When a computer system causes harm, who is responsible? This question has renewed significance given the proliferation of autonomous systems enabled by modern artificial intelligence techniques. At the root of this problem is a philosophical difficulty known in the literature as the responsibility gap. That is to say, because of the causal distance between the designers of autonomous systems and the eventual outcomes of those systems, the dilution of agency within the large and complex teams that design autonomous systems, and (...) the impossibility of fully predicting how autonomous systems will behave once deployed, determining who is morally responsible for harms caused by autonomous systems is unclear at a conceptual level. I review past work on this topic, criticizing prior works for suggesting workarounds rather than philosophical answers to the conceptual problem presented by the responsibility gap. The view I develop, drawing on my earlier work on vicarious moral responsibility, explains why computing professionals are ethically required to take responsibility for the systems they design, despite not being blameworthy for the harms these systems may cause. (shrink)

The spread of misinformation and fake news raises important problems for our society and for our democracy. From the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to vaccine hesitancy, from suppressing voter turnout to peddling conspiracy theories, we know that these problems are real and need to be taken seriously. While misinformation is not a new problem for democracy, it can spread more quickly and easily because of new media’s design and popularity. Given these problems, it is encouraging that some (...) technology companies are taking steps to reduce the spread of misinformation and fake news on the platforms they manage. Despite this seemingly positive development, some scholars have criticized some interventions designed to combat the spread of misinformation and fake news as paternalistic. For example, a 2019 Facebook intervention called Click-Gap aimed to reduce the amount of low-quality content (including fake news and misinformation) that users see on their NewsFeed. Click-Gap has been criticized as an instance of epistemic paternalism because it was adopted (1) with the goal of improving the epistemic status of its users and (2) irrespective of what the company believed the wishes of its users to be. If interventions like Click-Gap are problematic because paternalistic, those of us interested in the ethics of technology would face a dilemma—either endorse technology companies treating their users paternalistically or endorse their failing to act to combat the spread of misinformation and fake news on their platforms. Both options seem to me to be problematic. While paternalism may sometimes be permissible, I think we should be very hesitant to endorse a paternalistic relationship between technology companies and their users. The relationship does not seem to bear the right sort of structure to one in which paternalism might be appropriate, if it ever is. The second option seems, if anything worse: surely technology companies should not stand by and change nothing about their platforms despite the spread of misinformation and fake news in those spaces. In this paper, I argue that Click-Gap and interventions like it are not paternalistic, contrary to the conclusion of other scholars. Further, I will argue that the focus on paternalism itself is actually a red herring here. While not just any intervention or strategy that purports to reduce fake news and misinformation is permissible, we should want technology companies to take user well-being seriously and be able to take that well-being as a direct reason for action. Their doing so is not paternalistic nor even morally problematic, and it should not be criticized as such. (shrink)

Robotization is an increasingly pervasive feature of our lives. Robots with high degrees of autonomy may cause harm, yet in sufciently complex systems neither the robots nor the human developers may be candidates for moral blame. John Danaher has recently argued that this may lead to a retribution gap, where the human desire for retribution faces a lack of appropriate subjects for retributive blame. The potential social and moral implications of a retribution gap are considerable. I argue that the retributive (...) intuitions that feed into retribution gaps are best understood as deontological intuitions. I apply a debunking argument for deontological intuitions in order to show that retributive intuitions cannot be used to justify retributive punishment in cases of robot harm without clear candidates for blame. The fundamental moral question thus becomes what we ought to do with these retributive intuitions, given that they do not justify retribution. I draw a parallel from recent work on implicit biases to make a case for taking moral responsibility for retributive intuitions. In the same way that we can exert some form of control over our unwanted implicit biases, we can and should do so for unjustifed retributive intuitions in cases of robot harm. (shrink)

A collective duty gap arises when a group has caused harm that requires remedying but no member did harm that can justify the imposition of individual remedial duties. Examples range from airplane crashes to climate change. How might collective duty gaps be filled? This paper starts by examining two promising proposals for filling them. Both proposals are found inadequate. Thus, while gap-filling duties can be defended against objections from unfairness and demandingness, we need a substantive justification for their existence. I (...) argue that substantive justification can be found in the normative force of commitments individuals make to others with regard to ends. Along the way, I argue that gap-filling duties must be conceptualized differently in group agents, as compared to non-agent groups: in the former, gap-filling duties can be understood as duties to “take up the slack”; in the latter, this would be a category error. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree about whether vagueness requires us to admit truth-value gaps, about whether there is a gap between the objects of which a given vague predicate is true and those of which it is false on an appropriately constructed sorites series for the predicate---a series involving small increments of change in a relevant respect between adjacent elements, but a large increment of change in that respect between the endpoints. There appears, however, to be widespread agreement that there is some sense (...) in which vague predicates are gappy which may be expressed neutrally by saying that on any appropriately constructed sorites series for a given vague predicate there will be a gap between the objects of which the predicate is denitely true and those of which it is denitely false. Taking as primitive the operator ‘it is denitely the case that’, abbreviated as ‘D’, we may stipulate that a predicate F is denitely true (or denitely false) of an object just in case ‘DF (a)’, where a is a name for the object, is true (or false) simpliciter.1 This yields the following conditional formulation of a ‘gap principle’: (D Φ (x) ∧ D¬ Φ (y)) → ¬R(x, y). Here ‘ Φ ’ is to be replaced with a vague predicate, while ‘R’ is to stand for a sorites relation for that predicate: a relation that can be used to construct a sorites series for the predicate---such as the relation of being just one millimetre shorter than for the predicate ‘is tall’. Disagreements about the sense in which it is correct to say that vague predicates are gappy can then be recast as disagreements about how to understand the denitely operator. One might give it, for example, a pragmatic construal such as ‘it would not be misleading to assert that’; or an epistemic construal such as ‘it is known that’ or ‘it is knowable that’; or a semantic construal such as ‘it is true that’. (shrink)

