We introduce the Bias Network Approach (BNA) as a sociotechnical method for AI developers to identify, map, and relate biases across the AI development process. This approach addresses the limitations of what we call the "isolationist approach to AI bias," a trend in AI literature where biases are seen as separate occurrence linked to specific stages in an AI pipeline. Dealing with these multiple biases can trigger a sense of excessive overload in managing each potential bias individually or promote the (...) adoption of an uncritical approach to understanding the influence of biases in developers’ decision-making. The BNA fosters dialogue and a critical stance among developers, guided by external experts, using graphical representations to depict biased connections. To test the BNA, we conducted a pilot case study on the "waiting list” project, involving a small AI developer team creating a healthcare waiting list NPL model in Chile. The analysis showed promising findings: (i) the BNA aids in visualizing interconnected biases and their impacts, facilitating ethical reflection in a more accessible way; (ii) it promotes transparency in decision-making throughout AI development; and (iii) more focus is necessary on professional biases and material limitations as sources of bias in AI development. (shrink)

Cognitive test batteries are widely used in diverse research fields, such as cognitive training, cognitive disorder assessment, or brain mechanism understanding. Although they need flexibility according to their usage objectives, most test batteries are not available as open-source software and are not be tuned by researchers in detail. The present study introduces an open-source cognitive test battery to assess attention and memory, using a javascript library, p5.js. Because of the ubiquitous nature of dynamic attention in our daily lives, it is (...) crucial to have tools for its assessment or training. For that purpose, our test battery includes seven cognitive tasks, common in cognitive science literature. By using the test battery, we conducted an online experiment to collect the benchmark data. Results conducted on 2 separate days showed the high cross-day reliability. Specifically, the task performance did not largely change with the different days. Besides, our test battery captures diverse individual differences and can evaluate them based on the cognitive factors extracted from latent factor analysis. Since we share our source code as open-source software, users can expand and manipulate experimental conditions flexibly. Our test battery is also flexible in terms of the experimental environment, i.e., it is possible to experiment either online or in a laboratory environment. (shrink)

Max Bense gilt als Vorreiter der Computerkunst und der Technikphilosophie und war ein engagierter Förderer von Kunst und Literatur, Promotor interdisziplinären Denkens und politischer Provokateur. Häufig ist es bei der Auseinandersetzung mit Bense jedoch bei diesen Etikettierungen geblieben. Der Sammelband nimmt daher eine konzertierte Neuaufnahme der Diskussion von Max Benses Arbeiten aus literaturwissenschaftlicher, philosophie- und wissenschaftshistorischer sowie aus medien- und ästhetiktheoretischer Perspektive vor. Er versammelt Beiträge zu Themenkomplexen wie der Semiotik, Technikphilosophie, experimentellen Poesie und Ästhetiktheorie, zu Benses lokalen und internationalen (...) Kontakten und Netzwerken sowie zu seinem publizistischen Verhalten im Nationalsozialismus und in der Nachkriegszeit. (shrink)

Our ability to rapidly distinguish new from already stored information is important for behavior and decision making, but the underlying processes remain unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that contextual cues lead to a preselection of information and, therefore, faster recognition. Specifically, on the basis of previous modeling work, we hypothesized that recognition time depends on the amount of relevant content stored in long-term memory, i.e., set size, and we explored possible age-related changes of this relationship in older humans. In (...) our paradigm, subjects learned by heart four different word lists written in different colors. On the day of testing, a color cue indicated with a probability of 50% that a subsequent word might be from the corresponding list or from a list of new words. The old/new status of the word had to be distinguished via button press. As a main finding, we can show in a sample of n = 49 subjects, including 26 younger and 23 older humans, that response times increased linearly and logarithmically as a function of set size in both age groups. Conversely, corrected hit rates decreased as a function of set size with no statistically significant differences between both age groups. As such, our findings provide empirical evidence that contextual information can lead to a preselection of relevant information stored in long-term memory to promote efficient recognition, possibly by cyclical top-down and bottom-up processing. (shrink)

