations and operate to enhance their ability to produce fit variants during (...) stress. Coopted by lymphocytes, the ancient mutagenic processing systems retained their diversification functions instilling the adaptive immune cells with enhanced evolvability and defensive capacity to resist infection and damage. As reviewed here, the ubiquity and conserved character of specialized variation-generating mechanisms from bacteria to lymphocytes highlight the importance of these mechanisms for evolution of life in general. (shrink)

Authored item in a collection of original research papers, arising out of the University of Southampton's AHRC-funded research project 'Nietzsche and Modern Moral Philosophy'.

Freud's biological notion of a death drive is not well founded but a number of closely associated notions (including those of a drive, and of aggression turned against the self) are.

Many commentators have remarked upon the striking points of correspondence that can be found in the works of Freud and Nietzsche. However, this essay argues that on the subject of desire their work presents us with a radical choice: Freud or Nietzsche. I first argue that Freud’s theory of desire is grounded in the principle of inertia, a principle that is incompatible with his later theory of Eros and the life drive. Furthermore, the principle of inertia is not essentially (...) distinct from his later theory of the death drive. Consequently, Freud’s theory of desire can only be interpreted consistently as a monism of the death drive. I then analyze Nietzsche’s attempt to ground his theory of desire in the concept of the will to power. I argue that Nietzsche’s view of desire is fundamentally opposed to the key elements of Freud’s theory of desire: the principle of constancy, the Freudian definition of the drive, and the pleasure principle. Next, I explicate the stakes of this opposition by analyzing the social consequences of each view for morality and justice. I argue that the Freudian subject seeks to dominate the social other, and that there is an insurmountable conflict between the satisfaction of desire and the demands of social life. Consequently, Freud’s view allows only for a negative conception of the social good in which morality is defined as the intrinsically impossible task of eliminating evil, and justice can be achieved only through the equal distribution of instinctual frustration. Finally, I argue that in Nietzsche’s theory of desire there is no essential conflict between individual desire and social life. The Nietzschean subject desires to manifest power in the form of activity that is independent of external agents, not to dominate the other. Consequently, Nietzsche’s view allows for the possibility of a positively defined concept of the social good in which morality is the affirmation and enhancement of every subject’s happiness, and justice can be achieved through the promotion and protection of an equality of power among subjects. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ABSTRACT: Nietzsche, we are often told, had an account of 'self' or 'mind' or a 'philosophical psychology', in which what he calls our 'drives' play a highly significant role. This underpins not merely his understanding of mind, in particular, of consciousness and action. but also his positive ethics, be they understood as authenticity, freedom, knowledge, autonomy, self-creation, or power. But Nietzsche did not have anything like a coherent account of 'the drives' according to which the self, the relationship between (...) thought and action, or consciousness could be explained; consequently, he did not have a stable account of drives on which his positive ethics could rest. By this, I do not mean that his account is incomplete or that it is philosophically indefensible: both would leave open, misleadingly, the possibility of a rational reconstruction of Nietzsche’s views; both would already assume more unity and coherence than we find in his texts. Specifically, as I show through detailed analysis, Nietzsche provides varied and inconsistent accounts of what a 'drive' is, how much we can know about drives, and the relationship between drives and conscious deliberations about action. I conclude by questioning the hunt for a Nietzschean theory: is this the best way to be reading him? (shrink)

Freud introduces his dualistic theory of the life and death drives in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Much of that essay is devoted to the justification of the death drive, while little is said in defense of the introduction of “life drives” and “Eros,” which he claims are simply an extension of his libido theory from the psychological into the biological realm. In this essay, I argue that Eros is, on the contrary, fundamentally incompatible with Freud’s metapsychology. I first show (...) that Freud’s theory of society permits the production and preservation of social bonds only through the restraint of sexual aims rather than, as the theory of Eros would require, through the satisfaction of sexual drives. I then demonstrate that Eros is incompatible with three key elements of Freud’s metapsychology: the theories of the drives, the pleasure principle, and the principle of constancy. Finally, I argue that the death drive is indistinguishable from the early and late theories of the principle of constancy. Consequently, it is the death drive, and not Eros, that is merely an extension of the original libido theory. Because Eros is incompatible with the very foundations of Freud’s metapsychology, his drive theory can only consistently be interpreted as a monism of the death drive. (shrink)