We argue that the evil-god challenge is not an additional challenge for theists above and beyond the (much older) gap problem. One version of the evil-god challenge is merely a specific instance of the gap problem, and another is dependent on that specific instance of the gap problem. Therefore, the various solutions to the gap problem that theists have developed double as responses to the evil-god challenge, placing the evil-god challenge in a more vulnerable position than has been supposed.

The gap between teaching and learning occurs likewise and exclusively in the human condition, though—as we have pointed out earlier—not in all instances because human sensitivity to the fundamental character of the nature-to-culture trajectory will prevent the chasm. To be more specific on this issue, it is in the formalization of the teaching-learning event in the hands of human initiators that the gap gets in as a resultant disorder—even a syndrome. In this sense, formalized teaching doesn´t always result to learning. (...) In certain cases, formalized teaching (as in a school classroom) simply gets so far as the level of a mental assent—a theoretical approximation of a subject matter whose empirico-pragmatic location in real life is nowhere found. Learning—if we could call it as such—in this case is hence short of realization. (shrink)

The is-ought gap is Hume’s claim that we can’t get an ‘ought’ from just ‘is’s. Prior (“The Autonomy of Ethics,” 1960) showed that its most straightforward formulation, a staple of introductory philosophy classes, fails. Many authors attempt to resurrect the claim by restricting its domain syntactically or by reformulating it in terms of models of deontic logic. Those attempts prove to be complex, incomplete, or incorrect. I provide a simple reformulation of the is-ought gap that closely fits Hume’s description of (...) it. My formulation of the gap avoids the proposed counterexamples from Prior and offers a natural explanation of why they seem compelling. Moreover, I show that my formulation of the gap is guaranteed by standard theories of the semantics of normative terms, and that provides a more general reason to accept it. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are ubiquitous. From social media timelines, video recommendations on YouTube, and the kinds of adverts we see online, AI, in a very real sense, filters the world we see. More than that, AI is being embedded in agent-like systems, which might prompt certain reactions from users. Specifically, we might find ourselves feeling frustrated if these systems do not meet our expectations. In normal situations, this might be fine, but with the ever increasing sophistication of AI-systems, this (...) might become a problem. While it seems unproblematic to realize that being angry at your car for breaking down is unfitting, can the same be said for AI-systems? In this paper, therefore, I will investigate the so-called “reactive attitudes”, and their important link to our responsibility practices. I then show how within this framework there exist exemption and excuse conditions, and test whether our adopting the “objective attitude” toward agential AI is justified. I argue that such an attitude is appropriate in the context of three distinct senses of responsibility (answerability, attributability, and accountability), and that, therefore, AI-systems do not undermine our responsibility ascriptions. (shrink)

From the outset, critical social theory has sought to diagnose people’s participation in their own oppression, by revealing the roots of irrational and self-undermining choices in the complex interplay between human nature, social structures, and cultural beliefs. As part of this project, Ideologiekritik has aimed to expose faulty conceptions of this interplay, so that the objectively pathological character of what people are “freely” choosing could come more clearly into view. The challenge, however, has always been to find a way of (...) doing this without arrogantly assuming special access to what is good for people. And this danger of paternalism is one to which social theorists have all too often fallen prey. In this brief essay, I focus on contemporary instances of clearly self-defeating behavior in contexts of complex choices. I begin by discussing a recent attempt to diagnose and solve these failures of choices, namely the public policy recommendations of behavioral economist Richard Thaler and reform-minded legal theorist Cass Sunstein. Their influential “libertarian paternalist” approach is particularly interesting, both in what it includes (attention to the socially constructed nature of choice situations and the roots of the problems in human nature) and in what it leaves out (an understanding of the social construction of human nature and an adequate appreciation of the value of autonomy). After discussing it, I consider a broadly perfectionist alternative, to the effect that the problem lies in a failure to adequately appreciate the importance of developing autonomy. I then turn to sketching the outlines of a new approach, based on the concept of “autonomy gaps,” which approaches overly demanding policies in relational and action-theoretical terms. In the final section, I show how this provides the basis for an analysis both in terms of a critique of ideology and of social pathology. (shrink)

