The influential stage of Internet of Things has reformed all fields of life in general but specifically with the emergence of artificial intelligence has drawn the attention of researchers into a new paradigm of life standard. This revolution has been accepted around the globe for making life easier with the use of intelligent devices such as smart sensors, actuators, and many other devices. AI-enabled devices are more intelligent and capable of doing a specific task which saves a lot of resources (...) and time. Different approaches are available in the existing literature to tackle diverse issues of real life based on AI and IoT systems. The role of decision-making has its own importance in the AI-enabled and IoT systems. In-depth knowledge of the existing literature is dire need of the research community to summarize the literature in effective way by which practitioners and researchers can benefit from the prevailing proofs and suggest new solutions for solving a particular problem of AI-enabled sensing and decision-making for the IoT system. To facilitate research community, the proposed study presents a systematic literature review of the existing literature, organizes the evidences in a systematic way, and then analyzes it for future research. The study reported the literature of the last 5 years based on the research questions, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and quality assessment of the selected study. Finally, derivations are drawn from the included paper for future research. (shrink)

Richard Miller's two central theses rest on dubious predictions, and, more important, are morally objectionable. The United States would be perpetrating a major injustice if it enabled the Taliban to rule over any part of the territory and over any person.

What kind of futures does agro-food imaginaries enable and who can get involved in the making of agro-food futures? In this respect, what can the increasingly influential idea of circular economy potentially offer in terms of enabling more sustainable agrofood futures? We approach this task by first outlining the interconnected challenges that the agro-food system is facing related to environmental degradation, economic crises and social problems. Then we consider the way these challenges are being addressed in agro-food studies. We (...) argue that agro-food research in recent years has seen important contributions in relation to studies of alternative food networks and the “quality” turn. These research agendas have challenged the current logic of the food system in terms of offering alternative visions of future development. We highlight two examples from the literature—the eco-economy and the integrated territorial agri-food paradigm—that develop broader frameworks for rethinking the future of the agro-food system and which have distinguished themselves in contrast to the industrialized and globalized conventional food system. We find that with respect to reorienting and reconfiguring economic structures and relations all three approaches share a common goal, but circular economy stands out in relation to the actors that are included by, for example, emphasizing collaborations and partnerships with extant agro-food businesses. Also with regards to scalar politics, it would be prudent to consider the potentials offered by the increasingly influential ideas around circular economy. (shrink)

The influential stage of Internet of Things has reformed all fields of life in general but specifically with the emergence of artificial intelligence has drawn the attention of researchers into a new paradigm of life standard. This revolution has been accepted around the globe for making life easier with the use of intelligent devices such as smart sensors, actuators, and many other devices. AI-enabled devices are more intelligent and capable of doing a specific task which saves a lot of resources (...) and time. Different approaches are available in the existing literature to tackle diverse issues of real life based on AI and IoT systems. The role of decision-making has its own importance in the AI-enabled and IoT systems. In-depth knowledge of the existing literature is dire need of the research community to summarize the literature in effective way by which practitioners and researchers can benefit from the prevailing proofs and suggest new solutions for solving a particular problem of AI-enabled sensing and decision-making for the IoT system. To facilitate research community, the proposed study presents a systematic literature review of the existing literature, organizes the evidences in a systematic way, and then analyzes it for future research. The study reported the literature of the last 5 years based on the research questions, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and quality assessment of the selected study. Finally, derivations are drawn from the included paper for future research. (shrink)

This article seeks to contribute to the challenge of presenting the silenced voices of excluded groups in society by means of a philosophic community of inquiry composed primarily of children and young adults. It proposes a theoretical model named ‘enabling identity’ that presents the stages whereby, under the guiding role played by the community of philosophic inquiry, the hegemonic meta-narrative of the mainstream society makes room for the identity of members of marginalised groups. The model is based on the (...) recognition of diverse narratives within a web of communal narratives that does not favour the meta-narrative. It reports on the experiences of moderators and students from weak and excluded sectors of society in two countries whose participation in communities of philosophical inquiry gave them not only a “voice” but also a presence and identity. (shrink)