The CRISPR system for gene editing can break, repair, and replace targeted sections of DNA. Although CRISPR gene editing has important therapeutic potential, it raises several ethical concerns. Some bioethicists worry CRISPR is a prelude to a dystopian future, while others maintain it should not be feared because it is analogous to past biotechnologies. In the scientific literature, CRISPR is often discussed as a revolutionary technology. In this paper we unpack the framing of CRISPR as a revolutionary technology and contrast (...) it with framing it as a value-threatening biotechnology or business-as-usual. By drawing on a comparison between CRISPR and the Ford Model T, we argue CRISPR is revolutionary as a product, process, and as a force for social change. This characterization of CRISPR offers important conceptual clarity to the existing debates surrounding CRISPR. In particular, conceptualizing CRISPR as a revolutionary technology structures regulatory goals with respect to this new technology. Revolutionary technologies have characteristic patterns of implementation, entrenchment, and social impact. As such, early identification of technologies as revolutionary may help construct more nuanced and effective ethical frameworks for public policy. (shrink)

A puzzling feature of paradigmatic cases of dehumanization is that the perpetrators often attribute uniquely human traits to their victims. This has become known as the “paradox of dehumanization.” We address the paradox by arguing that the perpetrators think of their victims as human in one sense, while denying that they are human in another sense. We do so by providing evidence that people harbor a dual character concept of humanity. Research has found that dual character concepts have two independent (...) sets of criteria for their application, one of which is descriptive and one of which is normative. Across four experiments, we found evidence that people deploy a descriptive criterion according to which being human is a matter of being a Homo sapiens; as well as a normative criterion according to which being human is a matter of possessing a deep-seated commitment to do the morally right thing. Importantly, we found that people are willing to affirm that someone is human in the descriptive sense, while denying that they are human in the normative sense, and vice versa. In addition to providing a solution to the paradox of dehumanization, these findings suggest that perceptions of moral character have a central role to play in driving dehumanization. (shrink)

This article contends that the environmental release of genetically engineered (GE) animals with heritable traits that are patented will present a challenge to the efforts of nations and indigenous peoples to engage in self‐determination. The environmental release of such animals has been proposed on the grounds that they could function as public health tools or as solutions to the problem of agricultural insect pests. This article brings into focus two political‐economic‐legal problems that would arise with the environmental release of such (...) organisms. To address those challenges, it is proposed that nations considering the environmental release of GE animals must take into account the underlying circumstances and policy failures that motivate arguments for the use of the modified animals. Moreover, countries must recognize that the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights place on them an obligation to ensure that GE animals with patented heritable traits are not released without the substantive consent of the nations or indigenous peoples that could be affected. (shrink)

Common sense suggests that visual consciousness is essential to skilled motor action, but Andy Clark—inspired by Milner and Goodale's dual visual systems theory—has appealed to a wide range of experimental dissociations to argue that such an assumption is false. Critics of Clark's argument contend that the content driving motor action is actually within subjects' experience, just not easily discovered. In this article, I argue that even if such content exists, it cannot be guiding motor action, since a review of current (...) visual neuroscience indicates that the visual brain areas producing conscious representations are distinct from those driving motor action. (shrink)

The German Act on Autonomous Driving constitutes the first national framework on level four autonomous vehicles and has received attention from policy makers, AI ethics scholars and legal experts in autonomous driving. Owing to Germany’s role as a global hub for car manufacturing, the following paper sheds light on the act’s position within the ethical discourse and how it reconfigures the balance between legislation and ethical frameworks. Specifically, in this paper, we highlight areas that need to be more worked out (...) in the future either through ethical conventions, corporate measures or legal measures and examine how the law can be incorporated into the existing discourse on the regulation of technologies. Based on this examination, we derive implications for future discourse and elaborate on companies’ responsibilities in developing autonomous driving technologies in an ethical sense. (shrink)

The current study has two objectives: 1. Examine how friends’ safe-driving information affects Chinese drivers’ safe-driving behaviors. 2. Examine how the socio-cultural values affect the relationship between friends’ safe-driving information and Chinese drivers’ driving behaviors.