Résumé À travers le cas clinique d’une adolescente obèse, l’article postule que le corps « obèse » peut être l’espace d’expression de la conflictualité inter et transgénérationnelle. Le symptôme de l’obésité viendrait alors préserver l’homéostasie familiale. Cet écrit met le projecteur sur la dimension contenante de ce corps « encombrant », signifiant formel d’une enveloppe psychique porteuse de traces douloureuses appartenant au mémorial familial. Il expose ainsi une explication au phénomène de résistance à l’amaigrissement rencontré parfois dans la clinique de (...) l’obésité. (shrink)

We improve on and generalize a 1960 result of Maltsev. For a field F, we denote by $H(F)$ the Heisenberg group with entries in F. Maltsev showed that there is a copy of F defined in $H(F)$, using existential formulas with an arbitrary non-commuting pair of elements as parameters. We show that F is interpreted in $H(F)$ using computable $\Sigma _1$ formulas with no parameters. We give two proofs. The first is an existence proof, relying on a result of Harrison-Trainor, (...) Melnikov, R. Miller, and Montalbán. This proof allows the possibility that the elements of F are represented by tuples in $H(F)$ of no fixed arity. The second proof is direct, giving explicit finitary existential formulas that define the interpretation, with elements of F represented by triples in $H(F)$. Looking at what was used to arrive at this parameter-free interpretation of F in $H(F)$, we give general conditions sufficient to eliminate parameters from interpretations. (shrink)

The purpose of the commentary is not to contradict HIT but rather to question whether its increase in predictive power outweighs the decrease in parsimony. For the refutable aspects of HIT, a simpler model for naming appears to achieve as much. Both models better fit the facts concerning naming performance than describe category-specificity.

The question of whether colour categorisation is determined by nontrivial constraints (i.e., universal neurophysiological properties of visual neurons) is an empirical issue concerning the organisation of the internal colour space. Rosch has provided psychological evidence that categories are organised around focal colours and that the organisation is universal; this commentary reconsiders that evidence.

This book examines Greek engagements with the past as articulations of memory formulated against the contingency of chance associated with temporality. Based on a phenomenological understanding of temporality, it identifies four memorializing strategies: continuity , regularity , development, and acceptance of chance. This framework serves in pursuing a twofold aim: to reconstruct the literary field of memory in fifth-century bce Greece; and to interpret Greek historiography as a memorializing mode. The key contention advanced by this approach is that acts of (...) memory entailed an “idea of history” that was articulated not only in historiography, but also in epinician poetry, elegy, tragedy, and oratory. The book offers a rich account of poetic conventions and contexts through which each of these genres counterbalanced contingency through the use of exemplary and traditional modes of memory. This fine analysis highlights the grip of the present on the past as a significant feature of both historiographical and nonhistoriographical genres.The essay argues that this work fills a disciplinary gap by extending the reflection on memory to a new period, Greek antiquity. The retrospective positioning of this period at the outset of Western historical thought brings Grethlein's investigation to the center of debates about memory, temporality, and the meaning history. In engaging with the book's argument, the essay suggests that historiographical memory emerged in Greece not as a first-order encounter with time, but as a second-order encounter with forgetting. This confrontation marked a certain separation of historiography from other memorializing genres. Whereas poetic and rhetorical memories were posited against contingency, historiography sought to retrieve those aspects of the past that may otherwise have been irretrievably lost and forgotten. In doing so, it formulated the historiographical imperative as a negation of forgetting that problematized the truth-value of memory and the very act of remembering the past. (shrink)

Are WEIRD societies unrepresentative of humanity? According to Henrich et al., they are not useful for generalizing about humans because they are at the extreme end of the distribution for societal formations. In their vision, it is best to stick with the traditional societies for speculations about human nature. This commentary offers a more realistic starting point, and, oddly enough, concludes that WEIRD populations may be more compatible with humans' evolved nature than are most traditional societies.