This paper examines the explanatory gap account. The key notions for its proper understanding are analysed. In particular, the analysis is concerned with the role of “thick” and “thin” modes of presentation and “thick” and “thin” concepts which are relevant for the notions of “thick” and “thin” conceivability, and to that effect relevant for the gappy and non-gappy identities. The last section of the paper discusses the issue of the intelligibility of explanations. One of the conclusions is that the explanatory (...) gap account only succeeds in establishing the epistemic gap. The claim that psychophysical identity is not intelligibly explicable, and thus opens the explanatory gap, would require an indepen- dent argument which would prove that intelligible explanations stem only from conceptual analysis. This, I argue, is not the case. (shrink)

A paradox, it is claimed, is a radical form of contradiction, one that produces gaps in meaning. In order to approach this idea, two senses of “separation” are distinguished: separation by something and separation by nothing. The latter does not refer to nothing in an ordinary sense, however, since in that sense what’s intended is actually less than nothing. Numerous ordinary nothings in philosophy as well as in other fields are surveyed so as to clarify the contrast. Then follows the (...) suggestion that philosophies which one would expect to have room for paradoxes actually tend either to exclude them altogether, or to dull them. There is a clear alternative, however, one that fully recognizes paradoxes and yet also strives to overcome them. (shrink)

Considering public moral attitudes is a hallmark of the anticipatory governance of emerging biotechnologies, such as heritable human genome editing. However, such anticipatory governance often overlooks that future morality is open to change and that future generations may perform different moral assessments on the very biotechnologies we are trying to govern in the present. In this article, we identify an ’anticipatory gap’ that has not been sufficiently addressed in the discussion on the public governance of heritable genome editing, namely, uncertainty (...) about the moral visions of future generations about the emerging applications that we are currently attempting to govern now. This paper motivates the relevance of this anticipatory gap, identifying the challenges it generates and offering various recommendations so that moral uncertainty does not lead to governance paralysis with regard to human germline genome editing. (shrink)

The acculturation gap is the changing set of values and culture between a child and parent or guardian. The gap is usually revealed after a family immigrates from one country to another and assimilates into a culture.

Hot-cold empathy gaps are a pervasive phenomena wherein one’s predictions about others tend to skew ‘in the direction’ of one’s own current visceral states. For instance, when one predicts how hungry someone else is, one’s prediction will tend to reflect one’s own current hunger state. These gaps also obtain intrapersonally, when one attempts to predict what one oneself would do at a different time. In this paper, we do three things: We draw on empirical evidence to argue that so-called hot-cold (...) empathy gaps arise when one projects one’s own current state into a simulation about another. Second, we argue that this process does not typically confer knowledge, even when the predictions it produces happen to be accurate. Third, we suggest that these results can be used to develop a challenge for L.A. Paul's view that authentic action sometimes requires subjective knowledge of one’s own values and how these values relate to relevant outcomes. We then sketch an alternative view of the epistemic grounds of authenticity, one on which authenticity requires a kind of understanding. The relevant form of understanding can be achieved by subjective knowledge but can also be achieved elsewise, such as through testimony from a close friend about what one values. (shrink)

The income gap between women and men expands with age, culminating in a gender pension gap in old age that is much larger than pay gaps earlier in life. In this article, I question two attempts to justify gender pension gaps. One insists that lower financial contribution justifies women's lower overall pensions. The second states that women must receive less monthly because they live longer. I argue that neither of these reasons is fair in a gender‐unjust world. Rather than justifying (...) pension gaps, female longevity is an opportunity to promote gender justice: by subsidizing longer lives, old‐age redistribution attenuates lifetime gender inequality. In the case of retirement pensions, the use of age to promote gender equality may be preferable to explicit gender differentiation. There is, then, a feminist case for old‐age redistribution. (shrink)

The study aimed to determine if differentiated instruction effectively addresses learning gaps in mathematics. In particular, it explored how it can improve the student’s learning gaps concerning mathematical performance and confidence. The study employed a quasi-experimental design with 30 purposively-selected Grade 10 participants divided into differentiated (n = 15) and control groups (n = 15), ensuring the utmost ethical measures. The mean and standard deviation were used to describe the participants’ performance and confidence. Independent samples t-tests were used to determine (...) the significant differences in the performance and confidence between the two groups. In contrast, dependent samples t-tests were used to determine the significant differences in each group’s pre and posttest performance and confidence. Findings bared that the differentiated instruction successfully addressed students’ performance in mathematics even in a short period. It also increased the participants’ confidence when answering fundamental problems. Continuing differentiated instruction activities are recommended since it benefits students who struggle in mathematics, particularly in answering fundamental operations. Differentiated teaching activities in mathematics can boost academic achievement and engagement and prepare students for future success while fostering a positive and inclusive classroom culture that values individual learning needs and preferences. (shrink)

