Introduction By the late fifth century BCE Panini had composed the Astadhyayi, consisting of nearly 4000 rules giving a precise and fairly complete ...

Since the launch of applications such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, generative artificial intelligence has been controversial as a tool for creating artwork. While some have presented longtermist worries about these technologies as harbingers of fully automated futures to come, more pressing is the impact of generative AI on creative labour in the present. Already, business leaders have begun replacing human artistic labour with AI-generated images. In response, the artistic community has launched a protest movement, which argues that AI (...) image generation is a kind of theft. This paper analyzes, substantiates, and critiques these arguments, concluding that AI image generators involve an unethical kind of labour theft. If correct, many other AI applications also rely upon theft. (shrink)

According to Miranda Fricker, a hermeneutical injustice occurs when there is a deficit in our shared tools of social interpretation, such that marginalized social groups are at a disadvantage in making sense of their distinctive and important experiences. Critics have claimed that Fricker's account ignores or precludes a phenomenon I call hermeneutical dissent, where marginalized groups have produced their own interpretive tools for making sense of those experiences. I clarify the nature of hermeneutical injustice to make room for hermeneutical dissent, (...) clearing up the structure of the collective hermeneutical resource and the fundamental harm of hermeneutical injustice. I then provide a more nuanced account of the hermeneutical resources in play in instances of hermeneutical injustice, enabling six species of the injustice to be distinguished. Finally, I reflect on the corrective virtue of hermeneutical justice in light of hermeneutical dissent. (shrink)

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

This book is a clear and concise history of the soul in western philosophy, from Plato to cutting-edge contemporary work in philosophy of mind. Packed with arguments for and against a range of different, historically significant philosophies of the soul Addresses the essential issues, including mind-body interaction, the causal closure of the physical world, and the philosophical implications of the brain sciences for the soul's existence Includes coverage of theories from key figures, such as Plato, Aquinas, Locke, Hume, and Descartes (...) Unique in combining the history of ideas and the development of a powerful case for a non-reductionist, non-materialist account of the soul. (shrink)

"Zeit": Was ist das überhaupt? Und vor allem: Wie ist ein gelingender Umgang mit ihr möglich? Diese Fragen, die für das menschliche Leben in seiner wesentlich zeitlichen Verfasstheit höchst bedeutsam sind, stehen im Mittelpunkt des vorliegenden Bandes. Ihnen wird auf eine Weise nachgegangen, die existentielles Interesse mit dem Anspruch auf theoretische Durchklärung und systematische Durchsichtigkeit verbindet. Aufgezeigt wird ein Weg jenseits von gedankenloser Betroffenheit oder existentieller Belanglosigkeit, der zu einer Theorie gläubiger Identität am Leitfaden ihrer Zeitlichkeit führt.

My dissertation consists of two main parts. In the first part, I begin by assuming the plausibility of the libertarian thesis that agents sometimes could have done otherwise than they did given the very same history of the world. In light of this assumption, I undertake to develop a model of agency which does not employ the concept of agent-causation. My agency theory is developed in three main stages: I suggest that any agency theory must satisfy four desiderata: It must (...) adequately account for the freedom and responsibility of human agents. It must provide an adequate answer to the question of what distinguishes human actions from mere happenings. It must adequately account for the epistemological fact that human agents have an immediate and nonobservational awareness of their actions. It should have the support of a respectable philosophical tradition. I argue that agent-causation provides a theory of agency which fails adequately to satisfy these four desiderata. I claim both that human actions are uncaused exercisings by agents of their powers and that human agents typically act for reasons. I maintain that the central issue dividing agency theorists and nonagency theorists is whether reasons for performing actions cause the latter. I maintain that the sense of 'because' in 'I did x because...' is not causal in nature, but teleological. ;Having developed my model of agency, in the second part of my dissertation I investigate what are some of the paradigmatic actions human agents perform. I claim that bodily actions, such as moving an arm, are psychological in nature. Essential to my argument is the concept of a body-image. A normal agent 'feels' as if she is present in her physical arm. The way a normal agent feels is revealed in the case of a phantom limb. The subject of a phantom arm feels as if her amputated physical arm is still there and she can move while feeling armishly. I maintain that the bodily action of moving an arm is the agent's movement as a psychological arm-image of her physical arm, whether the physical arm is present or not. (shrink)