It has been alleged that Carolus Linnaeus practised Eurocentrism, sexism and racism in naming plant genera after famous botanists, and excluding ‘barbarous names’. He has therefore been said to practise ‘linguistic imperialism’. This paper examines whether Linnaeus applied ‘linguistic imperialism’ to the naming of Chinese plants. On the basis of examples such as Thea (¼Camellia), Urena, Basella, Annona, Sapindus (¼Koelreuteria), and Panax, I conclude that Linnaeus used generic names of diverse origins. However, he misidentified Chinese plants’ habitats, and acted on (...) these misapprehensions. (shrink)

_For centuries medicine was predominantly a tradition-based "trade" until the introduction of science transformed it into an intellectually rigorous discipline. That transformation contributed heavily to the dominance in medical education of the learning of biomedical concepts ("knowing that") over learning how to translate that knowledge into clinical performance ("knowing how"). The recent emergence of performance-oriented educational initiatives suggests, however, that the balance between these two complementary approaches is changing, a change that has been referred to as "the Flexnerian revolution of (...) the 21 ^st century." Problem-based learning, learning the practice of evidence-based medicine, and learning to use clinical guidelines are among the important initiatives designed to develop high-level performance in the care of individual patients. Initiatives in which learners acquire skill in changing the performance of care systems are also being widely implemented. These trends have received important formal support through recent changes in residency training accreditation standards. Although it is too early to assess the impact of these initiatives or to know whether they will develop further, medical education is unlikely to reach its full potential unless it successfully comes to grips with the challenges of understanding, teaching, and measuring performance._. (shrink)

Le terme platonisme est ambigu : il peut désigner soit le contenu de la philosophie de Platon, soit l’histoire de sa réception et de ses interprétations. C’est en suivant les méandres de cette seconde acception que Mauro Bonazzi (MB) propose une étude du platonisme dans un parcours allant de Speusippe jusqu’aux derniers diadoques de l’école d’Alexandrie. L’ouvrage, qui entre rapidement dans son objet, comporte quatre chapitres bien équilibrés : 1. « L’Académie antique » (p. 3-37) ; 2. « Plato...

The article presents an overview of the most interesting ideas, topics, and discussions among those constituting the problem field of social and political philosophy in post-Soviet Russia.

Do neuromodulation technologies change patients’ personal identities? Haeusermann et al. claim that there is not enough evidence to support this worry. In their study, participants, following a res...

Cet article a déjà paru dans Techniques & Culture en ligne, 48-49 | 2007 Résumé : L'œuvre d'André Leroi-Gourhan est traversée par une anthropologie du rythme. Celle-ci ne part pas d'une socialité constituée, de rythmes dits « sociaux », mais inscrit au contraire l'analyse de la rythmicité dans une approche de l'homme comme être vivant, comme totalité indivise. Elle pose en des termes renouvelés le problème classique du groupement des hommes et des liens entre l'individu et son milieu. Avec la (...) question - Anthropologie. (shrink)

Despite our interests in conceptual schemes, paradigms, styles of reasoning, levels of explanation, and populationist modes of theorizing, many philosophers ignore the fact that instruction occurs in situ. This paper highlights the importance of cultural location by reflecting upon the author’s experience as an instructor of modernity at Marshall University, a regional state institution in Huntington, West Virginia. For many Appalachian students, issues barely tolerated by others (as part of their required history sequence) are uniquely resonant. At the same time, (...) existing power structures—and the very real limits established by those structures—discourage Appalachian students from embracing or even entertaining the canonical themes of modernity. Immersing oneself in the regional culture, instead of bemoaning it, enables a philosophy instructor to examine modernity from both the pre- and postmodern perspectives, while also conveying to students that their education matters a great deal to the fate of the region. (shrink)

