Current uses of robots in classrooms are reviewed and used to characterise four scenarios: Robot as Classroom Teacher; Robot as Companion and Peer; Robot as Care-eliciting Companion; and Telepresence Robot Teacher. The main ethical concerns associated with robot teachers are identified as: privacy; attachment, deception, and loss of human contact; and control and accountability. These are discussed in terms of the four identified scenarios. It is argued that classroom robots are likely to impact children’s’ privacy, especially when they masquerade as (...) their friends and companions, when sensors are used to measure children’s responses, and when records are kept. