A number of artificial intelligence systems have been proposed to assist users in identifying the issues of algorithmic fairness and transparency. These AI systems use diverse bias detection methods from various perspectives, including exploratory cues, interpretable tools, and revealing algorithms. This study explains the design of AI systems by probing how users make sense of fairness and transparency as they are hypothetical in nature, with no specific ways for evaluation. Focusing on individual perceptions of fairness and transparency, this study examines (...) the roles of normative values in over-the-top platforms by empirically testing their effects on sensemaking processes. A mixed-method design incorporating both qualitative and quantitative approaches was used to discover user heuristics and to test the effects of such normative values on user acceptance. Collectively, a composite concept of transparent fairness emerged around user sensemaking processes and its formative roles regarding their underlying relations to perceived quality and credibility. From a sensemaking perspective, this study discusses the implications of transparent fairness in algorithmic media platforms by clarifying how and what should be done to make algorithmic media more trustable and reliable platforms. Based on the findings, a theoretical model is developed to define transparent fairness as an essential algorithmic attribute in the context of OTT platforms. (shrink)

While previous research has linked executive attention to emotion regulation, the current study investigated the role of attentional alerting (i.e., efficient use of external warning cues) on younger (N=39) and older (N=44) adults’ use of gaze to regulate their mood in real time. Participants viewed highly arousing unpleasant images while reporting their mood and were instructed to deliberately manage how they felt and to minimise the effect of those stimuli on their mood. Fixations toward the most negative areas of the (...) images were recorded with eye tracking. We examined whether looking less at the most negative regions, compared to each individual's own tendency, was a beneficial mood regulatory strategy and how it interacted with age and alerting ability. High alerting older adults, who rely more on external cues to guide their attention, experienced a smaller decline in mood over time by activating a less-negative-looking approach (compared to their own average tendency), effectively looking away from the most negative areas of the images. More negative gaze patterns predicted better mood for younger adults, though this effect decreased over time. Alerting did not moderate gaze–mood links in younger adults. Successful mood regulation may thus depend on particular combinations of age, fixation, and attention. (shrink)

We explore the possibility of teaching philosophy through the teaching of computer programming. It is pedagogically useful to use programming because it is extremely popular (especially due to the recent breakthroughs in machine learning), and it can provide a novel, interesting, and clear introduction to a variety of classic philosophical issues. We discuss two examples. The first is using programming to solve digital image manipulation tasks as a way of introducing and clarifying debates over external world skepticism. The second is (...) programming a simulation of a simple 2-D cellular automaton as a way of introducing and clarifying debates over determinism and free will. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

The central argument for animalism is the thinking animal problem : if you are not an animal, there are two thinkers within the region you occupy, i.e., you and your animal body. This is absurd. So you are an animal. The main objection to this argument is the thinking brain problem : animalism faces a problem that is structurally analogous to TAP. Specifically, if animalism is true, you and your brain both think. This is absurd. So animalism is false. The (...) purpose of this paper is to propose strategies animalists can endorse to solve TBP. I first show that animalists can solve TBP by arguing that it is not sound. This solution to TBP raises questions about personal identity over time and the mereological relation between the person and the brain. I argue that animalists can answer the personal identity question by endorsing non-biological persistence conditions as well as biological ones. For the mereological question, I first show that animalism is incompatible with four-dimensionalism and eliminativism. I then argue that animalists should endorse the dominant sortal account to answer the mereological question. (shrink)

Anthropology has long been interested in human diets. The main objective of this article is to introduce the perspective of cultural anthropology about food in culture, and the way by which food embodies the relevant sociocultural significances. The case studies chosen cover the study of the Chinese in Malaysia, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as studies conducted in the Asia and Pacific Islands. The short review in this article aims to provide some ideas and case studies about the (...) interrelationship between food and culture. The anthropological perspective of food in different cultures may provide an insight into the study of Overseas Chinese and help to expand it to a wider concern on a variety of human activities. In this way, the writer believes t he study of Overseas Chinese can mark its particularity, research value and potential in world academia. (shrink)

What should we do about “tainted” public commemorations? Recent events have highlighted the urgency of reaching a consensus on this question. However, existing discussions appear to be dominated by two naïve opposing views – to remove or preserve them. My aims in this essay are two-fold. First, I argue that the two views are not naïve, but undergirded by concerns with securing self-respect and with the character of our engagement with the past. Second, I offer a qualified defence of vandalising (...) tainted commemorations. The defence comprises two parts. I consider two prominent suggestions – to install counter-commemorations and to add contextualising plaques – and argue that they are typically beset with difficulties. I then argue that in some circumstances, constrained vandalism is a response to tainted commemorations which effectively adjudicates the demands of the two opposing views. (shrink)