Why do we say that something is unspeakable, even though we know the issue well? We find in many cultural contexts the classification of something as ‘unspeakable'. Using semantics and semiotic theory separating between ‘concept', ‘sign', and ‘reference object of the sign' in several cases where the ‘unspeakable' is described, we will discuss the functions of ‘the unspeakable‘ as a cultural phenomenon. Philosophers use the term frequently with reference to their culture. In our article we will look at the socio-cultural (...) conditions of the concept of ‘the unspeakable'. While it seems that this concept is universal, functions and meanings of this concept vary depending on the cultural settings. We will examine in this article the functions of this concept comparing the use of it in different cultures with religious and mythological impact expressed in this concept. Furthermore, we will look at the linguistic settings that allow us a construction like ‘the unspeakable' to be used as a representation for something not spoken in speech, but existing in another cultural or transcendental sphere. We will show that the expression serves as a semiotic replacement for issues that could be articulated, but due to cultural limits like religion or myths as act of cultural censorship should not be articulated in speech. (shrink)

Building on Bernard Williams’ thesis about the intertwining of history and political philosophy, the essay explores how the problem of the history of dēmokratia after the late-eighteenth and over the nineteenth-century in Britain constituted a primary and critical field in which the philosophical meaning of democracy was debated. Configuring a new temporal perspective grounded in the relationship between ancient and modern democracy, historiographical works by John Gillies, William Mitford, and George Grote put forth an understanding of the concept as a (...) battlefield, involving several conflicting meanings, narratives and historical forces. This historiographical tradition highlighted the tensions underpinning the definition of democracy in the long-term temporal frame linking antiquity and modernity. So even more than contemporary philosophical and political writings, historical understanding constituted a unique concept of democracy that both concentrated and dispersed meaning; it was not just one vision of democracy, among others, but one that acquired the paradoxical power to forge some semantic stability and coherence over time, and to accentuate the threat of the concept’s break up into distinct political premises and historical moments that constituted it. (shrink)

Even with a significant increase in representation of minority identities in popular media – especially in stories of speculative fiction – the ways in which inclusivity is designed must be examined, with Lovecraft Country standing as a useful example for this scrutiny. Adapted from a novel of the same name, the show Lovecraft Country swapped the genders and sexualities of a few characters from the book to increase representation. The ways that these swaps reified tropes about diverse identities is the (...) central concern of this analysis. Using Fields and Fields's conceptualization of racecraft as a "mental terrain of pervasive beliefs," this piece seeks to identify how pervasive beliefs and rules about identity were implicated in the series. The characters of Montrose Freeman, Ruby Baptiste, and Christina Braithwhite all undergo gender and/or sexuality swaps in the adaptation from page to screen, but the ways in which stereotypical assumptions around gender and sexuality are preserved in the narrative work mostly to reproduce negative tropes around these identities. This argument details narratives of violence, avoidance, and sacrifice that are given to these gender- and sexuality-swapped characters, and illustrates how, ultimately, these narratives provide detrimental instead of productive representation of diverse identities. (shrink)

To realize a successful and collaborative interaction between human and robots remains a big challenge. Emotional reactions of the user provide crucial information for a successful interaction. These reactions carry key factors to prevent errors and fatal bidirectional misunderstanding. In cases where human–machine interaction does not proceed as expected, negative emotions, like frustration, can arise. Therefore, it is important to identify frustration in a human–machine interaction and to investigate its impact on other influencing factors such as dominance, sense of control (...) and task performance. This paper presents a study that investigates a close cooperative work situation between human and robot, and explore the influence frustration has on the interaction. The task for the participants was to hand over colored balls to two different robot systems (an anthropomorphic robot and a robotic arm). The robot systems had to throw the balls into appropriate baskets. The coordination between human and robot was controlled by various gestures and words by means of trial and error. Participants were divided into two groups, a frustration- (FRUST) and a no frustration- (NOFRUST) group. Frustration was induced by the behavior of the robotic systems which made errors during the ball handover. Subjective and objective methods were used. The sample size of participants wasN= 30 and the study was conducted in a between-subject design. Results show clear differences in perceived frustration in the two condition groups and different behavioral interactions were shown by the participants. Furthermore, frustration has a negative influence on interaction factors such as dominance and sense of control. The study provides important information concerning the influence of frustration on human–robot interaction (HRI) for the requirements of a successful, natural, and social HRI. The results (qualitative and quantitative) are discussed in favor of how a successful und effortless interaction between human and robot can be realized and what relevant factors, like appearance of the robot and influence of frustration on sense of control, have to be regarded. (shrink)