The essay brings a summation of human efforts seeking to understand our existence. Plato and Kant & cognitive science complete reduction of philosophy to a neural mechanism, evolved along elementary Darwinian principles. Plato in his famous Cave Allegory explains that between reality and our experience of it there exists a great chasm, a metaphysical gap, fully confirmed through particle-wave duality of quantum physics. Kant found that we have two kinds of perception, two senses: By the spatial outer sense we perceive (...) phenomena, objects in space. Our temporal inner sense lets us perceive our inner state, noumena . Kant's two senses are fully confirmed through bilateral brain duality of cognitive science. The bilateral brain serves inner, temporal sense, logic & noumena in the left hemisphere. The right brain half is for the outer, spatial sense, geometry & phenomena. We form a whole system, a bilateral interior cosmos, a kind of world model, expressing what may lie beyond the metaphysical gap. In the right brain we build a phenomenal cosmos, to resemble the outer environment. In the brain's left hemisphere a noumenal cosmos, a model of our private world including Saint Teresa of Avila's castillo interior. The cosmos is regularly updated with novel sense data integrated into our memory banks. This was recognized early by Helmholtz (1860s). Our lives, health & well-being depend on us keeping our interior cosmos in good order. This used to be seen as saving one's precious soul from perdition. While we endeavour to keep our phenomenal cosmos neat & orderly by protecting the environment from harm, our noumenal cosmos to be livable requires us to engage in ethical conduct. This bilateral cosmos is responsible for our common sense judgment power, that we depend on for being able to lead a good & benign life. The 200 million neurons of BA10 in the prefrontal lobe have global access to the interior cosmos, & apply massive feedback to identify environmental conditions rapidly. The global access also gives conscious presence of the individual to itself, all that is present in the interior cosmos, for total freedom of action. In the left brain private ego, we are guarded by faith in divine mercy, & guided to choose the best course of action, able to survive under the most adverse conditions. For this, we receive directions from the Holy Ghost in Saint Teresa's castillo interior. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s insightful work on epistemic injustice discusses two forms of epistemic injustice—testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when the victim lacks the interpretative resources to make sense of her experience, and this lacuna can be traced down to a structural injustice. In this paper, I provide one model of how to fill the conceptual gap in hermeneutical injustice. First, I argue that the victims possess conceptual resources to make sense of their experiences, namely phenomenal concepts. Second, I (...) show how one might work the way up in a two-step process from a subjective, phenomenal concept to a novel, public concept. Finally, I discuss the conditions that have to be met for this process to be successful. The resulting model shows a way how the victims might alleviate hermeneutical injustice by developing novel concepts, given that the dominant group does not care about their predicament. (shrink)

Sparrow argues that military robots capable of making their own decisions would be independent enough to allow us denial for their actions, yet too unlike us to be the targets of meaningful blame or praise—thereby fostering what Matthias has dubbed “the responsibility gap.” We agree with Sparrow that someone must be held responsible for all actions taken in a military conflict. That said, we think Sparrow overlooks the possibility of what we term “blank check” responsibility: A person of sufficiently high (...) standing could accept responsibility for the actions of autonomous robotic devices—even if that person could not be causally linked to those actions besides this prior agreement. The basic intuition behind our proposal is that humans can impute relations even when no other form of contact can be established. The missed alternative we want to highlight, then, would consist in an exchange: Social prestige in the occupation of a given office would come at the price of signing away part of one's freedoms to a contingent and unpredictable future guided by another agency. (shrink)

Artificial agents create significant moral opportunities and challenges. Over the last two decades, discourse has largely focused on the concept of a ‘responsibility gap.’ We argue that this concept is incoherent, misguided, and diverts attention from the core issue of ‘control gaps.’ Control gaps arise when there is a discrepancy between the causal control an agent exercises and the moral control it should possess or emulate. Such gaps present moral risks, often leading to harm or ethical violations. We propose a (...) second-order ‘duty of moral control’ that mandates closing these gaps to reduce risks within acceptable moral limits. Our analysis encompasses both autonomous machines and collective agents, acknowledging their similarities and key differences in constitution and moral status. We suggest four methods to close control gaps: ensuring artificial agents attain moral agency, providing meaningful human control, implementing safety engineering, and employing social control. These methods aim to responsibly integrate artificial agents into society. We conclude that a realistic approach, which addresses the practical problems posed by control gaps, is essential. This approach provides solutions to manage the risks posed by artificial agents while maintaining acceptable moral standards, ensuring we responsibly harness their potential and address the ethical challenges they present. (shrink)

Chapter 4 of Dennis Schulting’s book Kant’s Radical Subjectivism targets those commentators who take there to be a gap in the transcendental deduction of the categories, arguing instead that there is no gap between the necessary application of the categories and their exemplification in the object of experience. In these comments on the chapter, I suggest a minimal sense in which the fact that there is a gap is non-negotiable. The interesting question is not whether there is a gap which (...) needs to be bridged, but how and why Kant makes the step from subjectivity to objectivity. (shrink)