One recurring criticism of the best interests standard concerns its vagueness, and thus the inadequate guidance it offers to care providers. The lack of an agreed definition of ‘best interests’, together with the fact that several suggested considerations adopted in legislation or professional guidelines for doctors do not obviously apply across different groups of persons, result in decisions being made in murky waters. In response, bioethicists have attempted to specify the best interests standard, to reduce the indeterminacy surrounding medical decisions. (...) In this paper, we discuss the bioethicists’ response in relation to the state's possible role in clarifying the best interests standard. We identify and characterise two clarificatory strategies employed by bioethicists —elaborative and enumerative—and argue that the state should adopt the latter. Beyond the practical difficulties of the former strategy, a state adoption of it would inevitably be prejudicial in a pluralistic society. Given the gravity of best interests decisions, and the delicate task of respecting citizens with different understandings of best interests, only the enumerative strategy is viable. We argue that this does not commit the state to silence in providing guidance to and supporting healthcare providers, nor does it facilitate the abuse of the vulnerable. Finally, we address two methodological worries about adopting this approach at the state level. The adoption of the enumerative strategy is not defeatist in attitude, nor does it eventually collapse into (a form of) the elaborative strategy. (shrink)

Animalism is the view that we human individuals are animals. And standard animalists claim that if we are animals, we are animals essentially. This is because they believe that if we are animals, we are essentially members of the human kind (e.g., human animal, Homo sapiens), and as a result, we have the criterion of identity by virtue of that kind. The goal of this paper is to reject the claim that our being animals implies our essentially being animals. I (...) begin by reformulating the standard animalist’s argument for the claim that we are essentially biological entities of some sort. I then argue that the very same argumentative strategy can be applied against standard animalism. Specifically, the standard animalist’s reasoning for the claim that we are contingently psychological beings faces a dilemma that undermines the claim that we are animals essentially. In the remainder of the paper, I reply to various objections to my argument and consider a strategy that animalists can pursue in attempting to block the dilemma. (shrink)

How can low-income, non-English-speaking parents become advocates, leaders, and role models in their children’s schools? _A Cord of Three Strands_ offers a close study of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, a grassroots organization on the northwest side of Chicago, whose work on parent engagement has drawn national attention. The author identifies three elements—induction, integration, and investment—that together capture the dynamic and developmental nature of successful parent engagement. Writing with both optimism and urgency, author Soo Hong offers richly detailed portraits of (...) parents’ experiences and addresses the complex and sometime conflicting relationships among school, family, and community. (shrink)

One of the central claims of the neurodiversity movement is that society should accommodate the needs of autistics, rather than try to treat autism. People have variously tried to reject this accommodation thesis as applicable to all autistics. One instance is Pier Jaarsma and Stellan Welin, who argue that the thesis should apply to some but not all autistics. They do so via separating autistics into high- and low-functioning, on the basis of IQ and social effectiveness or functionings. I reject (...) their grounds for separating autistics. IQ is an irrelevant basis for separating autistics. Charitably rendering it as referring to more general capacities still leaves us mistaken about the roles they play in supporting the accommodation thesis. The appeal to social effectiveness or functionings relies on standards that are inapplicable to autistics, and which risks being deaf to the point of their claims. I then consider if their remaining argument concerning autistic culture may succeed independently of the line they draw. I argue that construing autistics' claims as beginning from culture mistakes their status, and may even detract from their aims. Via my discussion of Jaarsma and Welin, I hope to point to why the more general strategy of separating autistics, in response to the accommodation thesis, does not fully succeed. Finally, I sketch some directions for future discussions, arguing that we should instead shift our attention to consider another set of questions concerning the costs and extent of change required to accommodate all autistics. (shrink)