Despite drives’ importance for Nietzsche’s explanation of individuals’ values, controversies persist over how to interpret Nietzsche’s attribution of normative capacities to the drives themselves. On one reading, drives evaluate their aims and recognize the normative authority of other drives’ aims. On another, drives’ normative properties reduce to nonnormative, causal properties. Neither approach is satisfying. The former commits Nietzsche to the homuncular fallacy by granting drives complex cognitive capacities. The latter reading either commits Nietzsche to the naturalistic fallacy, having him derive (...) normative conclusions from descriptive premises, or eliminates normativity from his thought altogether. In response to this impasse, this article advances a Leibniz-informed interpretation of Nietzsche’s drive psychology. By construing the normative and efficient causal orders as parallel modes of explanation distinguished by one’s perspective, a Leibniz-informed reading captures the benefits of extant interpretations while avoiding their drawbacks. (shrink)

Most current techniques to deal with invasive species are ineffective or have highly damaging side effects. To this end suppression-drives based on clustered regularly inter-spaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR/Cas9) have been touted as a potential silver bullet for the problem, allowing for a highly focused, humane and cost-effective means of removing a target species from an environment. Suppression-drives come with serious risks, however, such that the precautionary principle seems to warrant us not deploying this technology. The focus of this paper (...) is on one such risk – the danger of a suppression-drive escaping containment and wiping out the target species globally. Here, I argue that in most cases this risk is significant enough to warrant not using a gene-drive. In some cases, however, we can bypass the precautionary principle by using an approach that hinges on what I term the ‘Worst-Case Clause’. This clause, in turn, provides us with a litmus test that can be fruitfully used to determine what species are viable targets for suppression-drives in the wild. Using this metric in concert with other considerations, I suggest that only three species are currently possible viable targets – the European rabbit, ship rat and Caribbean Tree Frog. (shrink)

In our initial paper discussing plausible steps toward workable warp drive machines. The following article express our view on this debate. While there are still objections toward existing warp drive proposals, such as by G. Landis, Harold White etc., because they are all based on GTR, nonetheless we think it is possible by starting to see if it is possible to deviate from Newton's third law. And we discuss possible a propulsion method based on negative masses, and discuss (...) how optical diameter drive can be first step for realistic lab-scale version of negative mass propulsion. (shrink)

Nietzsche sometimes praises the drive to order—to simplify, organize, and draw clear boundaries—as expressive of a vital "classical" style, or an Apollonian artistic drive to calmly contemplate forms displaying "epic definiteness and clarity." But he also sometimes harshly criticizes order, as in the pathological dialectics or "logical schematism" that he associates paradigmatically with Socrates. I challenge a tradition that interprets Socratism as an especially one-sided expression of, or restricted form of attention to, the Apollonian: they are more radically (...) disparate. Beyond strengthening the case for this basic point, I develop a distinctive account of what, exactly, distinguishes the Apollonian-classical and Socratic forms of order. To this end, I advance interrelated interpretations of Apollonian-classical simplicity and the "cold" calm that it elicits, by contrast to superficially similar Socratic phenomena. This illuminates Nietzsche's broader ambivalence toward science, in part by clarifying the nature and value of an idealized Apollonian science. (shrink)

Purpose of the study was to find out the significant relationship between cover drive shot with selected biomechanical variables of university level male Indian cricketers. Only ten (10) men University-level cricketers from Lakshmibai National Institute of Physical Education NERC Guwahati Assam India were selected. The performance variable was the cover drive shot, whereas the other biomechanical variables were balance, the center of gravity (CG), angle of the left elbow, angle of the right elbow, angle of the left knee, (...) and angle of the right knee. During collecting data, two-dimensional (2D) videography was performed, and data was finalized using Kinovea software as filming protocols. Pearson coefficient correlation ('r') statistics are used at 0.05 level of significance to analyze a correlation between the variables. The study's findings did not correspond to the hypothesis formulation. Several factors could have influenced the study's outcomes. The number of subjects was significantly lower which affects the means of the variables because number of the subject may play a crucial role here since here, we are correlating means of the two variables at a single time. The current study found that the selected biomechanical variables had no significant correlation with cover drive performance among university level male participants in this study. (shrink)

This paper argues that histories of the Green Revolution are often underpinned by commitments to theoretical models of technology and science which shape the parameters of such narratives in politically normative ways. This paper explores the accounts of the Green Revolution in India given by Vandana Shiva and Govindan Parayil and demonstrates the ways in which these accounts are influenced by their models of technology and science. It is argued that Shiva and Parayil represent key theoretical positions in technological theory, (...) determinist and instrumentalist, respectively, and that examination of their Green Revolution narratives clearly indicates the ways in which such theoretical commitments can determine the scope and content of analyses of technology-driven development, and thereby exclude political content necessary for the evaluation of the efficacy of such development and the validity of the theoretical model. (shrink)

