In October 2016, the White House, the European Parliament, and the UK House of Commons each issued a report outlining their visions on how to prepare society for the widespread use of artificial intelligence. In this article, we provide a comparative assessment of these three reports in order to facilitate the design of policies favourable to the development of a ‘good AI society’. To do so, we examine how each report addresses the following three topics: the development of a ‘good (...) AI society’; the role and responsibility of the government, the private sector, and the research community in pursuing such a development; and where the recommendations to support such a development may be in need of improvement. Our analysis concludes that the reports address adequately various ethical, social, and economic topics, but come short of providing an overarching political vision and long-term strategy for the development of a ‘good AI society’. In order to contribute to fill this gap, in the conclusion we suggest a two-pronged approach. (shrink)

This article explores the relation among illness, home, and belonging. Through a feminist phenomenological framework, I describe the disorientations of being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and living with mental illness. This research anticipates the consequences of illness and serious disorientations for a conception of belonging as seamless body–world compatibility. Instead, this article examines how the stability of bodily dwellings in experiences of disorientation can suggest ways of being in the world that are more attentive to interdependency, unpredictability, and change (...) in human experience. I argue that these types of dwellings function as a more capacious and apposite metaphor to account for variations in belonging. This discussion outlines the ethical importance of building worlds that make room for different ways of being at home in and through our interactions with others. Although my discussion does not supply norms for ethical action, I contend that a feminist phenomenology of illness generates saliences and illuminates sensibilities that can transform our ways of being with others. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that the Stranger’s interest in keeping the philosopher and the sophist distinct is connected, primarily, to his assessment of the charges ofsophistry advanced against Socrates, which compels him to defend Socrates from these unduly advanced accusations. On this basis, I establish that the Stranger’s task in the Sophist, namely to keep philosophy distinct from sophistry, is intimately tied to the project of securing justice and is therefore not merely of theoretical importance but is also—and essentially—of (...) political and ethical significance. (shrink)

Global challenge-led research seeks to contribute to solution-generation for complex problems. Multicultural, multidisciplinary, and multisectoral teams must be capable of operating in highly demanding contexts. This brings with it a swathe of ethical conflicts that require quick and effective solutions that respect both international conventions and cultural diversity. The objective of this article is to describe the process of creating a toolkit designed to support global researchers in navigating these ethical challenges. The process of creating the toolkit embodied the model (...) of ethical research practice that it advocates. Specifically, at the heart of ethical decision-making is consideration of the following: Place, solutions must be relevant to the context in which they are to be used; People, those impacted by the outcomes must be partners in co-creation; Principles, ethical projects must be guided by clear values; and Precedent, the existing evidence-base should guide the project and, in turn, the project should extend the evidence-base. It is the thesis underlying the toolkit that consideration of these 4Ps provides a strong basis for understanding ethical conflicts and allows for the generation of potential solutions. This toolkit has been designed in two phases of collaborative work. More than 200 researchers participated from more than 30 countries and more than 60 different disciplines. This allowed us to develop a model for contextual, dynamic analysis of ethical conflicts in global research that is complementary to traditional codes of ethics. It emphasizes the need to consider ethical analysis as an iterative, reflective, process relevant at all stages of the research journey, including, ultimately, in evaluating the legacy of a project. The toolkit is presented as an open access website to promote universal access. A downloadable “pocket guide” version is also now available in 11 languages. (shrink)

Cultured meat, like any new technology, raises inevitable ethical issues. For example, on animal ethics grounds, it may be argued that reformed livestock farming in which animals’ lives are worth living constitutes a better alternative than cultured meat, which, along with veganism, implies the extinction of farm animals. Another ethical argument is that, just as we would undermine human dignity by producing and consuming meat that is grown from human cells, eating meat that is grown from nonhuman animal cells would (...) violate animal dignity because it is a way to create an us and them, which would make veganism the only ethical option. The present study challenges this argument. First, I examine the fundamental issue of whether cultured meat provides such an attack on animal dignity. The second issue is whether, assuming that it is true that cultured meat undermines animal dignity, it would be acceptable to reject cultured meat even though this implies sacrificing nonhuman animals. (shrink)