Why does an argument end up in the final court decision? Was it deliberated or questioned during the oral hearings? Was there something in the hearings that triggered a particular judge to write a dissenting opinion? Despite the availability of the final judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), none of these legal research questions can currently be answered as the ECHR’s multilingual oral hearings are not transcribed, structured, or speaker-attributed. We address this fundamental gap by presenting LaCour!, (...) the first corpus of textual oral arguments of the ECHR, consisting of 154 full hearings (2.1 million tokens from over 267 h of video footage) in English, French, and other court languages, each linked to the corresponding final judgment documents. In addition to the transcribed and partially manually corrected text from the video, we provide sentence-level timestamps and manually annotated role and language labels. We also showcase LaCour! in a set of experiments that explore the interplay between questions and dissenting opinions. Apart from the use cases in legal NLP, we hope that law students or other interested parties will also use LaCour! as a learning resource, as it is freely available in various formats at https://huggingface.co/datasets/TrustHLT/LaCour. (shrink)

The purpose of this qualitative research is to conceptualize the factors that influence human flourishing. Data has been gathered through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with thirty global heads of Human Resources of manufacturing companies in India and South Asia. Data from these interviews are analyzed using grounded theory methodology to categorize concepts and create a conceptual model of the main themes which contribute to human flourishing. This study highlights three such themes: (1) opportunities for advancement; (2) personal capability; and (3) leading (...) people inclusively. This article provides implications for a more complete model for entrepreneurs, policy makers, and HR heads to understand the conditions necessary for human flourishing, filling a literature gap in the study of human flourishing from the perspective of an employer. (shrink)

This article argues that personal medical data should be made available for scientific research, by enabling and encouraging individuals to donate their medical records once deceased, similar to the way in which they can already donate organs or bodies. This research is part of a project on posthumous medical data donation developed by the Digital Ethics Lab at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Ten arguments are provided to support the need to foster posthumous medical data (...) donation. Two major risks are also identified—harm to others, and lack of control over the use of data—which could follow from unregulated donation of medical data. The argument that record-based medical research should proceed without the need to secure informed consent is rejected, and instead a voluntary and participatory approach to using personal medical data should be followed. The analysis concludes by stressing the need to develop an ethical code for data donation to minimise the risks, and offers five foundational principles for ethical medical data donation suggested as a draft code. (shrink)

Critical thinking is crucial in today’s environments, yet university students show low levels, requiring targeted interventions. The Socratic method is recognized for critical thinking development, while Internet memes offer a promising approach to enhancing this skill and promoting evidence-based argumentation. Previous studies suggest that professors perceive both positively in higher education. Nevertheless, the literature lacks insight into professors' willingness, enablers, and barriers for adopting them together. Therefore, this qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews with eleven Mexican university professors, explores their willingness (...) to incorporate a combination of the Socratic method and Internet memes to enhance critical thinking, and examines their underlying enablers and barriers. The study found that professors are familiar with both tools and willing to using them together to foster critical thinking, citing enablers like students' affinity for memes and the method's reflective power. However, they also identified barriers such as limited curriculum time, restrictive classroom layouts, and a generational gap affecting mutual understanding of memes. This study concludes that the research agenda of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) could include the combined use of memes and the Socratic method to leverage the benefits of both, which include the Socratic method's reflective depth, and the innovative engagement offered by Internet memes. (shrink)