Until recently, philosophers debating the rationality of time-biases have supposed that people exhibit a first-person hedonic bias toward the future, but that their non-hedonic and third-person preferences are time-neutral. Recent empirical work, however, suggests that our preferences are more nuanced. First, there is evidence that our third-person preferences exhibit time-neutrality only when the individual with respect to whom we have preferences—the preference target—is a random stranger about whom we know nothing; given access to some information about the preference target, third-person (...) preferences mirror first-person preferences. As a result, the simulation hypothesis has been proposed, according to which third-person preferences will mirror first-person preferences when we can simulate the mental states of the preference target. Second, there is evidence that we prefer negative hedonic events to be in our past (we are first-person negatively hedonically future-biased) only when we view future events as fixed and in no way under our control. By contrast, when we perceive it to be within our power to mitigate the badness of future events, we are first-person negatively hedonically past-biased. This is the mitigation hypothesis. We distinguish two versions of the mitigation hypothesis, the squirrelling version and the heuristic version. We ran a study which tested the simulation hypothesis, and which aimed to determine whether the squirrelling or the heuristic version of the mitigation hypothesis enjoys more empirical support. We found support for the heuristic version of the hypothesis, but no support for the squirrelling version. (shrink)

This paper aims to show errors in common methodology of reasoning about macroeconomic theory. The error comes from confusion about descriptive and scientific methods of inquiry being used as a means of justifying conclusions with a normative basis. I will argue that many tools used in theorizing about the political economy that are thought of as able to express an isolated variable proving a normative point, actually contain normative assumptions which impact the soundness of the conclusion. The hidden values generally (...) serve to justify the status quo. Looking at my argument from a metaperspective, I argue that some popular methodology winds up in the general state of circular reasoning. I will try to weave two arguments together, the first is showing how economic concepts are value-laden, and also that they are implicit values of ideology, and operate as a powerful tool for the status quo. The ideology learns that things must be what they are, because the rest of the ideology seeks to justify it. There is both a factual and a value-driven thesis to this paper. Using examples I show how economic concepts that are thought of as being value neutral, are actually implicitly holding values that uphold the status quo and the growing tides of income inequality. I also wish to demonstrate how ideology constructs the common understanding, and how this effort keeps the populace from seeking emancipatory economic ideals and tax reform. (shrink)

This paper was presented as the keynote address at the 2005 Philosophy Graduate Student Conference at the University of Memphis on “Limitations of Subjectivity.”.

The issue of how to identify the liability of subjects after a traffic accident takes place remains a puzzle regarding the SAE classification system. The SAE system is not good at dealing with the problem of responsibility evaluation; therefore, building a new classification system for self-driving cars from the perspective of the subject's liability is a possible way to solve this problem. This new system divides automated driving into three levels: i) assisted driving based on the will of drivers, ii) (...) automated driving based on the will of the manufacturers, and iii) fully automated driving based on social will. The corresponding responsible subjects for level one, level two, and level three are the drivers, the manufacturers, and society, respectively. (shrink)

This paper addresses the cultural sustainability of artificial intelligence use through one of its most widely discussed instances: autonomous driving. The introduction of self-driving cars places us in a radically novel moral situation, requiring advance, reflectively endorsed, forced, and iterable choices, with yet uncharted forms of risk imposition. The argument is meant to explore the necessity and possibility of maintaining one of our most fundamental moral-cultural principles in this new context, that of the equal treatment of persons. It is claimed (...) that the implementation of this principle requires central and uniform regulation in autonomous mobility. (shrink)

Respiration influences various pacemakers and rhythms of the body during inspiration and expiration but the underlying mechanisms are relatively unknown. Understanding this phenomenon is important, as breathing disorders, breath holding, and hyperventilation can lead to significant medical conditions. We discuss the physiological modulation of heart rhythm, blood pressure, sympathetic nerve activity, EEG, and other changes observed during inspiration and expiration. We also correlate the intracellular mitochondrial respiratory metabolic processes with real-time breathing and correlate membrane potential changes with inspiration and expiration. (...) We propose that widespread minor hyperpolarization occurs during inspiration and widespread minor depolarization occurs during expiration. This depolarization is likely a source of respiratory drive. Further knowledge of intracellular and extracellular ionic changes associated with respiration will enhance our understanding of respiration and its role as a modulator of cellular membrane potential. This could expand treatment options for a wide range of health conditions, such as breathing disorders, stress-related disorders, and further our understanding of the Hering–Breuer reflex and respiratory sinus arrhythmia. (shrink)