Which kinds of responsibility can we attribute to which kinds of collective, and why? In contrast, which kinds of collective responsibility can we not attribute—which kinds are ‘gappy’? This study provides a framework for answering these questions. It begins by distinguishing between three kinds of collective and three kinds of responsibility. It then explains how gaps—i.e. cases where we cannot attribute the responsibility we might want to—appear to arise within each type of collective responsibility. It argues some of these gaps (...) do not exist on closer inspection, at least for some collectives and some of the time. (shrink)

Many seem to think that AI-induced responsibility gaps are morally bad and therefore ought to be avoided. We argue, by contrast, that there is at least a pro tanto reason to welcome responsibility gaps. The central reason is that it can be bad for people to be responsible for wrongdoing. This, we argue, gives us one reason to prefer automated decision-making over human decision-making, especially in contexts where the risks of wrongdoing are high. While we are not the first to (...) suggest that responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed, our argument is novel. Others have argued that responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed because they can reduce or eliminate the psychological burdens caused by tragic moral choice-situations. By contrast, our argument explains why responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed even in the absence of tragic moral choice-situations, and even in the absence of psychological burdens. (shrink)

This dissertation defends materialism from the epistemic arguments against materialism. Materialism is the view that everything is ultimately physical. The epistemic arguments against materialism claim that there is an epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths (for example, that knowing the physical truths does not put you in a position to know the phenomenal truths), and conclude from this that there is a corresponding gap in the world between physical and phenomenal truths, and materialism is false. -/- Chapter 1 introduces (...) materialism and the arguments against materialism that I respond to in this dissertation. -/- Chapters 2 and 3 explore the phenomenal concept strategy (PCS), one promising materialist response to the epistemic arguments against materialism. The PCS admits that there is an epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths, but claims that it arises because of something special about our concepts of consciousness and not because of something special about consciousness itself. -/- Chapter 4 considers what reason there is to think that there is an epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths in the first place. I argue that some arguments might succeed in showing that there is such an epistemic gap, but that if these arguments succeed then they end up vindicating the PCS. -/- Chapter 5 considers more generally what is required for an epistemic gap to exist. In particular, it considers whether conceptual analysis is necessary to close an epistemic gap. (shrink)

The lack of gender parity in philosophy has garnered serious attention recently. Previous empirical work that aims to quantify what has come to be called “the gender gap” in philosophy focuses mainly on the absence of women in philosophy faculty and graduate programs. Our study looks at gender representation in philosophy among undergraduate students, undergraduate majors, graduate students, and faculty. Our findings are consistent with what other studies have found about women faculty in philosophy, but we were able to add (...) two pieces of new information. First, the biggest drop in the proportion of women in philosophy occurs between students enrolled in introductory philosophy classes and philosophy majors. Second, this drop is mitigated by the presence of more women philosophy faculty. (shrink)

We are living through an era of increased robotisation. Some authors have already begun to explore the impact of this robotisation on legal rules and practice. In doing so, many highlight potential liability gaps that might arise through robot misbehaviour. Although these gaps are interesting and socially significant, they do not exhaust the possible gaps that might be created by increased robotisation. In this article, I make the case for one of those alternative gaps: the retribution gap. This gap arises (...) from a mismatch between the human desire for retribution and the absence of appropriate subjects of retributive blame. I argue for the potential existence of this gap in an era of increased robotisation; suggest that it is much harder to plug this gap than it is to plug those thus far explored in the literature; and then highlight three important social implications of this gap. (shrink)

This short article is based on my special lecture entitled "Aristotle and the Philosophy of Education" at Tamagawa University Research Institute in Tokyo on September 19, 2015, through a recording of the spoken language transcribed in written form with some corrections. The lecture delivered on that day consists of two parts: referring to historical research and a statistical survey, the first half focuses on uncovering the fact that the philosophy of education has been slighted both in Japanese and Western academia (...) and that this fact is valid for both Aristotle's and contemporary studies on the philosophy of education; the second half endeavors to describe two possible research projects - namely, a classical-philosophical and interpretative study of Aristotle's philosophy of education and a contemporary-philosophical and Aristotelian study of the philosophy education. Some of these topics have been published but others have not. This short article concerns the first half of the lecture and measures the gap between philosophy and the philosophy of education in Japan through a statistical survey of the largest competitive research funding database in Japan: KAKEN. (shrink)

Walter Burley’s Commentary to the Nicomachean Ethics is commonly considered little more than an expositio littere. Nevertheless, in some notanda he raises open questions about the crucial gap between the conclusion of the practical syllogism and action. Within the interpretative framework of Saarinen’s and Wood’s works, I will focus on Burley’s analysis of akrasia in book VII. The first point will be some questions related to a notandum, concerning the gap between intellect and will as typical of akrasia. Secondly, I (...) will analyze it in the light of Burley’s semantics, where conceptual tools developed in one science prove useful in solving problems of another discipline, in this case ethics. Finally, I’ll address the Commentary’s brief gloss about heroic virtue, as example of Burley’s first steps in the use of measure languages in ethics, by analogy with the Oxford Calculators’ techniques. (shrink)