The commentaries by Warren Kinghorn and Giuseppe Butera provide me with the welcome opportunity to reaffirm and briefly address a concern that lies at the core of my work in recent years. It regards the lack of a metaphysical perspective and consequently metaphysically informed interventions, or what I recently came to term 'metaphysical care', in psychological and medical treatments when there are identifiable metaphysical assumptions at work both in clinicians and treated persons that affect the treatment and the well-being of (...) both. In the original article, this is exemplified in the failure of both psychotherapists and people affected by violence to operate with a metaphysically grounded... (shrink)

Recent empirical studies have established that disgust plays a role in moral judgment. The normative significance of this discovery remains an object of philosophical contention, however; ‘disgust skeptics’ such as Martha Nussbaum have argued that disgust is a distorting influence on moral judgment and has no legitimate role to play in assessments of moral wrongness. I argue, pace Nussbaum, that disgust’s role in the moral domain parallels its role in the physical domain. Just as physical disgust tracks physical contamination and (...) pollution, so moral disgust tracks social contamination. I begin by examining the arguments for skepticism about disgust and show that these arguments threaten to overgeneralize and lead to a widespread skepticism about the justifiability of our moral judgments. I then look at the positive arguments for according disgust a role in moral judgment, and suggest that disgust tracks invisible social contagions in much the same way as it tracks invisible physical contagions, thereby serving as a defense against the threat of socio-moral contamination. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose a systematic classification of emotions which can also characterize their nature. The first challenge we address is the submission of clear criteria for a theory of emotions that determine which mental phenomena are emotions and which are not. We suggest that emotions as a subclass of mental states are determined by their functional roles. The second and main challenge is the presentation of a classification and theory of emotions that can account for (...) all existing varieties. We argue that we must classify emotions according to four developmental stages: 1. pre-emotions as unfocussed expressive emotion states, 2. basic emotions, 3. primary cognitive emotions, and 4. secondary cognitive emotions. We suggest four types of basic emotions (fear, anger, joy and sadness) which are systematically differentiated into a diversity of more complex emotions during emotional development. The classification distinguishes between basic and non-basic emotions and our multi-factorial account considers cognitive, experiential, physiological and behavioral parameters as relevant for constituting an emotion. However, each emotion type is constituted by a typical pattern according to which some features may be more significant than others. Emotions differ strongly where these patterns of features are concerned, while their essential functional roles are the same. We argue that emotions form a unified ontological category that is coherent and can be well defined by their characteristic functional roles. Our account of emotions is supported by data from developmental psychology, neurobiology, evolutionary biology and sociology. (shrink)

Democracy and the Divine articulates a democracy that is based on the principle of giving oneself to another. For this project, the author highlights two traditions that rarely have been read side by side or considered seminal to the philosophical idea of democracy: nineteenth-century German romanticism and French postmodernism.

El siguiente articulo analiza la presencia y el tratamiento de la música clásica en la prensa española generalista frente a los suplementos de estos identificando espacios, géneros y cobertura a través de ficha. Los resultados presentan una presencia minoritaria de la música clásica frente a otros géneros musicales en la mayoría de las cabeceras de los medios generalistas frente a una mayor presencia en los suplementos priorizando la opinión frente a la información.

This Article points to a widening gap between citizenship theories and practices. Although discourses of citizenship resonate widely and are used extensively by scholars and policy makers, the author argues that the social, economic, political and even psychological processes of citizenship are shrinking in a contemporary context of global insecurity where im/migration and ever more restrictive national security concerns have become enmeshed in law, as well as in the public consciousness. As a result, this Article explores new trends of securitization (...) and related processes of marketization, racialization and the invisibilization and/or instrumentalization of women and evaluates their impact on citizenship in Canada and Britain. A citizenship regime framework structures the analysis and highlights the contraction of citizenship in both countries. In the end, despite their purported concern with citizenship, social exclusion and social cohesion, British and Canadian state’s responses serve to perpetuate feelings of insecurity on the part of both citizens and non-citizens. (shrink)