The identification of regularities in time-dependent functional structures leads to turn patterns, observed according to a given time resolution, into functional attractors on which it is first possible to found any complex system. Rationality is introduced under the form of probabilities for functions to make up a given attractor beyond the first rough descriptive pattern. These physically characterized attractors are the medium enabling the definition of value as an extension of the Prospect Theory overall utility, considering that the actions produced (...) by their functions are outcomes which are modulated by PT psychological value functions and an operational value appears naturally as an optimization taking account of diminishing sensitivity to action efficiency. Nevertheless, this diminishing sensitivity, when applied to negative actions, introduces also a bias of negative externalities underestimation. An attractor-based complex system evolution in an industrial context is described according to Manufacturing Readiness Level and to the main milestones of an industrial project, corresponding to singular points of maturity expressed in terms of probability—or decision—weighting, up to the system release to the market. So, a maturity assessment heuristics is proposed both for the system development and for its marketing. The supply and demand law is established, highlighting that the ideal case of a purely mature economy can be a good approximation reducing the complexity of the exchanges analysis. Equilibria are discussed as depending on an initial point from which the usual Gaussian probability distribution and a speculative weight qualify equilibrium. (shrink)

Many linguists and philosophers of language explain linguistic meaning in terms of truth conditions. This book focuses on the meanings of expressions that escape such truth-conditional treatment, in particular the concessives: but , even if , and although . Corinne Iten proposes semantic analyses of these expressions based on the cognitive framework of relevance theory. A thoroughly cognitive approach to linguistic meaning is presented in which linguistic forms are seen as mapping onto mental entities, rather than individuals and properties (...) in the real world. Researchers and advanced students in pragmatics will find this account lucid, clear and accessible. (shrink)

This allegory is among the most well-traversed passages in Plato's dialogues and deservedly so. Its emotional impact is undeniable, yet it confronts the reader with several problems of interpretation. There is a strong sense that it is of central importance to the crucial questions of the Platonic philosopher's education and his role in society, and it possibly holds one key to an understanding of the Republic as a whole.

At healthcare facilities worldwide, women during childbirth undergo medical procedures they haven’t consented to and experience mistreatment and disrespect. This phenomenon is recognized as obstetric violence (OV), a distinct form of gender violence. The resulting trauma carries both immediate and long-term implications, making it vital to address for promoting women’s health. OV is partly shaped by a narrow, paternalistic conception of vulnerability. A flawed conception of the vulnerability of pregnant women and fetuses has opened the door to medical control and (...) coercion during childbirth. In this paper we examine what role notions of vulnerability play in perpetuating OV and consider recent attitudinal shifts in research ethics as a model for addressing it. (shrink)

This article is based on a roundtable held at the Association of Internet Researchers annual conference in 2017, in Tartu, Estonia. The roundtable was organized by the Oxford Internet Institute’s Digital Ethics Lab. It was entitled “Artificial Intelligence and the Good Society”. It brought together four scholars—Michael Zimmer, Stine Lomborg, Ben Zevenbergen, and Corinne Cath—to discuss the promises and perils of artificial intelligence, in particular what ethical frameworks are needed to guide AI’s rapid development and increased use in societies. (...) The paper covers three case studies. They give a distinct overview of the ethical issues raised by the use of AI at different levels of analysis: top-down application of AI, bottom-up use of AI, and how academics and governments have reacted to these new challenges. From the case studies, four areas emerged. They represent some of the most topical ethical questions related to AI: its uses, its users, its designers, and the data that fuel it. Each of them provided a specific subset of ethical concerns that need further investigation. In conclusion, three recommendations are formulated for researchers and regulators to ensure the AI has a net-positive impact on society. (shrink)