While the empirical evidence pointing to a gender gap in professional, academic philosophy in the English-speaking world is widely accepted, explanations of this gap are less so. In this paper, we aim to make a modest contribution to the literature on the gender gap in academic philosophy by taking a quantitative, corpus-based empirical approach. Since some philosophers have suggested that it may be the argumentative, “logic-chopping,” and “paradox-mongering” nature of academic philosophy that explains the underrepresentation of women in the discipline, (...) our research questions are the following: Do men and women philosophers make different types of arguments in their published works? If so, which ones and with what frequency? Using data mining and text analysis methods, we study a large corpus of philosophical texts mined from the JSTOR database in order to answer these questions empirically. Using indicator words to classify arguments by type, we search through our corpus to find patterns of argumentation. Overall, the results of our empirical study suggest that women philosophers make deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments in their published works just as much as male philosophers do, with no statistically significant differences in the proportions of those arguments relative to each philosopher’s body of work. (shrink)

Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, proponents of digital psychiatry were touting the promise of various digital tools and techniques to revolutionize mental healthcare. As social distancing and its knock-on effects have strained existing mental health infrastructures, calls have grown louder for implementing various digital mental health solutions at scale. Decisions made today will shape the future of mental healthcare for the foreseeable future. We argue that bioethicists are uniquely positioned to cut through the hype surrounding digital mental health, which can (...) obscure crucial ethical and epistemic gaps that ought to be considered by policymakers before committing to a digital psychiatric future. Here, we describe four such gaps: The evidence gap, the inequality gap, the prediction-intervention gap, and the safety gap. (shrink)

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)

There is a concern that the widespread deployment of autonomous machines will open up a number of ‘responsibility gaps’ throughout society. Various articulations of such techno-responsibility gaps have been proposed over the years, along with several potential solutions. Most of these solutions focus on ‘plugging’ or ‘dissolving’ the gaps. This paper offers an alternative perspective. It argues that techno-responsibility gaps are, sometimes, to be welcomed and that one of the advantages of autonomous machines is that they enable us to embrace (...) certain kinds of responsibility gap. The argument is based on the idea that human morality is often tragic. We frequently confront situations in which competing moral considerations pull in different directions and it is impossible to perfectly balance these considerations. This heightens the burden of responsibility associated with our choices. We cope with the tragedy of moral choice in different ways. Sometimes we delude ourselves into thinking the choices we make were not tragic ; sometimes we delegate the tragic choice to others ; sometimes we make the choice ourselves and bear the psychological consequences. Each of these strategies has its benefits and costs. One potential advantage of autonomous machines is that they enable a reduced cost form of delegation. However, we only gain the advantage of this reduced cost if we accept that some techno-responsibility gaps are virtuous. (shrink)

This article offers a normative analysis of some of the most controversial incidents involving police—what I call police-generated killings. In these cases, bad police tactics create a situation where deadly force becomes necessary, becomes perceived as necessary, or occurs unintentionally. Police deserve blame for such killings because they choose tactics that unnecessarily raise the risk of deadly force, thus violating their obligation to prioritize the protection of life. Since current law in the United States fails to ban many bad tactics, (...) police- generated killings often are treated as “lawful but awful.” To address these killings, some call on changes to departmental policies or voluntary reparations by local governments, yet such measures leave in place a troubling gap between ethics and law. I argue that police-generated killings merit legal sanctions by appealing to a relevant analogy: self-generated self-defense, where the person who engages in self-defense started the trouble. The persistent lack of accountability for police-generated killings threatens life, police legitimacy, and trust in democratic institutions. The article closes by identifying tools in law and policy to address this challenge. (shrink)

Many philosophers have tried to defend physicalism concerning phenomenal consciousness, by explaining dualist intuitions within a purely physicalist framework. One of the most common strategies to do so consists in interpreting the alleged “explanatory gap” between phenomenal states and physical states as resulting from a fallacy, or a cognitive illusion. In this paper, I argue that the explanatory gap does not rest on a fallacy or a cognitive illusion. This does not imply the falsity of physicalism, but it has consequences (...) on the kind of physicalism we should embrace. (shrink)

This paper examines an argument by Schaffer (2017) that aims to prove how, contrary to what many philosophers hold, there is no special explanatory gap occurring in the connection between the physical and the phenomenal. This is because a gap of the same kind can be found in every connection between a more fundamental and a less fundamental level of reality. These gaps lurk everywhere in nature. For Schaffer, they can be bridged by means of substantive metaphysical principles such as (...) grounding principles. He thus puts forward a version of grounding-based physicalism, which is supposed to provide this kind of substantive bridge principle. My main contention is as follows: even if Schaffer’s argument indeed proves the existence of a gap in every connection between fundamental and derivative entities, and such gaps can be bridged by means of grounding principles, a different gap remains open in the psycho-physical connection. (shrink)

