This article asks what the emerging computational field of sentiment analysis can teach us about the sentimental novel, and vice versa. It argues that, despite humanistic skepticism about quantitative methods and sentiment analysis’s well-known limitations (in recognizing irony, for example), sentiment analysis can help us better to understand the novel form and the sentimental novel in particular. The literary approach to computational analysis taken in this article demonstrates the ability of sentiment analysis to link large-scale observations about text data to (...) small-scale features of individual texts and reveals that the sentimental novel itself already constitutes an analytical tradition. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue presented a reinterpretation of Aristotelian virtue ethics that is contrasted with the emotivism of modern moral discourse, and provides a moral scheme that can enable a rediscovery and reimagination of a more coherent morality. Since After Virtue’s publication, this scheme has been applied to a variety of activities and occupations, and has been influential in the development of research in accounting ethics. Through a ‘close’ reading of Chaps. 14 and 15 of AV, this paper considers and (...) applies the key concepts of practices, institutions, internal and external goods, the narrative unity of a human life and tradition, and the virtues associated with these concepts. It contributes, firstly, by providing a more accurate and comprehensive application of MacIntyre’s scheme to accounting than that available in the existing literature. Secondly, it identifies areas in which MacIntyre’s scheme supports the existing approach to professional accounting ethics as articulated by the various International Federation of Accountants pronouncements as well as areas in which it provides a critique and challenge to this approach. The application ultimately provides an alternative philosophical perspective through which accounting can be examined and further research into accounting ethics pursued. (shrink)

This volume will acquaint novice philosophers with one of the most important debates in twentieth-century philosophy, and will provide seasoned readers with a ...

What is it to interpret the outputs of an opaque machine learning model? One approach is to develop interpretable machine learning techniques. These techniques aim to show how machine learning models function by providing either model-centric local or global explanations, which can be based on mechanistic interpretations (revealing the inner working mechanisms of models) or non-mechanistic approximations (showing input feature–output data relationships). In this paper, we draw on social philosophy to argue that interpreting machine learning outputs in certain normatively salient (...) domains could require appealing to a third type of explanation that we call “socio-structural” explanation. The relevance of this explanation type is motivated by the fact that machine learning models are not isolated entities but are embedded within and shaped by social structures. Socio-structural explanations aim to illustrate how social structures contribute to and partially explain the outputs of machine learning models. We demonstrate the importance of socio-structural explanations by examining a racially biased healthcare allocation algorithm. Our proposal highlights the need for transparency beyond model interpretability: understanding the outputs of machine learning systems could require a broader analysis that extends beyond the understanding of the machine learning model itself. (shrink)

Empirical investigation of the conditions under which people prefer, or disprefer, causal explanation, has suggested to many that our judgements about what causally explains what are context-sensitive in a number of ways. This has led many to suppose that whether or not a causal explanation obtains depends on contextual factors: that causal explanation is context-sensitive. Surprisingly, most accounts of metaphysical explanation, by contrast, suppose it to be context insensitive. Only recently have accounts been developed of metaphysical explanation on which it (...) is context-sensitive. To date, however, there is no empirical evidence about the context sensitivity of metaphysical explanation. In what follows we test the judgements of non-philosophers, and find that amongst non-philosophers, at least, metaphysical explanations are context-sensitive. We then consider the implications of this finding for theorising about metaphysical explanation. (shrink)

This article distinguishes between a telic and a deontic version of Derek Parfit's influential Priority View. Employing the distinction, it shows that the existence of variations in how intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts should be resolved fails to provide a compelling case in favour of relational egalitarianism and against all pure versions of the Priority View. In addition, the article argues that those variations are better understood as providing counterevidence to certain distribution-sensitive versions of consequentialism.

In this article, I focus on internal dimensions of moral responsibility. I argue that if such dimensions are real -- and it seems they are -- then moral responsibility is compatible with determinism.

Recently, a three-dimensional construct model for complex experiential Selfhood has been proposed (Fingelkurts et al., 2016b,c). According to this model, three specific subnets (or modules) of the brain self-referential network (SRN) are responsible for the manifestation of three aspects/features of the subjective sense of Selfhood. Follow up multiple studies established a tight relation between alterations in the functional integrity of the triad of SRN modules and related to them three aspects/features of the sense of self; however, the causality of this (...) relation is yet to be shown. In this article we approached the question of causality by exploring functional integrity within the three SRN modules that are thought to underlie the three phenomenal components of Selfhood while these components were manipulated mentally by experienced meditators in a controlled and independent manner. Participants were requested, in a block-randomised manner, to mentally induce states representing either increased (up-regulation) or decreased (down-regulation) sense of (a) witnessing agency (“Self”), or (b) body representational-emotional agency (“Me”), or (c) reflective/narrative agency (“I”), while their brain activity was recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG). This EEG-data was complemented by first-person phenomenological reports and standardised questionnaires which focused on subjective contents of three aspects of Selfhood. The results of the study strengthen the case for a direct causative relationship between three phenomenological aspects of Selfhood and related to them three modules of the brain SRN. Furthermore, the putative integrative model of the dynamic interrelations among three modules of the SRN has been proposed. (shrink)