We have developed an approach to implementing a system for managing situated knowledge for complex instruments. Our aim is to develop a system that guides a user through the steps for operating complex scientific instruments. A user manual is often inadequate support for a community of users, so direct communication with an expert is often required. One reason for this is that not all of the author’s expert knowledge was included in the manual, thus limiting the contents to explicit knowledge. (...) This is a main concern of modern knowledge management practitioners who are attempting to design systems that consider both explicit and tacit knowledge. The key is to distribute explicit knowledge through interaction with the real world so that users can develop tacit knowledge as well as acquire explicit knowledge. We describe technical difficulties related to referencing the real world, which is required for interaction, and describe a novel approach to building a low-cost three-dimensional pointer for obtaining the required knowledge, which constitutes our preliminary result. (shrink)

The rapidly growing research on hybrid organizations in recent years suggests that these organizations may have particular abilities to facilitate institutional change. This article contributes to our understanding of change and, in particular, sustainable transformation in society by highlighting the importance of organizational forms. Looking more closely at the role of hybrid organizations in processes of path generation, we analyze the conditions under which hybrid organizations may enable path generation. A retrospective exploratory case study of the Swedish hybrid organization The (...) Natural Step confirms how hybrids can take part in- and may facilitate the early phases of path generation: assimilation and coalescence. The conclusion drawn is that hybrids have multivocal abilities that enable them to earn trust and authority to open up “neutral” spaces for orientation and connection between actors in separated sub-paths, and that this in turn may ease tensions and trigger dialogue and exchange, also between former opponents. Yet, as also seen in the case, this enabling position of the hybrid may be both fragile and temporary. (shrink)

This book bridges the divide between the fields of power systems engineering and computer communication through the new field of power system information theory. Written by an expert with vast experience in the field, this book explores the smart grid from generation to consumption, both as it is planned today and how it will evolve tomorrow. The book focuses upon what differentiates the smart grid from the "traditional" power grid as it has been known for the last century. Furthermore, the (...) author provides the reader with a fundamental understanding of both power systems and communication networking. It shows the complexity and operational requirements of the evolving power grid, the so-called "smart grid," to the communication networking engineer; and similarly, it shows the complexity and operational requirements for communications to the power systems engineer. The book is divided into three parts. Part One discusses the basic operation of the electric power grid, covering fundamental knowledge that is assumed in Parts Two and Three. Part Two introduces communications and networking, which are critical enablers for the smart grid. It also considers how communication and networking will evolve as technology develops. This lays the foundation for Part Three, which utilizes communication within the power grid. Part Three draws heavily upon both the embedded intelligence within the power grid and current research, anticipating how and where computational intelligence will be implemented within the smart grid. Each part is divided into chapters and each chapter has a set of questions useful for exercising the readers' understanding of the material in that chapter. Key Features: Bridges the gap between power systems and communications experts Addresses the smart grid from generation to consumption, both as it is planned today and how it will likely evolve tomorrow Explores the smart grid from the perspective of traditional power systems as well as from communications Discusses power systems, communications, and machine learning that all define the smart grid It introduces the new field of power system information theory. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree about the moral status of harm-enabling, or behavior by which an agent removes an obstacle to the completion of a threatening sequence. I argue that enabling harm is equivalent to doing harm, at least when an agent withdraws a resource to which neither she nor the victim has any prior moral claim. This conclusion reinforces the common objection that deontological appeals to the doing/allowing distinction cannot easily handle cases involving the withdrawal of aid. I argue that (...) the existing literature on this issue overlooks a more fundamental problem concerning the moral relevance of an agent’s past behavior. (shrink)