When you expect something bad to happen, you take action to avoid it. That is the principle of action that underlies J. Y. Lee’s recent paper (2021), which presents a new form of epistemic injustice that arises from anticipating negative consequences for testifying. In this brief reply article occasioned by Lee’s essay, I make two main contributions to the discussion of this idea. The first (§§2–3) is an intervention in the discussion between Lee and Eric Bayruns García regarding the relationship (...) between anticipatory epistemic injustice and Kristie Dotson’s concept of testimonial smothering. The second (§§4–5) is to expand the concept of anticipatory epistemic injustice into the educational context, and to illuminate yet another form of anticipatory epistemic injustice, which I call anticipatory zetetic injustice (§6). (shrink)

How do we prepare engineering students to make ethical and responsible decisions in their professional work? This paper presents an approach that enhances engineering students’ engagement with ethical reasoning by simulating decision-making in a complex scenario. The approach has two principal inspirations. The first is Anthony Weston’s scenario-based teaching. Weston’s concept of a scenario is a situation that changes in response to choices made by participants, according to an inner logic. Scenarios can dynamically explore open-ended complex problems without imposing predetermined (...) results, allowing students to apply their ethical reasoning in a more realistic fashion. The second inspiration is Thi Nguyen’s theory of games. According to Nguyen, games are the “art of agency,” meaning that they provide a structure under which some result is agreed to be valuable, along with prescribed ways of achieving that result, in a relatively low-stakes and temporary social arrangement. By playing many games, Nguyen argues, we can develop a “library of agency,” that is to say, a set of values and means to achieving them that can inform how we make high-stakes decisions in real life. Engaging with carefully designed game scenarios, then, can enable students to practice making ethical decisions within a structured framework, which unfolds in response to their choices, while their decisions are driven by some defined goal. This roleplaying game–based approach thus allows students to build their own ethical libraries of agency, in preparation for professional decision-making. The approach is illustrated using a specific example recently deployed in a seminar on engineered living materials (building materials that incorporate living tissues). The scenario uses techniques from tabletop roleplaying games (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons) for outcome resolution, adventure design, and character creation. Through the game, students practice making difficult decisions in a humanitarian context. (shrink)

Whilst Rahimzadeh et al. (2023) apply a critical lens to the pedagogical use of LLM bioethics assistants, we outline here further reason for skepticism. Two features of LLM chatbots are of signific...

This thesis concerns our moral and epistemic responsibilities regarding our concepts. I argue that certain concepts can be morally, epistemically, or socially problematic. This is particularly concerning with regard to our concepts of social kinds, which may have both descriptive and evaluative aspects. Being ignorant of certain concepts, or possessing mistaken conceptions, can be problematic for similar reasons, and contributes to various forms of epistemic injustice. I defend an expanded view of a type of epistemic injustice known as ‘hermeneutical injustice’, (...) where widespread conceptual ignorance puts members of marginalized groups at risk of their distinctive and important experiences lacking intelligible interpretations. Together, I call the use of problematic concepts or the ignorance of appropriate concepts ‘conceptual incapacities’. I discuss the conditions under which we may be responsible for our conceptual incapacities on several major theories of responsibility, developing my own account of responsibility in the process, according to which we are responsible for something just in case it was caused by one of our reasons-responsive constitutive psychological traits. However, I argue that regardless of whether we are responsible for something, we may still be required to take responsibility for it. Whether or not we are responsible for our conceptual incapacities, we are required to reflect critically upon them in a variety of scenarios that throw our use of those concepts into question. I consider the method of conceptual engineering — the philosophical critique and revision of concepts — as one way we might take responsibility for our concepts, or at least, defer that duty to experts. But, this top-down model of conceptual revision is insufficient. Using a pragmatist model of the social epistemology of morality, I argue that conceptual inquiry is a social endeavour in which we are all required to participate, to some degree. (shrink)