According to previous research, threatening people’s belief in free will may undermine moral judgments and behavior. Four studies tested this claim. Study 1 used a Velten technique to threaten people’s belief in free will and found no effects on moral behavior, judgments of blame, and punishment decisions. Study 2 used six different threats to free will and failed to find effects on judgments of blame and wrongness. Study 3 found no effects on moral judgment when manipulating general free will beliefs (...) but found strong effects when manipulating the perceived choice capacity of the judged agent. Study 4 used pretested narratives that varied agents’ apparent free will and found that perceived choice capacity mediated the relationship between free will and blame. These results suggest that people’s general beliefs about whether free will exists have no impact on moral judgments but specific judgments about the agent’s choice capacity do. (shrink)

Conflicting answers to the question of what principles of justice are for may generate very different ways of theorizing about justice. Indeed divergent answers to it are at the heart of G. A. Cohen's disagreement with John Rawls. Cohen thinks that the roots of this disagreement lie in the constructivist method that Rawls employs, which mistakenly treats the principles that emerge from a procedure that involves factual assumptions as ultimate principles of justice. But I argue that even if Rawls were (...) to abandon his constructivism, and to accept Cohen's argument that ultimate principles of justice are not grounded directly in any facts, their divergent views concerning the proper role of principles of justice would lead them to different conclusions. I contend that even if ultimate principles of justice are not directly grounded in any facts, the role that principles of justice are needed to play may mean that their justification depends upon facts about what is feasible and facts about what is burdensome to people. Contrary to what Cohen maintains, being dependent on the facts in this manner does not preclude a principle from being ultimate; nor do principles which have this sort of dependence on the facts necessarily combine justice with other values in a way that must lead to conflation. (shrink)

This is my final editorial, and my final issue as editor of Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, so it inevitably feels like an occasion for a brief retrospective.In my first editorial (Edgar 2017), I ant...

SHUSTERMANRICHARDCambridge University Press. 2021. pp. xvi+420. £23.

Integrating affective events theory, work-family compensation, and moral balance theory, the present study proposes a model that examines how and when abusive supervisory behavior is related to employees’ deviant behavior toward their supervisor. Using a diary method that involved two surveys per day over two weeks, we found support for our model based on 707 daily observations from 130 employees. Specifically, anger toward one’s supervisor mediated the relationship between abusive supervisory behavior and deviant behavior toward one’s supervisor. In addition, the (...) degree to which employees engaged in deviant behavior toward their supervisor depended on their prior-day deviant behavior toward their family. When employees engaged in lower prior-day deviant behavior toward their family, anger toward their supervisor was positively related to subsequent deviant behavior toward their supervisor. In contrast, when employees had higher prior-day deviant behavior toward their family, the relationship between anger toward their supervisor and deviant behavior toward their supervisor was weaker. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research on abusive supervision, work-family interface, and moral balance theory. (shrink)

This paper proposes an account of mathematical reasoning as parallel in structure: the arguments which mathematicians use to persuade each other of their results comprise the argumentational structure; the inferential structure is composed of derivations which offer a formal counterpart to these arguments. Some conflicts about the foundations of mathematics correspond to disagreements over which steps should be admissible in the inferential structure. Similarly, disagreements over the admissibility of steps in the argumentational structure correspond to different views about mathematical practice. (...) The latter steps may be analysed in terms of argumentation schemes. Three broad types of scheme are distinguished, a distinction which is then used to characterize and evaluate four contrasting approaches to mathematical practice. (shrink)

The UWI system of universities celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2023 and as part of reflecting on this milestone the following study will examine the role of Caribbean traditional music in the UWI system and explore traditional Caribbean methods of teaching and learning music as well as the ways in which Caribbean traditional music and its associated culture have connected UWI students with local communities in Jamaica and Trinidad. Finally, through an analysis of the proliferation and teaching of traditional Caribbean (...) music ensembles at UWI’s historic campus locales in Trinidad and Jamaica, this study will offer best practices for UWI’s recently added Five Islands campus in Antigua (established in 2019) as it looks to integrate the study of traditional and contemporary music into its curriculum and campus life in an academically rigorous and culturally relevant fashion. (shrink)

Objective: The value of spontaneous EEG oscillations in distinguishing patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states was studied. Methods: We quantified dynamic repertoire of EEG oscillations in resting condition with closed eyes in patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states (VS and MCS). The exact composition of EEG oscillations was assessed by the probability-classification analysis of short-term EEG spectral patterns. Results: The probability of delta, theta and slow-alpha oscillations occurrence was smaller for patients in MCS than for VS. Additionally, only (...) patients in MCS demonstrated fast-alpha oscillation occurrence. Depending on the type and composition of EEG oscillations, the probability of their occurrence was either aetiology dependent or independent. The probability of EEG oscillations occurrence differentiated brain injuries with different aetiologies. Conclusions: Spontaneous EEG oscillations have a potential value in distinguishing patients in VS and MCS. Significance: This work may have implications for clinical care, rehabilitative programs and medical–legal decisions in patients with impaired consciousness states following coma due to acute brain injuries. (shrink)

I consider two puzzles in which an agent undergoes a sequence of decision problems. In both cases it is possible to respond rationally to any given problem yet it is impossible to respond rationally to every problem in the sequence, even though the choices are independent. In particular, although it might be a requirement of rationality that one must respond in a certain way at each point in the sequence, it seems it cannot be a requirement to respond as such (...) at every point for that would be to require the impossible. (shrink)

An overview of analytic philosophy of music.