In this essay, I aim to address the two related problems faced by ontological emergence and propose a solution. First, I shall briefly outline the concept of emergence, the distinction between ontological and epistemological emergence, as well as the distinction between synchronic and diachronic emergence, and focus mainly on synchronic ontological emergence. Second, I shall discuss the two related problems faced by synchronic ontological emergence—configurational forces and downward causation. Third, I shall present a solution to these problems—affirming ontological emergence but (...) denying vertical causation. Last, I shall address objections to the ontological emergence without vertical causation view. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to argue against the claim that agent causation is more fundamental than event causation. To accomplish this aim, I shall first briefly discuss the motivation behind agent causation. Second, I shall highlight the differences between agent causation and event causation. Third, I shall begin briefly with the weaker claim held by Timothy O’Connor and Randolph Clarke that there is no good reason to believe that event causation is more fundamental than agent causation. Fourth, I (...) shall discuss the stronger claim held by E. J. Lowe that agent causation is more fundamental than event causation, and raise objections against the various arguments Lowe advances for the stronger claim. To the extent that my objections against Lowe’s stronger claim succeed, they raise questions for O’Connor’s and Clarke’s weaker claim. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory contends that organizations owe an obligation to other stakeholder groups that extends beyond shareholders. This study uses stakeholder theory to examine which groups public relations practitioners and journalists attend to as well as which attributes—legitimacy, power, and urgency—they highlight. Content analysis of press releases and news stories found that the stakeholder most frequently mentioned in both press releases and newspapers was the shareholder group. Both press releases and news stories focused more on legitimacy than power or urgency for (...) all stakeholders except government. The findings support criticisms that, in general, business news and corporate communications concentrate on the interests of shareholders. The ethical implications from the perspective of stakeholder theory are discussed. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 310—311. Writing Death . Jeremy Fernando, foreword by Avital Ronell. Den Haag: Uitgeverij. 2011 ISBN: 978-90-817091-0-1 Rite and ceremony as well as legend bound the living and the dead in a common partnership. They were esthetic but they were more than esthetic. The rites of mourning expressed more than grief; the war and harvest dance were more than a gathering of energy for tasks to be performed; magic was more than a way of commanding forces of nature (...) to do the bidding of man; feasts were more than a satisfaction of hunger. Each of these communal modes of activity united the practical, the social, and the educative in an integrated whole having esthetic form.(1) Jeremy Fernando’s Writing Death is a sensitive attempt at exploring the depths and heights to which the processes of mourning can take us. Death, as an absence, renders all gestures (for what is mourning but a gesture with many faces) surrounding it at once as a possibility and an impossibility. Fernando poses questions that often elude the mourner and the mourned—the same, and different—by raising the specter of subject and object; by compelling the examination of what it actually means to mourn; and most crucially, by considering the very status of possibility itself that the act of mourning foregrounds. Mourning, he reminds us, is premised upon memory (remembrance, recollection), the shadow of forgetting upon which is perpetually cast—the inextricability between memory and forgetting haunts the living more than it does the dead. And if grief has anything to do with it, mourning can quite easily be mistaken for an attempt to remember in order to forget; an attempt, in other words, to deny death, deny the one thing that confirms mortality. As if living has anything to do with it. What, then, of writing death? It becomes an unceasing process of locating—and addressing—possibility itself: the passing as possibility; loss as possibility; impossibility as, and of, naming this possibility. In confronting the passing on, it is possible, nay inevitable, to move on, move away from the site of loss, of grief. All the while, we forget, Fernando reminds us, that mourning has little to do with the dead, and a whole lot to do with the living, the mourning self. Here, he echoes Dewey’s consolidation of rituals and ceremonies, of the dead and of the living, all as parts of a larger unity, of a social, public gesture meant to sate a private need: In trying to “get over it,” are we trying to get over ourselves? Or more than that: are we trying to get over the fact that we can never quite get over ourselves? (Fernando, 77) As if guilt has anything to do with it. And “it” continues to be the point that he is driving at, driving towards. “It” is the possibility and impossibility, death and life, memory and forgetting, lost and cherished. “It” is what eludes mourning, eludes attempts to overcome grief. Nonetheless, move on, he must. And Fernando does this in fewer moves than a 12-step program—hardly therapeutic, but intellectually satisfying. Writing Death attends to some of the pertinent aspects of the act of mourning—both as gesture and as meditation: eulogy, distress (call), tears, and the question of how (beyond ritual, beyond sentimentality) to mourn. And what’s love got to do with it? Everything and nothing. Mourning, after all, is an articulation of love, but it is also one that forces the mourner to be selective, as with myth-making, in the recollection: Remembering only ever occurs in exception to memory—quite possibly in betrayal of a memory. In this way, each remembrance is a naming of that memory, a naming of something as memory, bringing with it an act of violence. (40) Mourning is thus not only an act of fictionalizing, it is also an act of reading, to continually be compelled to respond to another, all the while keeping vigil against a reconceptualization of the dead, without, therefore, misreading the dead. This can only be done, Fernando argues, by all the while “maintaining the otherness of the other. After all, one must try not to forget that one cannot be too close—space is needed—to touch.” (82) There is also tacit acknowledgement that doing so foregrounds the fact that the selectivity of memory becomes exclusive, and concretizes into a singularity, thus negating the multi-dimensionality of a life lived – and thus killing the already dead. Writing Death is framed by two eulogies—or the approximations of eulogies; approximation because both foreground and call into question the eulogy as a genre. The first is Avital Ronell’s foreword to the book, remembering Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe; the second is Fernando’s own response to the passing of a mentor, Jean Baudrillard. Both are not merely attempts to philosophize their way out of the act of mourning. Both are in fact deeply moving pieces that remind us of the emotional possibilities that may reside within any intellectual undertaking, that the latter need not be cold and devoid of feelings. And whereas Writing Death does not attempt to make any philosophical claim for humanism, the underlying wistfulness of both pieces does suggest that there is a proper place for deep-seated human response to death. We can (and the book does) intellectualize and problematize the acts of mourning and grieving, but these do not diminish the fact that we mourn and grieve. And, framing Writing Death as the two eulogies do, Jeremy Fernando perhaps finally, and inadvertently, names “It”—it is, above everything else, Human. August, 2011 Singapore NOTES (1) Dewey, John. Art as Experience . New York: Perigee, 1934. (shrink)