Barbieri introduced and developed the concept of organic codes. The most basic of them is the genetic code, a set of correspondence rules between otherwise unrelated sequences: strings of nucleotides on the one hand, polypeptidic chains on the other hand. Barbieri noticed that it implies ‘coding by convention’ as arbitrary as the semantic relations a language establishes between words and outer objects. Moreover, the major transitions in life evolution originated in new organic codes similarly involving conventional rules. Independently, dealing with (...) heredity as communication over time and relying on information theory, we asserted that the conservation of genomes over the ages demands that error-correcting codes make them resilient to casual errors. Moreover, the better conservation of very old parts of the genome demands that they result from combining successively established nested codes such that the older an information, the more numerous component codes protect it. Barbieri’s concept of organic code and that of genomic error-correcting code may seem unrelated. We show however that organic codes actually entail error-correcting properties. Error-correcting, in general, results from constraints being imposed on a set of sequences. Mathematical equalities are conveniently used in communication engineering for expressing constraints but error correction only needs that constraints exist. Biological sequences are similarly endowed with error-correcting ability by physical-chemical or linguistic constraints, thus defining ‘soft codes’. These constraints are moreover presumably efficient for correcting errors. Insofar as biological sequences are subjected to constraints, organic codes necessarily involve soft codes, and their successive onset results in the nested structure we hypothesized. Organic codes are generated and maintained by means of molecular ‘semantic feedback loops’. Each of these loops involves genes which code for proteins, the enzymatic action of which controls a function needed for the protein assembly. Taken together, thus, they control the assembly of their own structure as instructed by the genome and, once closed, these loops ensure their own conservation. However, the semantic feedback loops do not prevent the genome lengthening. It increases both the redundancy of the genome and the information quantity it bears, thus improving the genome reliability and the specificity of the enzymes, which enables further evolution. (shrink)

As capitalist economies have shifted their primary focus from providing goods and services for all, to concentrating wealth at the top echelons of societies, social entrepreneurs have been one source of re-capturing the original intent of capitalism. Social entrepreneurs have combined the efficiency and effectiveness of business organizations with the social concerns of many non-profit and governmental agencies. As a result, social entrepreneurship is viewed as having significant potential for alleviating many of the social ills we now face. To accomplish (...) this mission, however, will require expansion of social enterprises beyond their current footprints. We explore alternate methods of expansion, scaling and replication, and then examine potential catalysts, which can enable social entrepreneurs to attain their goals of social improvement. The catalysts we identify are effectual logic, enhanced legitimacy through appropriate reporting metrics, and information technology. We conclude with two brief case studies that exemplify how these catalysts are currently working to enhance the effectiveness of social start-ups. (shrink)

Rather than ask if expertise is under threat, this paper uses case studies to show how expertise is enabled. Its appearance can be traced to how the already known evokes sensibility, judging, thinking and languaging. As defined below, it draws on epistemic cycles. Using Secchi and Cowley’s (2021) 3M model, this posits a second cut between the micro and the macro. In the mesosphere, people create temporary domains or what William James (1991) calls ‘little worlds’. Within these corpora popularia, the (...) new is made possible – expertise sets off unimagined outcomes. Thus, many concerns cannot be solved by scientific correlates of a natural ontological attitude: indeed, the truism clarifies many social challenges. We lack social institutions that dedicate expertise to goals like ecosocial justice and life-sustaining relations. Once the necessary expertise is traced to epistemic cycles, we can demand of institutions that they create bodies that seek to bring a rich future to evolution. (shrink)