Thinking in Translation posits the Hebrew Bible as the fulcrum of the thought of Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), underpinning a unique synthesis between systematic thinking and biblical interpretation. Addressing a lacuna in Rosenzweig scholarship, the book offers a critical evaluation of his engagement with the Bible through a comparative study of The Star of Redemption and his Bible translation with Martin Buber. The book opens with Rosenzweig's rejection of German Idealism and fascination with the sources of Judaism. It then analyzes the (...) unique hermeneutic approach he developed to philosophy and scripture as a symbiosis of critique and cross-fertilization, facilitated by translation. An analysis of the Star exposes Rosenzweig's employment of translation in grafting biblical verses unto the philosophical discussion. It is followed by a reading that demonstrates how his Bible translation reflects an attempt to re-valorize the Tanakh as a distinctively Jewish scripture, over and against Christian appropriations. Thinking in Translation recasts Rosenzweig's life's work as a project of melding Judaism and modernity in an attempt to secure their spiritual and intellectual survival. (shrink)

Examines the neglected topic of C.S. Lewis' views of pleasure, happiness, and the soul and why they are relevant to an explanation of his not becoming a Roman Catholic.

Accounts of creation in Sanskrit literature include a number of hymns in the R̥gveda principal among which are R̥V 10.72, 10.81–82, 10.90, 10.121, and 10.129. Later accounts appear in the Mānavadhārmaśāstra, the Mahābhārata, and purāṇas. Scholars generally describe these accounts as various, mutually inconsistent myths, or as superseded stages of philosophical thought. Even recent treatments of Indian cosmogony that praise the poetic subtlety and prowess of their composers consider their work as products of individual poetic imagination. Yet, despite the variety (...) of expression in the various accounts, they appear to convey a consistent model of the origin of the world. Moreover, the model of the absolute and the first stages of creation mirror the descriptions of the development of enlightenment in foundational texts of Vedānta and systematic analyses of Yoga. The descriptions of creation may therefore rather be the result of the special insight of enlightened sages than the results of individual imagination. (shrink)

Bernard Stiegler highlights many of the problems faced by education with respect to the ‘bringing forth’ of knowledge on an individual, collective, and technical level in the Anthropocene. These problems include the short-circuiting of dreams, automatization of thought, and toxic digital networks. Stiegler’s φάρμακον seeks to treat the toxicity of the Anthropocene with a care-ful hermeneutic approach that is directed towards the disautomatized, inventive, co-individuating knowledge act. This paper first explores Stiegler’s Anthropocene and his development of Heideggerian ποίησις in terms (...) of the challenge of the ‘bringing forth’ of knowledge acts, which are illustrated by free software. It then explores, through the additional example of free radio, of Félix Guattari’s work in free radio, the problem and possibility of creative co-individuating ex-pression in the Anthropocene by expanding on Stiegler’s emphasis on the importance of hermeneutics. This raises the question of how to read Stiegler’s own ex-pression of the future of knowledge. Next, the paper reviews Stiegler’s educational project involving a dis-automatizable hermeneutic web. Finally, the paper gives an autoethnographic account of an attempt to ‘bring forth’ learning through the implementation of free software in local, online classrooms. The free software example does not solve the problem of the Anthropocene but does raise the question of our responsibility to choose our digital tools care-fully and the importance of maintaining the possibility of co-individuating ex-pression like the kind that is remembered in song and which online education should remind us of. (shrink)

If we have libertarian free will, then it is plausible to believe that the occurrences of certain physical events have irreducible and ineliminable mental explanations. According to a strong version of naturalism, everything in the physical world is in principle explicable in nonmental terms. Therefore, the truth of naturalism implies that libertarian choices cannot explain the occurrences of any physical events. In this paper, I example a methodological argument for the truth of naturalism and conclude that the argument fails. I (...) then consider additional concerns raised against the reality of libertarian freedom. First, I examine the claim that if a physical event E is not causally determined to occur by another physical event, then there is no way to account for the difference between E’s occurring randomly and E’s being causally determined to occur by a mental event. Second, I consider the assertion that the affirmation of libertarianism is a mind-of-the-gaps version of the God-of-the-gaps objection to a divine explanation of a physical event. Third, I take up the question of whether the inability of libertarians to pinpoint precisely where the initial physical effects of libertarian choices occur is a good reason for rejecting libertarianism. Fourth, I examine the claim that belief in the existence of the soul or immaterial mind is the result of an explanatory hypothesis to account for how libertarian free choices can causally produce physical effects. Fifth, I look at the traditional objection to substance dualism from the impossibility of causal interaction between a soul and its body. (shrink)