In this paper I argue that, for Spinoza, the power to produce effects through one's nature alone is the key constituent of the good life. Indeed, to exist in the strict sense is to be the causal source of effects. On this reading, a temporally long life that is entirely governed by causal factors external to one's essence is not a genuine existence.

According to an influential view of practical reason and rational agency, a person acts for a reason only if she recognizes some consideration to be a reason, where this recognition motivates her to act. I call this requirement the guidance condition on acting for a reason. Despite its intuitive appeal, the guidance condition appears to generate a vicious regress. At least one proponent of the guidance condition, Christine M. Korsgaard, is sensitive to this regress worry, and her appeal in recent (...) work to the constitutive principles of action can be seen, in part, as a response to it. I argue, however, that if we are to appeal to the constitutive principles of action to resolve the regress, then we must determine whether acting on such principles is also subject to the guidance condition. This raises a dilemma. If following these principles is subject to the guidance condition, then the regress remains unresolved. But if not, then the rationale for applying it to acting for a reason vanishes as well. I conclude that we should embrace an account of acting for a reason that rejects the guidance condition. (shrink)

Monuments commemorating racists are theoretically and practically controversial. Just what these monuments represent is interpreted, in part, on grounds of identity. Since the public nature of such monuments renders them polysemous, ways of reasonably thinking about the relevant identity-based claims are needed. A distinction between an individualistic, psychological notion of identity and an interpersonal, way-of-living notion of identity is drawn. The former notion is illegitimate as a basis of claims about how to interpret public symbols, but the latter notion is (...) conceptually defensible and politically admissible. Use of ways of living to frame discourse about identity and racist monuments generates four sorts of question. These questions raise issues that are respectively a) internal to particular ways of living, b) pertinent to relations between particular ways of living, or c) objective with regard to ways of living, or d) the product of political discussion among ways of living. Such examples as the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia and the (now-removed) statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in Victoria, British Columbia are examined to show how polysemy can be recognized and navigated by focusing on ways of living rather than on narrowly psychological aspects of identity. Although in principle both preservationist and removalist positions can be defensible with regard to particular statues, there is reason to think that a general removalist position is prima facie attractive. (shrink)

Eric Schwitzgebel, Fiery Cushman, and Joshua Rust have conducted a series of studies of the thought and behavior of professional ethicists. They have found no evidence that ethical reflection yields distinctive improvements in behavior. This work has been done on English-speaking ethicists. Philipp Schönegger and Johannes Wagner replicated one study with German-speaking professors. Their results are almost the same, except for finding that German-speaking ethicists were more likely to be vegetarian than non-ethicists. The present paper devises and evaluates eleven psychological (...) hypotheses (along with one from Schönegger and Wagner) aimed at explaining why ethical reflection might have motivational influence for this topic but not for others. Three hypotheses are judged to be plausible at this initial stage: generic emotional support, perception of cost as a source of emotional obstacles, and social categorization. (shrink)

This paper concerns the interface between relevant logics and recent developments in semantics for hyperintensional operators. In the latter area, the notion of topicality or aboutness has begun to play an explicit modeling role, with classes of models being studied which incorporate representations of topics, and of operations on topics. The idea is to use these topics in the evaluations of formulas including hyperintensional operators in order to explain why classically equivalent formulas may not be intersubstitutable in contexts using those (...) operators—though classically equivalent, if a pair of formulas can be interpreted to concern totally unrelated topics, then we should not be able to substitute one for the other in contexts which are sensitive to topics. Relevant logics, and the central relevance property of Variable Sharing, have been read as concerning something like topics in the past, and recently this angle on relevance has seen renewed interest. In this paper, I’ll develop and motivate a method for representing topics in the matrix models of logics, and apply this method to _R_ and its matrix models (given by De Morgan monoids) to argue that there is a clear semantic perspective on topicality according to which _R_ is topic-sensitive as a logic. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction; 2. Peace; 3. Rule of law; 4. Human rights; 5. Democracy; 6. Liberty; 7. The institutional ethos of the EU; 8. Towards the EU as a just institution; 9. Concluding proposals.

Originally published in 1982. This volume explores some features of modern philosophy of science from the point of view of their utility for sociology’s self-understanding. Recently philosophers of science have broken with the empiricism once fundamental to their discipline, and have sought alternative methods of science. Founded on the belief that these developments are significant for sociologists, the book explores the failings of the old "received view" and some of the more recent alternatives. It proposes a schematic outline of the (...) structure of inquiry, paying detailed attention to questions about the nature of theory, explanation and demonstration. (shrink)

The original version of this article unfortunately contains mistakes.