A growing body of work suggests that the presence of women and of independent directors on boards of directors is associated with higher corporate environmental performance. However, the mechanisms linking board composition to corporate environmental performance are not well understood. This study proposes and empirically tests the mediating role of sustainability-themed alliances in the relationship between board composition and corporate environmental performance. Using the population of public oil and gas firms in the United States as the sample, the study relies (...) on renewable energy alliances to measure sustainability-themed alliances and longitudinally analyzes lagged data for independent and control variables. The study found that the higher the representation of women on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances, and the higher the representation of independent directors on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances. Such alliances, in turn, positively contribute to corporate environmental performance. This paper discusses the study’s contributions to the board composition-social performance literature. (shrink)

This essay denaturalizes the taken-for-granted meaning of ‘access’ and interrogates its role and lived meaning in ableist social worlds, with a focus on spaces of higher education. I suggest that legalistic approaches to access need ‘cripping’ by a disability framework. Currently, these approaches (1) miss the intersubjective sociality of being-in-the-world; (2) they prioritize a narrow conception of access focused on ‘physical’ access and ‘physical’ space (a typology I contest); (3) they approach access as frozen in time, rather than as a (...) relational and temporally dynamic process (4); and, finally, they contribute to bureaucratizing and privatizing disability knowledge. I examine ‘access’ through the lens of belonging by asking how we orient ourselves in spaces shaped by oppressive social norms. I argue that ableist lifeworlds generate serious disorientations for disabled people that are lasting, structurally enforced, and harmful or debilitating. (shrink)

The context of economic globalization has contributed to the emergence of a new form of social action which has spread into the economic sphere in the form of the new social economic movements. The emblematic figure of this new generation of social movements is fair trade, which influences the economy towards political or social ends. Having emerged from multiple alternative trade practices, fair trade has gradually become institutionalized since the professionalization of World Shops, the arrival of fair trade products in (...) the food industry, and the establishment of an official "fair trade" label. With the strength that this institutionalization has generated, fair trade can now be considered a real trade system that questions, as much as it renews, the traditional economic system. In parallel, this transformation has exacerbated the tensions within the movement, which can be characterized as a clash between a "radical, militant" pole and a "softer, more commercial" one. However, it is not the actual institutionalization of fair trade which is being debated among fair trade actors on either side of the fence, but rather the challenges inherent in finding an economic institutionalization acceptable to social economic movements. Therefore the institutionalization process of fair trade should not be seen as mere degradation of social action, but rather as typical of the institutionalization process of new social economic movements. If we need to worry about the highjacking and alteration of the fair trade movement by the dominant economic system, the opposite is no less likely, as new social economic movements contribute to an ethical restructuring of markets. (shrink)

Corinne de González De Léon; Classificatory Schemes and the Justification of Educational Content: a re-interpretation of the Hirstian approach, Journal of Philo.

This paper explores the potential for psychic conflict within Seneca's moral psychology. Some scholars have taken Seneca's explicit claim in De Ira that the soul is unitary to preclude any kind of simultaneous psychic conflict, while other interpreters have suggested that Seneca views all cases of anger as instances of akrasia. I argue that Seneca's account of anger provides the resources for accommodating some types of simultaneous psychic conflict; however, he denies the possibility of psychic conflict between two action-generating impulses, (...) thus rejecting the phenomena of genuine akrasia and enkrateia. Although superficially counterintuitive, Seneca's cognitivist account of anger, according to which anger is complex and requires assent to the propositions that ‘I have been wronged’ and ‘I ought to seek revenge’, renders his denial of akrasia and enkrateia more plausible. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a compelling argument against the thesis that Aristotle’s understanding of the relation between the soul and the body can be construed asfunctionalist, despite some passages that would seem to support such an interpretation. Toward this end, in section I of the essay I offer an interpretation of Aristotle’s account of the soul-body relation that emphasizes the non-contingent nature of the connection between the soul and a specific kind of body, arguing that Aristotle’s account of the (...) soul as the “form” and “actuality” of the living thing, and of the organic body as its “matter” and “potentiality,” shows their necessary relation with one another. In section II, I present the functionalist account of mind, placing especial emphasis on its post-Cartesian genesis, which takes seriously the “problematic” status of the relation between mind and body. I then attempt to show, in section III, how because functionalism holds that psychic capacities can be realized within a number of different material bases, including physical and artificial systems, it is incompatible with Aristotle’s conception of the necessary soul-body relation, and thus that Aristotle’s account of psuche is not best construed as functionalist. (shrink)