Vicarious responsibility is sometimes analysed by considering the different kinds of agents involved—who is vicariously responsible for the actions of whom? In this paper, I discuss vicarious responsibility from a different angle: in what sense is the vicarious agent responsible? I do this by considering the ways in which one may take responsibility for events caused by another agent or process. I discuss three senses of taking responsibility—accepting fault, assuming obligations, and fulfilling obligations—and the forms of vicarious responsibility that correspond (...) to these. I end by explaining how to judge which sense applies in a given case, based on the degree of (what I call) moral entanglement between the agent and what they should take responsibility for. (shrink)

The use of language models in Web applications and other areas of computing and business have grown significantly over the last five years. One reason for this growth is the improvement in performance of language models on a number of benchmarks — but a side effect of these advances has been the adoption of a “bigger is always better” paradigm when it comes to the size of training, testing, and challenge datasets. Drawing on previous criticisms of this paradigm as applied (...) to large training datasets crawled from pre-existing text on the Web, we extend the critique to challenge datasets custom-created by crowdworkers. We present several sets of criticisms, where ethical and scientific issues in language model research reinforce each other: labour injustices in crowdwork, dataset quality and inscrutability, inequities in the research community, and centralized corporate control of the technology. We also present a new type of tool for researchers to use in examining large datasets when evaluating them for quality. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is concerned with the improvement of our concepts. The motivating thought behind many such projects is that some of our concepts are defective. But, if to use a defective concept is to do something wrong, and if to do something wrong one must be in control of what one is doing, there might be no defective concepts, since we typically are not in control of our concept use. To address this problem, this paper turns from appraising the concepts (...) we use to appraising the people who use them. First, I outline several ways in which the use of a concept can violate moral standards. Second, I discuss three accounts of moral responsibility, which I call voluntarism, rationalism, and psychologism, arguing that each allows us to find at least some cases where we are responsible for using defective concepts. Third, I answer an objection that because most of our concepts are acquired through processes for which we are not responsible, our use of defective concepts is a matter of bad luck, and not something for which we are responsible after all. Finally, I conclude by discussing some of the ways we may hold people accountable for using defective concepts. (shrink)

When we encounter extremist rhetoric, we often find it dumbfounding, incredible, or straightforwardly unintelligible. For this reason, it can be tempting to dismiss or ignore it, at least where it is safe to do so. The problem discussed in this paper is that such dismissals may be, at least in certain circumstances, epistemically unjust. Specifically, it appears that recent work on the phenomenon of hermeneutical injustice compels us to accept two unpalatable conclusions: first, that this failure of intelligibility when we (...) encounter extremist rhetoric may be a manifestation of a hermeneutical injustice; and second, that remedying this injustice requires that we ought to become more engaged with and receptive of extremist worldviews. Whilst some theorists might interpret this as a reductio of this framework of epistemic in/justice, we push back against this conclusion. First, we argue that with a suitably amended conception of hermeneutical justice—one that is sensitive to the contextual nature of our hermeneutical responsibilities, and to the difference between understanding a worldview and accepting it—we can bite the bullet and accept that certain extremists are subject to hermeneutical injustice, but without committing ourselves to any unpalatable conclusions about how we ought to remedy these injustices. Second, we argue that bringing the framework of hermeneutical in/justice to bear upon the experience of certain extremists actually provides a new and useful perspective on one of the causes of extremism, and how it might be undermined. (shrink)