Background We report a randomised controlled clinical trial of neurofeedback therapy intervention for ADHD/ADD in adults. We focus on internal mechanics of neurofeedback learning, to elucidate the primary role of cortical self-regulation in neurofeedback. We report initial results; more extensive analysis will follow. Methods Trial has two phases: intervention and follow-up. The intervention consisted of neurofeedback treatment, including intake and outtake measurements, using a waiting-list control group. Treatment involved $\sim$40 hour-long sessions 2-5 times per week. Training involved either theta/beta or (...) sensorimotor-rhythm regimes, adapted by adding a novel 'inverse-training' condition to promote self-regulation. Follow-up (ongoing) will consist of self-report and executive function tests. Setting Intake and outtake measurements were conducted at University of Helsinki. Treatment was administered at partner clinic Mental Capital Care, Helsinki. Randomisation We randomly allocated half the sample then adaptively allocated the remainder to minimise baseline differences in prognostic variables. Blinding Waiting-list control design meant trial was not blinded. Participants 54 adult Finnish participants (mean age 36 years; 29 females) were recruited after screening by psychiatric review. 44 had ADHD diagnoses, 10 had ADD. Measurements Symptoms were assessed by computerised attention test (T.O.V.A.) and self-report scales, at intake and outtake. Performance during neurofeedback trials was recorded. Results Participants were recruited and completed intake measurements during summer 2012, before assignment to treatment and control, September 2012. Outtake measurements ran April-August 2013. After dropouts, 23 treatment and 21 waiting-list participants remained for analysis. Initial analysis showed that, compared to waiting-list control, neurofeedback promoted improvement of self-reported ADHD symptoms, but did not show transfer of learning to T.O.V.A. Comprehensive analysis will be reported elsewhere. Trial Registration "Computer Enabled Neuroplasticity Treatment (CENT)", ISRCTN13915109. Partly funded by Finnish science agency TEKES, project #440078. (shrink)

It has been a common belief among scientists, including mathematicians, that young scientists are especially good at bringing about scientific change. A number of studies suggest, however, that older scientists are not more resistant to change than young scientists are. It is nonetheless worth examining why a scientist’s or mathematician’s outsider status – due to age, educational background, or something else – can sometimes be effective in enabling scientific change. This paper focuses on the case of the solving of (...) the Four Color Problem by Wolfgang Haken and Kenneth Appel. Building on Donald MacKenzie’s paper ‘Slaying the kraken: The sociohistory of a mathematical proof’, I argue that Haken’s outsider status is central to understanding his success with the problem. On this basis, I offer an argument against Margaret Gilbert’s account of why a scientist’s outsider status can be effective in enabling scientific change. (shrink)

This paper investigates the right of exit from religious associations. The liberal state has a compelling interest in overseeing exit, even if it implies some loss in religious group autonomy. Members should not be bound by rules they find unconscionable. They should be free to leave and able to do so. To enable exit, the paper advocates the use of membership contracts. Religious associations should issue a contract for members working for, residing in, or donating money to the association under (...) a regime of legal exemptions. The membership contract publicises the right of exit and offers a basis for negotiating and contesting its terms. It makes exit less “unthinkable” to members and helps tackle unreasonable economic costs to exit. (shrink)

Improvements in computational hardware enabled by nanotechnology promise a dual revolution in coming decades: machines which are both more intelligent and more numerous than human beings. This possibility raises substantial concern over the moral nature of such intelligent machines. An analysis of the prospects involves at least two key philosophical issues. The first, intentionality in formal systems, turns on whether a “mere machine” can be a mind whose thoughts have true meaning and understanding. Second, what is the moral nature of (...) a machine vis-a-vis a human: can a machine be a true moral agent, capable of real responsibility, possessed of rights and duties? If so, might a machine be a better moral agent than a human? (shrink)

Many futurists, technologists, and democratic theorists have asserted the Internet and modern information technology are enabling the realization of an authentic direct democracy, or at least a more participatory democracy. Conversely, critics contend advances in technology are only automating the existing democracy. This article explores the potential of modern information technology to enable the emergence of a more participatory democratic system. In particular, the key foundations of modern direct democracy are analyzed with respect to promising technological developments.