Robust Realists think that there are irreducible, non-natural, and mind-independent moral properties. Quasi-Realists and Relaxed Realists think the same, but interpret these commitments differently. Robust Realists interpret them as metaphysical commitments, to be defended by metaphysical argument. Quasi-Realists and Relaxed Realists say that they can only be interpreted as moral commitments. These theories thus pose a serious threat to Robust Realism, for they apparently undermine the very possibility of articulating the robust metaphysical commitments of this theory. I clarify and respond (...) to this threat, showing that there is in fact space to develop and defend a robust moral ontology. (shrink)

A review of Yvanka Raynova's monograph Sein, Sinn und Werte: Phänomenologische und hermeneutische Perspektiven des europäischen Denkens. Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien: 2017, 331 S.

When explaining human actions, people usually focus on a small subset of potential causes. What leads us to prefer certain explanations for valenced actions over others? The present studies indicate that our moral attitudes often predict our explanatory preferences far better than our beliefs about how causally sensitive actions are to features of the actor's environment. Study 1 found that high-prejudice participants were much more likely to endorse non-agential explanations of an erotic same-sex encounter, such as that one of the (...) men endured a stressful event earlier that day. Study 2 manipulated participants' beliefs about how the agent's behavior depended on features of his environment, finding that such beliefs played no clear role in modeling participants' explanatory preferences. This result emerged both with low- and high-prejudice, US and Indian participants, suggesting that these findings probably reflect a species-typical feature of human psychology. Study 3 found that moral attitudes also predicted explanations for a woman's decision to abort her pregnancy (3a) and a person's decision to convert to Islam (3b). Study 4 found that luck in an action's etiology tends to undermine perceptions of blame more readily than perceptions of praise. Finally, Study 5 found that when explaining support for a rival ideology, both Liberals and Conservatives downplay agential causes while emphasizing environmental ones. Taken together, these studies indicate that our explanatory preferences often reflect a powerful tendency to represent agents as possessing virtuous true selves. Consequently, situation-focused explanations often appear salient because people resist attributing negatively valenced actions to the true self. There is a person/situation distinction, but it is normative. (shrink)

This dissertation examines Fichte's critical idealism in an effort to formulate a compelling model of how we can be said to be free, despite our subjection to both rational and nonrational constraints. ;Fichte grounds idealism in a "drive to freedom" that involves two disparate strands of thought: the standpoint of idealism is said to be both the result of an absolutely free adoption of the principle of self-determination and conditioned by reason, to which the finite I is necessarily subject. (...) However, if there is no reason prior to the choice of a first principle, the choice of idealism over dogmatism cannot be motivated, and so is not attributable to a responsible subject. And if there is a prior basis for the election of idealism, the constraints of reason already necessitate the I's attempt to consider itself to be independent and are, therefore, not self-legislated. Fichte's argument strategy thus yields the following question: How can there be an absolute election of the philosophical principle of one's life, when the adoption of such a standpoint is already a manifestation of who one is? Fichte confronts this issue by conceiving of the I as necessarily subject to an original limit and by radically subjectivizing the world in terms of the I's ethical and conceptual demands. ;By locating the tension between these positions, this dissertation reveals how philosophers indebted to Fichte as well as interpreters of the Wissenschaftslehre have mischaracterized Fichte's treatment of rational self-constraint. Fichte's synthesis of freedom and necessity constitutes a model of subjectivity according to which the normatively constrained structure of experience is impossible without my relating that experience to my practical activity, and the ways in which I am able to characterize that experience are answerable to what is practically required of me by that experience. Fichte shows the interdetermination of the givenness of the given and the autonomy of the I by qualifying each in terms of the other. As a description of this interdetermination, Fichte's striving doctrine establishes the tension involved in this mutually constitutive relation as a positive conception of human freedom. (shrink)

This study investigated the impact of investor psychological bias on a firm’s market value. In detail, we examined the effect of investor overconfidence (optimism) and loss aversion (pessimism) on firm market value. We also aimed to investigate the moderating effect of corporate governance on the relationship between investor behavior biases and firm market value. This study used a sample of 143 firms listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange over the period from 2012 to 2021. The results suggest that investor overconfidence (...) affects a firm’s value positively. On the other hand, loss aversion is negatively associated with the firm’s market value. Furthermore, we find that corporate governance (measured by board size and board independence) enhances the positive association between overconfidence and firm market value. In contrast, we find that corporate governance seems to marginally mitigate the negative effect of loss aversion. (shrink)