‘Gender’, understood as the social construction of sex, is a key concept for feminists working at the interface of theory and policy. This article examines challenges to the concept which emerged from different groups at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, September 1995, an important arena for struggles over feminist public policies. The first half of the article explores contradictory uses of the concept in the field of gender and development. Viewpoints from some southern activist women at (...) the NGO Forum of the Beijing Conference are presented, Some of them argued that the way ‘gender’ has been deployed in development institutions has led to a depoliticization of the term, where feminist policy ambitions are sacrificed to the imperative of ease of institutionalization. ‘Gender’ becomes a synonym for ‘women’, rather than a form of shorthand for gender difference and conflict and the project of transformation in gender relations. ‘Gender sensitivity’ can be interpreted by non-feminists as encouragement to use gender-disaggregated statistics for development planning, but without consideration of relational aspects of gender, of power and ideology, and of how patterns of subordination are reproduced. A completely different attack on ‘gender’ came from right-wing groups and was battled out over the text of the Platform for Action agreed at the official conference. Six months prior to the conference, conservative groups had tried to bracket for possible removal the term ‘gender’ in this document, out of opposition to the notion of socially constructed, and hence mutable, gender identity. Conservative views on gender as the ‘deconstruction of woman’ are discussed here. The article points out certain contradictions and inconsistencies in feminist thinking on gender which are raised by the conservative backlash attack on feminism and the term ‘gender’. (shrink)

Goetz outlined legal models of identical entities that include natural persons who are identical to a coregency and natural persons who are identical to a general partnership. Those entities cohere with the formula logic of relative identity. This essay outlines the coexistence of relative identity and numerical identity in the models of identical legal entities, which is impure relative identity. These models support the synthesis of Relative Trinitarianism and Social Trinitarianism, which I call Relative-Social Trinitarianism.

Changing Generations, a study of intergenerational relations in Ireland undertaken between 2011 and 2013 by the Social Policy and Ageing Research Centre, Trinity College, Dublin, and the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, NUI Galway, used the Constructivist Grounded Theory method to interrogate support and care provision between generations. This article draws on interviews with 52 women ages 18 to 102, allowing for simultaneous analysis of older and younger women’s perspectives. The intersectionality of gender and class emerged as central to the (...) analysis. Socioeconomic positions shape contrasting forms of interdependency among family generations, ranging from “enmeshed” lives among lower socioeconomic groups to “freed” lives among higher socioeconomic groups. Women are initiating changes in how care and support flow across generations. Older women in higher socioeconomic groups are attuned to how emotional capital women expend across family generations can constrain women’s lives. In an expression of solidarity, older women are renegotiating the place of care labor in their own lives and in the lives of younger women. A new reciprocity emerges that amounts to women “undoing gender.” This process is, however, deeply classed as it is women in higher socioeconomic groups whose resources best place them to renegotiate care. (shrink)

While calls to integrate ethics into computer science education go back decades, recent high-profile ethical failures related to computing technology by large technology companies, governments, and academic institutions have accelerated the adoption of computer ethics education at all levels of instruction. Discussions of how to integrate ethics into existing computer science programmes often focus on the structure of the intervention—embedded modules or dedicated courses, humanists or computer scientists as ethics instructors—or on the specific content to be included—lists of case studies (...) and essential topics to cover. While proponents of computer ethics education often emphasize the importance of closely connecting ethical and technical content in these initiatives, most do not reflect in depth on the variety of ways in which the disciplines can be combined. In this paper, I deploy a framework from cross- disciplinary studies that categorizes academic projects that work across disciplines as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary, depending on the degree of integration. When applied to computer ethics education, this framework is orthogonal to the structure and content of the initiative, as I illustrate using examples of dedicated ethics courses and embedded modules. It therefore highlights additional features of cross-disciplinary teaching that need to be considered when planning a computer ethics programme. I argue that computer ethics education should aim to be at least interdisciplinary—multidisciplinary initiatives are less aligned with the pedagogical aims of computer ethics—and that computer ethics educators should experiment with fully transdisciplinary education that could transform computer science as a whole for the better. (shrink)

The Ethics Committee at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) developed a Bioethics Ambassador Program (BAP); a yearlong educational program to assist clinical and non-clinical staff develop the skills to identify and address common burgeoning ethical issues that can arise during the provision of care to patients with cancer. The goal was to provide greater awareness of the role and services of Ethics, particularly at the institution’s geographically-diverse outpatient care centers and to better-instill a culture of preventative ethics. This article (...) discusses the design and implementation of the first two years of the program and analyzes its strengths, weaknesses, and impact on MSK. (shrink)

Explores C. S. Lewis's views of the purpose of higher education and his distinctive answer: to experience pleasure.