Traditionally, moral philosophers have distinguished between doing and allowing harm, and have normally proceeded as if this bipartite distinction can exhaustively characterize all cases of human conduct involving harm. By contrast, cognitive scientists and psychologists studying causal judgment have investigated the concept ‘enable’ as distinct from the concept ‘cause’ and other causal terms. Empirical work on ‘enable’ and its employment has generally not focused on cases where human agents enable harm. In this paper, we present new empirical evidence to support (...) the claim that some important cases in the moral philosophical literature are best viewed as instances of enabling harm rather than doing or allowing harm. We also present evidence that enabling harm is regarded as normatively distinct from doing and allowing harm when it comes to assigning compensatory responsibility. Moral philosophers should be exploring the tripartite distinction between doing harm, allowing harm, and enabling harm, rather than simply the traditional bipartite distinction. Cognitive scientists and psychologists studying moral judgment, who have so far largely adopted the bipartite distinction in this area of research, should likewise investigate the tripartite distinction. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that Kant’s philosophy of education should be interpreted as showing that education can be morally relevant despite the fact that it cannot make the child moral. To support this claim, I suggest that it is necessary to focus on the connection between Kant’s account on education and his views on moral anthropology. For it brings to light that education cannot but work with nature (and in particular human nature, natural feelings and predispositions) (...) rather than against it in order to realize the vocation of humanity. I then go on to argue that the moral dimension of education is best described as enabling the child to use his freedom in the right way, that is to say, autonomously. On this basis, I conclude that whilst education can prepare him for the universal command of duty, nothing can relieve him of the essential burden of the task morality demands of him—having a good will. (shrink)

It is sometimes asserted that enabling harm is morally equivalent to allowing harm. In this article, I criticize this view. Positively, I show that cases involving self-defence and cases involving people acting on the basis of a reasonable belief to the effect that certain obstacles to harm will remain in place, or will be put in place, show that enabling harm is harder to justify than allowing it. Negatively, I argue that certain cases offered in defence of the (...) moral equivalence thesis fail, because either their similarity with the archetypal trolley case limits their relevance to an assessment of this thesis, or they are compromised by their reliance on the elusive notion of a situation being completely stable. (shrink)

Both advocates of corporate regulation and its opponents tend to depict regulation as restrictive—a policy option that limits freedom in the name of welfare or other social goods. Against this framing, I suggest we can understand regulation in enabling terms. If well designed and properly enforced, regulation enables companies to operate in ways that are acceptable to society as a whole. This paper argues for this enabling character by considering some wider questions about responsibility and the sharing of (...) responsibility. Agents who are less able or willing to act well are obviously more likely to face criticism, mistrust, and adverse responses. It will be more difficult to hold those agents responsible, especially so when there are many who fail in their responsibilities or where there are wide-reaching disagreements about those responsibilities. Regulatory standards, like other norms and ways of defining responsibilities, address these problems: by restricting, they also enable social cooperation. Like other forms of holding responsible, ways of enforcing those standards against recalcitrant agents, or encouraging conformity to them, may also seem restrictive. Again, however, these practices play an important role in enabling responsible agency. This is partly because they can bolster readiness to act well in agents who experience or witness such responses. It is also because they free other agents to exercise initiative and commitment in defining their individual responsibilities in line with higher standards. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce the notion of a Frankfurt Enabler, a counterfactual intervener poised, should a signal for intervention be received, to enable an agent to perform a mental or physical action. Frankfurt enablers demonstrate, I claim, that merely counterfactual conditions are sometimes relevant to assessing what capacities agents possess. Since this is the case, we are not entitled to conclude that agents in standard Frankfurt-style cases retain their responsibility-ensuring capacities. There is no principled rationale for bracketing counterfactual interveners (...) in standard Frankfurt-style cases, but admitting their relevance when they are Frankfurt enablers. I argue that the intuition that we ought to bracket counterfactual interveners is, at bottom, an expression of a mistaken internalist view about the mental. (shrink)