The feeling brings the "Hard Problem" to philosophy of mind. Does the subjective feeling have a non-ignorable impact on Intelligence? If so, can the feeling be realized in Artificial Intelligence (AI)? To discuss the problems, we have to figure out what the feeling means, by giving a clear definition. In this paper, we primarily give some mainstream perspectives on the topic of the mind, especially the topic of the feeling (or qualia, subjective experience, etc.). Then, a definition of the feeling (...) is proposed through a thought experiment, the "semi-transparent room". The feeling, roughly to say, is defined as "a tendency of changing input representations by representing its inner state". Also, a formalized definition is given. The definition does not help to verify "having the feeling", but it helps to provide evidence. Based on the definition, we think these are the hard problems of intelligence — whether the "innate" feeling plays an important role in Intelligence, whether the difference between the "simulated" feeling and the "innate" feeling will have a significant influence on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and, if so, where the "innate" feeling comes from and how to make an artificial agent possess it. (shrink)

In this chapter, I revisit the issue of the explanatory gap that is supposed to open when considering identity statements between physical and mental phenomena. I show that the question asked in the original formulation of the explanatory gap was this: ʻwhy this phenomenal character, rather than any other, is attached to this physiological process?ʼ I argue that this question can be answered, because there is a natural fit between the phenomenal character of experiences and their functional roles. For example, (...) pains feel inherently unpleasant, and that explains why they cause avoidance behaviour, and the felt location and intensity of pain indicates the location and extent of damage to the body. I discuss some other possible gaps in our understanding the relationship between the mental and the physical, and conclude that the fit between functional role and phenomenal character goes a long way, though probably not the whole way, to closing the explanatory gap. (shrink)

In today’s world, education is less being considered as an outcome, but more as a journey. As the adventurers, our students are facing more and more complex challenges. Previously, the socio-economic status of a student’s family seemed to be one of the biggest factors among inequality causes. Nowadays, the chaotic situation of today's VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) is generating more and more types of inequity and inequality. Thus, the purpose of the study is to develop LERB - (...) a simple model to classify inequity and inequality, as a stepping-stone to build a gap detection framework. Through a structured literature review, the study identified the interconnection between equity and equality, as well as their transition toward students as an individual or as a group(s) and subgroup(s). The study can also be adapted to examine the correlation between different categories of equity, as well as to brainstorm and propose remedies to tackle those gaps. (shrink)

Grounding-theoretic account of the notion of transparency relevant to the explanatory gap between the mental and physical.

With the existing commitments to climate change mitigation, global warming is likely to exceed 2°C and to trigger irreversible and harmful threshold effects. The difference between the reductions necessary to keep the 2°C limit and those reductions countries have currently committed to is called the ‘emissions gap’. I argue that capable states not only have a moral duty to make voluntary contributions to bridge that gap, but that complying states ought to make up for the failures of some other states (...) to comply with this duty. While defecting or doing less than one’s fair share can be a good move in certain circumstances, it would be morally wrong in this situation. In order to bridge the emissions gap, willing states ought to take up the slack left by others. The paper will reject the unfairness-objection, namely that it is wrong to require agents to take on additional costs to discharge duties that are not primarily theirs. Sometimes what is morally right is simply unfair. (shrink)

According to the accepted translation-failure interpretation, the problem of incommensurability involves the nature of the meaning-referential relation between scientific languages. The incommensurability thesis is that some competing scientific languages are mutually untranslatable due to the radical variance of meaning or/and reference of the terms they employ. I argue that this interpretation faces many difficulties and cannot give us a tenable, coherent, and integrated notion of incommensurability. It has to be rejected. ;On the basis of two case studies, I find that (...) the confrontations between many classical incommensurable languages are not confrontations between two untranslatable languages with different distribution of truth values, but rather the confrontations between incompatible fundamental presuppositions at the ontological level. We can always identify a truth-value gap between two incommensurable languages. Such a truth-value gap indicates a communication breakdown between the two language communities on the one hand, and is caused by the incompatible fundamental presuppositions underlying them on the other. ;I thereby identify the truth-value functional relationship between sentences, instead of the meaning-referential relationship between terms, as the dominant semantic relation between two incommensurable languages. According to my presuppositional interpretation of incommensurability, the real secret of incommensurability lies in the ontological setup of two competing presuppositional languages. When two presuppositional languages with incompatible factual commitments encounter with each other, the confrontation leads to a truth-value gap, and consequently a communication breakdown between them. Formally put, two scientific languages are incommensurable when core sentences of one language, which have truth values when considered within its own context, lack truth values when considered within the context of the other due to an ontological gap between them. ;The presuppositional interpretation makes many significant contributions to the discussion of the issue of incommensurability and the related metaphysical and epistemological issues: It confirms the existence of the phenomenon of incommensurability and makes it metaphysically and epistemologically significant. It establishes the tenability and integrity of the notion of incommensurability. It avoids many alleged unattractive epistemological and metaphysical consequences of the translation-failure interpretation. (shrink)