The small nation-state of Singapore has increasingly been referred to in the popular media as the Intelligent Island of the future. With significant state investment in the promotion and dissemination of information-communications technology and attendant social ramifications, this has become an area that can no longer be ignored or taken for granted. This article intends to map the conditions of possibility on which Singapore can be conceived of as an Intelligent Island, in situating the role of information technology and Intelligent (...) Island discourse within the discourses of postcoloniality, technocapitalism, late modernity, and globalization. In particular, this article attempts to show how, in Intelligent Island discourse, the processes of the construction of a Singaporean nation are intricately linked to the shift in political discourse from mobilizing a rhetoric of crisis to one of utopianism. (shrink)

성호 이익의 저서 『성호사설』의 글 중에서 저자 성호 선생의 사유와 생애를 뚜렷이 보여주는 작품만을 선별하여 구성하였다. 『성호사설』에 수록된 글들은 성호가 40세 전후부터 평소에 공부하거나 생활하거나 제자들을 가르치다가 떠오른 생각이나 의문들을 적어둔 것들이다. 성호는 그 글들을 차곡차곡 모아두었다가 나이가 80세에 가까워지자 그 글들을 꺼내어 정리했다. 40여년에 걸친 학문의 총 결산이 곧 『성호사설』인 것이다. 여기에서‘사설’은 한자로 僿說로 ‘자질구레한 논설’이라는 뜻이다. 『성호사설』은 폭넓은 지식을 담고 있다는 점에서는 백과사전과 비슷하지만 그와 결정적으로 구분되는 점은 실학자로서의 ‘투철한 문제의식’과 ‘높은 식견’을 보여준다. 『성호사설』에 담긴 광범위한 지식은 그저 (...) 흥밋거리나 ‘지식을 위한 지식’으로 나열된 것이 아니다. 어떻게 하면 하층민이 더 잘살 수 있을까, 열심히 일하는 사람이 더 가난해지고 놀고먹는 자들이 특권을 유지하는 부조리를 어떻게 하면 청산할 수 있을까, 어떻게 하면 부당하게 잊힌 사람들이 정당한 평가를 받게 할 수 있을까 등의 질문에 답하며 문제를 구체적이면서도 치밀하고 깊이 있게 파고들기 위한 지식인 것이다. (shrink)

Conscientious disobedients often face the demand to differentiate themselves from criminals whose law-breaking actions are not undergirded by conscientious convictions. In public and philosophical discourse, conscientious disobedients are often criticised on the basis that their actions render them no different from criminals. I provide a qualified defence of disobedients in this essay. I argue that the differentiation demand can be satisfied even by disobedients who engage in what are typically regarded as radical acts of disobedience. In practical terms, this means (...) that even disobedients who engage in actions such as arson, looting, rioting, vandalism or vigilantism can also successfully differentiate themselves from criminals. (shrink)