Nucleosomes “talk” to each other about their modification state to form extended domains of modified histones independently of the underlying DNA sequence. At the same time, DNA elements promote modification of nucleosomes in their vicinity. How do these site-specific and histone-based activities act together to regulate spreading of histone modifications along the genome? How do they enable epigenetic memory to preserve cell identity? Many models for the dynamics of repressive histone modifications emphasize the role of strong positive feedback loops, which (...) reinforce histone modifications by recruiting histone modifiers to preexisting modifications. Recent experiments question that repressive histone modifications are self-sustained independently of their genomic context, thereby indicating that histone-based feedback is relatively weak. In the present review, current models for the dynamics of histone modifications are compared and it is suggested that limitation of histone-based feedback is key to intrinsic confinement of spreading and coexistence of short- and long-term memory at different genomic loci. See also the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/3bxr_xDEZfQ. Communication between nucleosomes and site-specific recruitment of histone modifiers act together to enable spreading and epigenetic memory of histone modifications. This review essay compares current models that describe these phenomena and outline a mechanism for how epigenetic short- and long-term memory can coexist in the same cell. (shrink)

The 2016, the UK Supreme Court case of Jogee confirmed a long-standing convention in English law. In cases where D is assisting or encouraging P to commit an offence, D will only be liable as an accessory for that offence if she intentionally assists or encourages P and if she knows the essential features of the offence. In this paper, I discuss and develop some of the arguments from Sanford Kadish’s 1996 article “Reckless Complicity.” I argue that a special sub-category (...) of complicity, namely ‘enabling’, can be done recklessly, and is sufficiently blameworthy to ground criminal liability. (shrink)

According to active inference, action is enabled by a top-down modulation of sensory signals. Computational models of this mechanism complement ideomotor theories of action representation. Such theories postulate common neural representations for action and perception, without specifying how action is enabled by such representations. In active inference, motor commands are replaced by proprioceptive predictions. In order to initiate action through such predictions, sensory prediction errors have to be attenuated. This paper argues that such top-down modulation involves systematic misrepresentations. More specifically, (...) the paper first argues for the following conditional claim. If active inference provides an accurate computational description of how action is enabled in the brain, then action is enabled by systematic misrepresentations. Furthermore, it is argued that an inference to the best explanation provides reason for believing the antecedent is true: Firstly, active inference provides a crucial extension to ideomotor theories. Secondly, active inference explains otherwise puzzling phenomena related to sensory attenuation, e.g. in force-matching or self-tickling paradigms. Taken together, these reasons support the claim that action is indeed enabled by systematic misrepresentations. The claim casts doubt on the assumption that representations are systematically beneficial to the extent that they are true: if the argument in this paper is sound, systematically beneficial misrepresentations may lie at the heart of our neural architecture. (shrink)

Digital Health Tools (DHTs), also known as patient self-surveilling strategies, have increasingly been promoted by health-care policy makers as technologies that have the capacity to transform patients’ lives. At the heart of the debate is the notion of empowerment. In this paper, we argue that what is required is not so much empowerment but rather a shift to enabling DHTs as digital companions. This will enable policy makers and health-care system designers to provide a more balanced view—one that capitalises (...) on the benefits of DHTs, while minimising the risks of potential harms. -/- . (shrink)

One thing an examination of the literature on youth work makes clear is a lack of clarity on youth work's purpose. This study investigated the value of using the concept of telos as an analytical tool to orient youth work towards the right ends. Relevant literature was systematically reviewed. The value of telos in understanding youth work was examined. Common aims of youth work were described. The merits of different goals were assessed to figure out which, if any, is youth (...) work's proper purpose. A telos would provide youth work a clear and cohesive definition, act as a useful guide for good practice, and distinguish youth work from other interventions into young people's lives. The case was made for the telos of youth work to be 'enabling young people to live the good life'. (shrink)