This paper takes Porochista Khakpour’s personal narrative of chronic illness, disability, and addiction in Sick: A Memoir (2018) as a starting point to reflect on social and material features of sick bodily subjectivity. In ways heretofore largely unexplored by tradi-tional phenomenologies of illness, I ask what different modalities of the body come to light if we move beyond the privatization of dis-ease as a biological dysfunction and instead bring into focus its re-lation with conditions of existence that make and keep (...) some of us sick. (shrink)

Le sacramentalisme qu’on s’accorde, depuis longtemps déjà, à reconnaître comme excessif à la fin du Moyen Âge devait conduire Luther puis les autres Réformateurs à dénoncer la « captivité babylonienne » de l’Eglise, notamment sous l’espèce d’une sorte d’emprisonnement de la « Parole de Dieu » dans l’institution sacramentelle, emprisonnement qui fut analogiquement dénoncé, à l’époque moderne, dans l’institution magistérielle de l’Eglise. Cette opposition entre Parole et Sacrement a en outre connu au XXe siècle une sorte de redoublement avec la (...) dichotomie entre la « foi » et la « religion », dichotomie qui a d’ailleurs traversé aussi bien le camp « catholique » que le camp « protestant », la foi étant mise du côté de la Parole, censée être nécessairement plus « pure » que les sacrements, lesquels relèveraient plutôt de la « religion » avec toutes les ambiguïtés que prend alors le terme devenu proche de la « magie ». La donne ayant aujourd’hui considérablement changé, il semble clair que l’on peut, dans la fidélité à la régulation dogmatique de la foi catholique, penser théologiquement les sacrements dans le sillage direct de la Parole.For a long time an agreement to recognize sacramentalism as excessive at the end of the Middle Ages would lead Luther and the other Reformers to denounce the “Babylonian captivity” of the Church, notably as a kind of imprisonment of the “Word of God” in the sacramental institution, imprisonment that was denounced analogically, in modern times, in the magisterial institution of the Church. This opposition between Word and Sacrament has moreover resurfaced in the 20th century, as a dichotomy between “faith” and “religion.” This dichotomy passed through both the “Catholic” and the “Protestant” camps. Faith was allied with the Word, because it was deemed to be necessarily “purer” than the sacraments, which were more a product of “religion” with all its ambiguities, which then takes on a connotation close to “magic.” Perspectives have considerably changed today, so it seems clear that it is possible to remain faithful to the dogmas of the Catholic faith and theologically view the sacraments as flowing directly from the Word. (shrink)

Résumé Interpréter serait trouver dans l’œuvre l’épaisseur temporelle qui lui assure sa force et sa survie. Si traduction et commentaire sont l’acquittement d’une double dette, en ce qu’ils donnent à l’œuvre passée son avenir et au présent l’héritage d’un passé, ils ont à construire dans le texte littéraire les conditions même de sa transmission. C’est-à-dire, comme le pense Benjamin, à trouver dans quel chassé-croisé des temps l’œuvre conjugue une expérience tout à la fois historique et atemporelle.

Gilles Deleuze et Jean-François Lyotard sont deux figures centrales de la pensée française contemporaine. Leur connivence, née dans les années 1970 alors qu'ils enseignent à l'Université expérimentale de Vincennes, procède d'une critique partagée de l'humanisme classique, d'une distance comparable à l'égard du structuralisme, enfin d'une thématisation commune du désir et de la sensibilité. La publication, à deux ans d'intervalle, de L'Anti-Oedipe et d'Economie libidinale confirme cette proximité : les auteurs y soutiennent des positions éthiques et politiques tout aussi intempestives. On (...) aurait pourtant tort de croire que leurs idées relèvent d'une même «philosophie de la différence», expression qui caractérise la seule entreprise de Deleuze. Dès les années 1980, Lyotard et Deleuze ont en effet divergé sur le sens à accorder à la psychanalyse, à l'oeuvre de Wittgenstein ou encore à l'obligation morale. Le propos du présent volume est de mettre à profit quarante années de recul pour confronter à nouveaux frais ces deux représentants de la philosophie française, en restituant l'héritage, l'évolution et le prolongement de leurs pensées respectives. Les contributions ici réunies déploient le large éventail des disciplines que Deleuze et Lyotard ont explorées et discutées. Elles s'intéressent aussi bien à la période de leur plus grande proximité théorique qu'à l'apparition des différends les opposant, au moment même de l'avènement, chez Lyotard, du concept de «différend». (shrink)