Die Arbeit behandelt das bis heute nicht zureichend geklarte Verhaltnis von Kants pragmatischer Anthropologie zur empirischen Psychologie Christian Wolffs und seiner Schule, eine Frage, um die die Kantforschung seit Jahrzehnten wie die Katze um den heissen Brei herumschleicht. Untersucht wird der Einfluss, den die Problemstellungen der empirischen Psychologie Wolffs und Baumgartens auf die pragmatische Anthropologie von Kant ausgeubt haben. Ein besonderes Gewicht der Untersuchung liegt dabei auf der Klarung der vieldeutigen, weitgehend unbeachteten Idee der Erfahrung, die sowohl im empirisch-psychologischen Kontext (...) der Wolffschen Schule als auch im pragmatisch-anthropologischen bei Kant eine zentrale Rolle spielt.". (shrink)

The combination of decreased genotyping costs and prolific social media use is fueling a personal genetic testing industry in which consumers purchase and interact with genetic risk information online. Consumers and their genetic risk profiles are protected in some respects by the 2008 federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which forbids the discriminatory use of genetic information by employers and health insurers; however, practical and technical limitations undermine its enforceability, given the everyday practices of online social networking and its impact (...) on the workplace. In the Web 2.0 era, employers in most states can legally search about job candidates and employees online, probing social networking sites for personal information that might bear on hiring and employment decisions. We examine GINA's protections for online sharing of genetic information as well as its limitations, and propose policy recommendations to address current gaps that leave employees? genetic information vulnerable in a Web-based world. (shrink)

I attempt to adjudicate the disagreement between those who seek to reconceptualize disability as mere difference and their opponents. I do so by reviewing a central conviction motivating the resistance, concerning the relationship between disability and well-being. I argue that the conviction depends on further considerations about the costs and extent of change involved in accommodating individuals with a particular disability trait. I conclude by considering three pay-offs of this clarification.

Fan Zhen’s 范縝 “Shen Mie Lun 神滅論” can be read as a debate between a physicalist and a dualist in the philosophy of mind. This debate, known as the “mind-body problem” in the Western tradition, has a long history beginning with the ancient Greeks, and is still rife to this very day. Many of the arguments found in the “Shen Mie Lun” correspond to arguments found in the history of Western thought, including those of Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Frege, and Ryle. (...) My aims in this essay are threefold: (1) offer a philosophical translation and explication of the key arguments in the “Shen Mie Lun,” (2) compare them with the corresponding arguments of some relevant Western philosophers, and (3) clarify Fan Zhen’s position on the mind-body problem through comparing the conceptual distinctions employed by him with those employed by his Western counterparts. (shrink)

It has been suggested that states have no right to directly discriminate against would-be immigrants on grounds of race or sex. However, while the discourse on cases of wrongful discrimination has largely focused on discrimination on grounds of gender, race, and sexual orientation, states frequently engage in discrimination of a different kind when it comes to admissions and naturalisation policies. It is assumed that the anti-discrimination principle does not include cases of talent-based discrimination, and that these fall well within the (...) rights of states. I wish to suggest, to the contrary, that selecting immigrants on the basis of talent is a form of wrongful discrimination. First, with reference to Deborah Hellman’s expressive theory of discrimination, I explain what is wrongful about particular forms of state discrimination between would-be migrants. Next, I tackle the issue of immigrant selection on grounds of talent, which I refer to as ‘talent-based selection’. Unlike gender or race-based selection, it is generally not regarded as wrongful discrimination, for the reason that it does not express disrespect in the same way that sexist or racist selection criteria does. I argue that this assumption is mistaken, as talent-based discrimination does involve the expression of disrespect. In the present context, it has the expressive effect of reproducing demeaning stereotypes about low-skilled foreigners. Finally, I anticipate four objections to my conclusion. (shrink)

In “Punishing Intentions and Neurointerventions”, Birks and Buyx (2018) provide a novel argument on why the use of mandatory neurointerventions on convicted criminals is morally objectionable “in a...

According to T.M. Scanlon, the core idea of contractualism consists in the claim that what we are morally required to do is conceptually grounded in the value of living in “relations of mutual recognition” with others. Specifically, Scanlon's contractualist idea of “living in relations of mutual recognition with others” requires that one act only in ways that cannot be reasonably rejected by all of those affected, according to the results of a hypothetical reflection conducted within one's own mind. I claim, (...) however, that Scanlon is mistaken to rely on a single individual's hypothetical reflection (monological reflection) to determine what no one affected could reasonably reject. Instead, following Jürgen Habermas, I claim that we must engage in actual dialogue with all who stand to be affected, in order to live in relations of mutual recognition with others. (shrink)