What I call medically enabled suicides have four distinctive features: 1. They are instigated by actions of a suicidal individual, actions she intends to result in a physiological condition that, absent lifesaving medical interventions, would be otherwise fatal to that individual. 2. These suicides are ‘completed’ due to medical personnel acting in accordance with recognized legal or ethical protocols requiring the withholding or withdrawal of care from patients (e.g., following an approved advance directive). 3. The suicidal individual acts purposefully to (...) ensure that medical personnel will act on these protocols. 4. These suicides do not involve medical personnel providing aid in dying in the standard sense, either through (a) active voluntary euthanasia, or (b) assistance by means of prescriptions, etc. -/- Regardless of how common medically enabled suicides are, they raise compelling questions at the interface of medicine and individual choice. After first clarifying the concept of medically enabled suicide and exploring some of the reasons why it might be attractive to suicidal individuals, I then investigate two apparent dilemmas that medically enabled suicides raise for medical care providers. The first alleges that medical care providers may not contribute to harming their patients, and so they may not contribute to their patients’ suicides. The second alleges that if care providers, as a matter of personal conscience, believe that suicide is wrong, then they may not be compelled to contribute to their patient’s acting wrongly by assenting to the wishes of a patient pursuing medically enabled suicide. Both dilemmas arise from the fact that while medical personnel are bound by widely accepted precepts of medical ethics to honor the competent wishes of their patients, medically enabled suicides entangle them in their patients’ suicidal plans in ways that result in their contributing to those suicides. I conclude that neither dilemma should be resolved in the direction of medical personnel having the right to refrain from involvement in medically enabled suicides. Thus, while we may find medically enabled suicide distasteful or exploitative, a strong case cannot be made that medical personnel refusing to involve themselves in such suicides is ethically permissible. (shrink)

John Tillson argues, on grounds of children’s well-being, that it is impermissible to teach them religious views. I defend a practice of pluralistically advocating religious views to children. As long as there are no monopolies of influence over children, and as long as advocates do not use coercion, deceit, or manipulation, children can greatly benefit without having their rational abilities subverted, or incurring undue risk to form false beliefs. This solution should counter, to some extent, both perfectionist and antiperfectionist reasons (...) against initiating children into religions. (shrink)

The mental model theory of naive causal understanding and reasoning (Goldvarg & Johnson‐Laird, 2001, Cognitive Science, 25, 565–610) claims that people distinguish between causes and enabling conditions on the basis of sets of models that represent possible causal situations. In the tasks used to test this hypothesis, however, the proposed set of models was confounded with linguistic cues that frame which event to assume as given (the enabling condition) and which to consider as responsible for the effect under (...) this assumption (the cause). By disentangling these two factors, we were able to show that when identifying causes and enabling conditions in these tasks, people rely strongly on the linguistic cues but not on the proposed set of models and that this set of models does not even reflect people's typical interpretation of the tasks. We propose an alternative explanation that integrates syntactic and causal considerations. (shrink)

Biological evolution is a complex blend of ever changing structural stability, variability and emergence of new phe- notypes, niches, ecosystems. We wish to argue that the evo- lution of life marks the end of a physics world view of law entailed dynamics. Our considerations depend upon dis- cussing the variability of the very ”contexts of life”: the in- teractions between organisms, biological niches and ecosys- tems. These are ever changing, intrinsically indeterminate and even unprestatable: we do not know ahead of (...) time the ”niches” which constitute the boundary conditions on selec- tion. More generally, by the mathematical unprestatability of the ”phase space”, no laws of mo- tion can be formulated for evolution. We call this radical emergence, from life to life. The purpose of this paper is the integration of variation and diversity in a sound concep- tual frame and situate unpredictability at a novel theoretical level, that of the very phase space. Our argument will be carried on in close comparisons with physics and the mathematical constructions of phase spaces in that discipline. The role of symmetries as invariant preserving transformations will allow us to under- stand the nature of physical phase spaces and to stress the differences required for a sound biological theoretizing. In this frame, we discuss the novel notion of ”enablement”. Life lives in a web of enablement and radical emergence. This will restrict causal analyses to differential cases. Mutations or other causal differ- ences will allow us to stress that ”non conservation princi- ples” are at the core of evolution, in contrast to physical dynamics, largely based on conservation principles as sym- metries. Critical transitions, the main locus of symmetry changes in physics, will be discussed, and lead to ”extended criticality” as a conceptual frame for a better understanding of the living state of matter. (shrink)