The article is based on a doctoral research on reception in social work: « Client reception: an analyzer professional implications in social work. Socio-clinical research CCAS » (Rougerie, 2015). This research has for object the reception, worked from the analysis of the occupational implications of the employees. I approach the issue of collaborative research from the perspective of the researcher, the analysis of its involvement and of the effects among social workers, administrative staff or animation staff concerned and involved in (...) the research in an establishment head of the french territorial civil service. The analysis of the involvement of the researcher participates in the participatory and collaborative dynamics voluntarily initiated through the search feature. The collaborative dimension to act in the negotiation of the work done on the ground. The posture of the researcher is then posed as the keystone to building the research collaboration. It hatched the search inquiry. This negotiation is involved in creating cooperative acting out between researcher and professional. Collaborative research becomes a space of co-construction of knowledge that has impact on professional practices as the researcher that the practitioner.It produces knowledge about the function of reception. (shrink)

Friendship (philia) plays a prominent role in Aristotle’s ethical thought. It is only within the context of his discussions of philia that Aristotle explicitly mentions acting for the sake of another’s good: friends, he claims, wish and do good things for one another for the sake of the friend. However, it is not clear whether Aristotle limits disinterested wishing well to the complete friendships of virtuous agents. I argue that he does not; friends of all varieties, to the extent that (...) they are friends at all, wish and act well for the friend’s sake. I also consider whether Aristotle’s remarks on self-love and friendship might provide reason for thinking that love for others is and ought to be an extension of self-love. I reject the idea that love for a friend is justified by self-love: the virtuous agent does not care about the good of her friends only insofar as she sees those friends as her other selves. (shrink)

Le corpus PhraséoRoChe se centre sur le roman de chevalerie de langue française écrit en prose. Il rassemble des textes issus d’œuvres produites entre le XIIIe siècle et le XVIIe siècle, période bornée par la naissance et la disparition de ce genre textuel. Pour permettre des interrogations par le lecteur d’aujourd’hui d’un corpus outillé embrassant une diachronie aussi longue, il faut faire des choix concernant l’évolution de la langue, non seulement en traitant le décalage entre le français contemporain et la (...) langue des textes retenus mais aussi en faisant face aux difficultés liées à l’hétérogénéité de l’ancien français, du moyen français et du français préclassique. Quels choix méthodologiques peuvent être pertinents en vue de l’objectif défini, à savoir une exploitation de type linguistique, stylistique ou littéraire? Les collaborateurs du projet se sont heurtés à la triple difficulté de rester fidèles aux textes, d’intégrer la diversité des pratiques éditoriales des chercheurs selon les étapes de l’histoire du français et d’unifier le plus possible les principes de traitement pour faciliter la réception actuelle. Le présent article rend compte des deux volets de l’opération : la sélection et la transcription d’un ensemble de 40 textes, d’abord, et l’annotation au moyen de balises structurelles, d’étiquettes lexicales et d’étiquettes morphosyntaxiques, ensuite. (shrink)