Most mental health research largely ignores or minimises gender and age differences in depression. In ‘Don't mind the gap: Why do we not care about the gender gap in mental health?’, Patalay and Demkowicz identify a dearth of research on the causal factors of depression in young women. They attribute this to an over-reliance on biological accounts of gender differences in depression. Patalay and Demkowicz conclude that a person-centred approach that meaningfully engages with the reports of young women with depression (...) is more likely to expose the social drivers of depression that impact this group. This commentary focuses on Patalay and Demkowicz's call to examine the patient's lived experience. We argue that there is an urgent need to reflect upon the methodologies involved in examining lived experience and how they can be best utilised. Ultimately, we advocate for an approach known as ‘phenomenological psychopathology’, through a phenomenological investigation of depression in young women, we can go some way towards closing the gender gap. (shrink)

I assume that there exists a general phenomenon, the phenomenon of the explanatory gap, surrounding consciousness, normativity, intentionality, and more. Explanatory gaps are often thought to foreclose reductive possibilities wherever they appear. In response, reductivists who grant the existence of these gaps have offered countless local solutions. But typically such reductivist responses have had a serious shortcoming: because they appeal to essentially domain-specific features, they cannot be fully generalized, and in this sense these responses have been not just local but (...) parochial. Here I do better. Taking for granted that the explanatory gap is a genuine phenomenon, I offer a fully general diagnosis that unifies these previously fragmented reductivist responses. (shrink)

One of the driving questions in philosophy of mind is whether a person can be understood in purely physical terms. In this presentation, I wish to continue the project initiated by Donald Davidson, whose subtle position on this question has left many more perplexed than enlightened. The main reason for this perplexity is Davidson’s rather obscure pronouncements about the normativity of intentionality and its role in supporting psychophysical anomalism – the claim that there are no laws bridging our intentional states (...) with states of our brain. Insofar as Davidson’s thesis is an ontological one – about the existence of laws or otherwise modally significant connections between the mental and the physical – I think his critics are correct: Davidson has not provided us with a successful argument for psychophysical anomalism. There is, however, a different argument, also based upon considerations about the normativity of intentionality that lead to an equally important conclusion. The conclusion is not ontological but rather epistemic: if thoughts do indeed display normativity, it is hard to understand how they would arise out of mere mechanical occurrences in the brain. To borrow a well-worn phrase, there is an “explanatory gap” between the mental and the physical. Originally coined to capture the epistemic darkness we confront in our attempt to understand phenomenal experiences in purely physical terms, the idea has yet to be explored in the area of contentful mental states or intentionality in general. My argument shall be this: considerations about the normativity of intentionality demonstrate that there is an explanatory gap between the intentional and the physical. In fact, if there were laws of the kind Davidson denies, then the world be more mysterious than if no such laws existed. The presence of an explanatory gap explains why this is so. (shrink)

Understanding academic gender gaps is difficult because gender-imbalanced fields differ across many features, limiting researchers’ ability to systematically study candidate causes. In the present preregistered research, we isolate two potential explanations—brilliance beliefs and fixed versus growth intelligence mindsets—by comparing two fields that have inverse gender gaps and historic and topical overlap: philosophy and psychology. Many more men than women study philosophy and vice versa in psychology, with disparities emerging during undergraduate studies. No prior work has examined the contributions of both (...) self-perceptions of brilliance and fixed versus growth mindsets on choice of major among undergraduate students. We assessed field-specific brilliance beliefs, brilliance beliefs about self, and mindsets, cross-sectionally in 467 undergraduates enrolled in philosophy and psychology classes at universities in the United States and Canada via both in-person and online questionnaires. We found support for the brilliance beliefs about the self, but not mindset, explanation. Brilliance beliefs about oneself predicted women’s but not men’s choice of major. Women who believed they were less brilliant were more likely to study psychology (perceived to require low brilliance) over philosophy (perceived to require high brilliance). Findings further indicated that fixed versus growth mindsets did not differ by gender and were not associated with major. Together, these results suggest that internalized essentialist beliefs about the gendered nature of brilliance are uniquely important to understanding why men and women pursue training in different academic fields. (shrink)

This study employed an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) which aimed to explore the lived experiences, challenges, and coping mechanisms of teachers in the public school both in elementary and secondary schools in Malolos, Bulacan. The findings of this study revealed that most teachers are significantly challenged with the poor internet connection, multitasking and multitudes of paperwork to be submitted, communication with the parents and teachers and the different modalities of learning which are cited as the contributing factors of stress and (...) anxiety. As to the experiences of the teachers, they became a module writer, online teacher, reporter while doing the online classes and juggling with the work at home as a homemaker. However, the good experiences of this pandemic brought realization to the teachers that they were able to unleash their potential and utilized the skills needed to survive in this difficult time. Moreover, teachers coped up with the situations through prayers, listening and watching motivational videos, yoga and others became farmers too just to avoid stress. Finally, the teachers also gave their suggestions to further help other teachers also who are struggling during this pandemic. Majority of the participants gave emphasis to focus on stabilizing mental health. Others also highlighted the need to seek the assistance of other people who are knowledgeable in terms of ICT. Continuing innovation and researching to update oneself was also one of the suggested ways to deal with the current paradigm shift in education. (shrink)