Surrogate motherhood is prohibited in Germany; more and more childless German couples therefore look for a surrogate mother abroad. Due to the partly tragic consequences that the use of surrogacy abroad can have for all parties involved, it is now time to rethink the prohibition. To this end, the author examines all the arguments put forward for and against controlled permission for their analytical rigor and coherence and sharpens the state of the debate. The work concludes with a draft law (...) that combines the results obtained - from moral-philosophical, legal-theoretical, developmental-psychological and sociological arguments to fundamental rights. (shrink)

The well-being of children and young people has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The shift to online education disrupted daily rhythms, transformed learning opportunities, and redefined social connections with peers and teachers. We here present a qualitative content analysis of responses to open-ended questions in a large-scale survey of teachers and students in Romania. We explore how their well-being has been impacted by online education through overflow effects of the sudden move to online classes; identity work at the individual (...) and group levels; and Students’ and teachers’ presentations of self in the online environment, with a focus on problematic aspects of webcam use. The results indicate that both students and teachers experienced ambivalence and diverse changes in well-being, generated by the flexibility, burdens, and disruptions of school-from-home. The identities associated with the roles of teacher and student have been challenged and opened for re-negotiation. Novel patterns have emerged in teachers’ and Students’ identity work. Failure or success at the presentation of self in online situations is relevant for the emotional valence of learning encounters, impacting well-being. Online classes have brought about new ways to control one’s presentation of self while also eliminating previous tactics and resources. The controversy regarding webcams has captured this duality: for some, the home remained a backstage that could not be safely exposed; for others, the home became a convenient front stage for school. Well-being was affected by the success of individual and collective performances, and by student-teacher asymmetries. Overall, our study of online learning indicates powerful yet variable influences on subjective well-being, which are related to overflow effects, identity work, and presentation of self. (shrink)

In this book, which forms part of the Routledge Cultural Studies Series, Adriana Bolívar focuses on the Latin American political culture and introduces an innovative way of seeing and analyzing pol...

In this paper we argue that the arts (visual arts) constitute a kind of an expressive gesture (as conceived by the French philosopher M. Merleau-Ponty), and on the basis of this hypothesis, we shall try to show that they can fulfill the presuppositions required to be addressed in comprehensive and meaningful school programs. Our central argument is that artistic activity is an expressive activity par excellence: it is an “advent”, an original operation, i.e., which, constitutes a sign as a sign, (...) implants a meaning in that which did not have one and thus, inaugurates an order and founds an institution or tradition. Accordingly, this meaning is on principle a meaning in genesis, ever to be re-created and re-interpreted. Given that, we claim that just as the arts are an attempt to visually articulate meanings, to create meaningful forms, correspondingly art education is an attempt to cultivate children’s ability to grasp, understand and respond to such meanings available from art’s expressive forms. We maintain that the role of art education is to facilitate access to various artistic approaches and to help to the development of a reflective attitude towards their significance as expressive advents. (shrink)

Interaction analysis opens promising perspectives for nursing education. Sixteen students and three teachers conducted an interaction analysis, based on video-recorded therapeutic activities. The study aims to understand the practice of self-disclosure in psychiatric nursing. How does the use of interaction analysis tools in a training setting constitute a resource for the acquisition of professional skills? We show how this training design constitutes a resource for : a) the acquisition of clinical theoretical knowledge, b) the articulation of theoretical and practical knowledge, (...) c) the development of a non-judging descriptive posture useful for the clinical observation. (shrink)

A wide-ranging, collection focusing on the practical philosophy of Williams, with many chapters on politically relevant themes and many trying to assess the importance and influence of Williams. With contributions by Roman Altshuler, Mathieu Beirlaen, Thom Brooks, Jonathan Dancy, Jennifer Flynn, Lorenzo Greco, Chris D. Herrera, James Kellenberger, Colin Koopman, Stephen Leach, Esther Abin, Nancy Matchett, Jeff McMahan, Sarah Pawlett, Jonathan Sands-Wise, Robert Talisse, and Owen Ware.

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 59 Heft: 1 Seiten: 1-25.