Les etudes ici rassemblees interrogent les articulations et desarticulations que Jean-Francois Lyotard place au principe du langage. Le volume dessine ainsi les lignes de force et les deplacements de sa pensee, ses presupposes et ses apories. Il montre les malentendus et les polemiques suscites par sa reecriture radicale de la rationalite. Pas de langage en general, dit Lyotard, mais des langages multiples, des types de discours heterogenes que la politique brasse sans pacifier leurs conflits. La recherche du consensus, dont l' (...) ethique de la discussion a souligne l'importance, tend a occulter les differends qui divisent les fins respectives des genres de discours. On ne peut pas etre pacifiste en matiere de phrases, et pas indifferent. Car tout enchainement discursif signe la victoire d'un genre et porte tort aux autres. Sans compter que la parole, quel qu'en soit le registre, eclipse par principe ce qui echappe aux contraintes linguistiques, ce champ de la sensation et du sentiment que Discours, figure explorait, des 1971, en inventant le figural. Apres 1983, apres l' ontologie des phrases du Differend, Lyotard cherche a cerner ce que les mots laissent en souffrance et dont ils doivent pourtant temoigner. Phrase-affect, infantia, donation sensible, Chose sont quelques-uns des noms sous lesquels il pense alors ce qui resiste au langage, le travaille de l'interieur et signe la difficulte de l'ecriture.Ont participe a ce volume Isabelle Aubert, Geoffrey Bennington, Gaelle Bernard, Corinne Enaudeau, Frederic Fruteau de Laclos, Alberto Gualandi, Laurence Kahn, Charlotte Murgier, Andreas Niederberger, Sophie Nordmann, Michel Olivier, Claire Pages, Ronit Peleg, Gerard Raulet, Jean-Francois Rey, Jean-Michel Salanskis, Francois-David Sebbah, Gerald Sfez, Rieke Trimcev. (shrink)

In this commentary, we respond to the editorial letter by Professor Luciano Floridi entitled “AI as a public service: Learning from Amsterdam and Helsinki.” Here, Floridi considers the positive impact of municipal AI registers, which collect a limited number of algorithmic systems used by the city of Amsterdam and Helsinki. We question a number of assumptions about AI registers as a governance model for automated systems. We start with recent attempts to normalize AI by decontextualizing and depoliticizing it, which is (...) a fraught political project that encourages what we call ‘ethics theater’ given the proven dangers of using these systems in the context of the digital welfare state. We agree with Floridi that much can be learned from these registers about the role of AI systems in municipal city management. The lessons we draw, on the basis of our extensive ethnographic engagement with digital wellfare states, are distinctly less optimistic. (shrink)

Historian, city planner, international lecturer, and early advocate of interdisciplinary study, Corinne LathropGIlb draws on disciplines beyond the conventional study of history to explore such diverse topics as symbolismin city planning, biorhythms as determinants of creativity, the intertwined histories of liberalism andcorporatism, and the role of beauty in public policy. Woven as a subtext throughout this collection ofarticles, speeches, and other short writings is Dr. Gilb's inquiry into the dynamic between inner history ("thearchitecture of self-space") and outer history. Thought-provoking (...) and entertaining, Toward Holistic History istimely in its call for an historiography that recognizes the "great honeycomb" of pluralisms that defines our world. (shrink)

Braitenberg et al.'s target article presents the best current integration of anatomical and physiological data, and provides a qualitative description of cerebellar function in terms of the dynamics of processes based on the geometry of the cerebellar cortex. We compare the proposed model to our own quantitative model based on the concept of Purkinjeunit.

Il s’avère nécessaire d’élaborer une théologie fondamentale de la sacramentalité qui implique une réévaluation de notre rapport à la théologie sacramentaire scolastique et invite à la fois à en mesurer les limites et à s’alimenter de ce qu’elle a de meilleur . Parmi les points qui requièrent une vigilance particulière, l’auteur aborde les sacrements en tant qu’actions de l’Église , le lien intime entre Parole et Sacrement . Il évoque également l’anamnèse eucharistique , l’épiclèse sacramentelle et la dimension eschatologique des (...) sacrements.It would appear necessary to set out a fundamental theology of sacramentality that entails re-evaluating our relationship to scholastic sacramentary theology and incites us both to measure its limits and to take nourishment in the best it has to offer . Among the points that require particular attention, the author examines the sacraments as actions of the Church , the intimate relationship between Word and Sacrament . He also takes up the question of Eucharistic anamnesis , sacramental epiclesis and the eschatological dimension of the sacraments. (shrink)