Introduction -/- 1 Précis -/- 2 Methodology: Introducing digital humanities to the history of philosophy 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Core constructs 2.3 Operationalizing the constructs 2.4 Querying the Nietzsche Source 2.5 Cleaning the data 2.6 Visualizations and preliminary analysis 2.6.1 Visualization of the whole corpus 2.6.2 Book visualizations 2.7 Summary -/- Nietzsche’s Socio-Moral Framework -/- 3 From instincts and drives to types 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The state of the art on drives, instincts, and types 3.2.1 Drives 3.2.2 Instincts 3.2.3 Types 3.3 (...) The semantic neighborhood of drive, instinct, and type 3.4 A theory of (the relations among) instincts, drives, and types 3.4.1 Drives are act-directed rather than outcome-directed dispositions 3.4.2 The reflexive turn in Nietzsche’s drive psychology 3.4.3 Triggers of drive-displacement 3.4.4 Instincts are innate drives 3.4.5 Types are constellations of instincts and other drives 3.4.6 To what extent are types, instincts, and drives fixed? 3.5 Summary -/- 4 From types to virtues 4.1 Introduction 4.2 The state of the art on virtues and values 4.2.1 Virtues 4.2.2 Values 4.3 The semantic neighborhood of virtue and value 4.4 On (the relations among) instincts, drives, types, values, virtues, and values 4.4.1 Virtues are well-calibrated drives 4.4.2 Nietzsche’s type-relative unity of virtue thesis 4.4.3 The type of the criminal 4.4.4 Nietzschean exemplarism and his ad hominem attacks 4.5 Summary -/- 5 Socializing Nietzschean virtues 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Higher-order types 5.2.1 Social character construction 5.2.2 Reflexive character construction 5.3 Eponymous trait terms and Nietzschean summoning 5.3.1 Eponymous trait terms 5.3.2 Nietzschean summoning 5.4 Summary -/- Nietzschean virtues -/- 6 Curiosity 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Curiosity in virtue epistemology 6.3 Curiosity and its affiliated emotions 6.4 Curiosity, perspectivism, and inquiry 6.5 Curiosity as a virtue 6.5.1 A preliminary characterization 6.5.2 Curiosity in the middle through late works 6.6 Summary -/- 7 Courage 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Intellectual courage in contemporary virtue epistemology 7.3 Courage as a virtue 7.3.1 A preliminary characterization 7.3.2 Courage in the middle through late works 7.4 Summary -/- 8 Pathos of distance 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Contempt and disgust in contemporary moral psychology 8.3 The semantic neighborhood of contempt, disgust, and the pathos of distance 8.4 Nietzsche on contempt 8.4.1 Spernere mundum 8.4.2 Spernere neminem 8.4.3 Spernere se ipsum 8.4.4 Spernere se sperni 8.4.5 Nietzsche aims to induce what he considers fitting contempt in receptive readers 8.5 Nietzsche on disgust 8.5.1 The use of disgust: detaching from an ideal 8.5.2 The danger of disgust 8.6 The pathos of distance 8.7 Prospects for a Nietzschean democratic ethos 8.8 Summary -/- 9 Sense of humor 9.1 Introduction 9.2 The semantic neighborhood of laughter, humor, and comedy 9.3 The Nietzschean sense of humor and its functions 9.3.1 From episodic laughter to the sense of humor 9.3.2 Affirmation and inquiry 9.3.3 Negation and inquiry 9.3.4 Affiliation with like-minded inquirers 9.4 Summary -/- 10 Solitude 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Solitude in virtue theory and Nietzsche scholarship 10.3 The semantic neighborhood of solitude 10.4 An account of Nietzschean solitude 10.5 Summary -/- Conclusion -/- 11 Conscience & integrity 11.1 Introduction 11.2 Conscience and integrity in contemporary moral psychology and Nietzsche scholarship 11.2.1 Conscience and integrity in contemporary moral psychology 11.2.2 Conscience and integrity in Nietzsche commentary 11.3 The semantic neighborhood of conscience and integrity 11.4 Distinguishing conscience, good conscience, bad conscience, and intellectual conscience 11.4.1 Conscience 11.4.2 Good conscience 11.4.3 Bad conscience 11.4.4 Intellectual conscience and integrity 11.5 Summary -/- 12 Prospectus 12.1 Future directions in moral psychology 12.2 Future directions in Nietzsche scholarship 12.3 Future directions in digital humanities and the history of philosophy . (shrink)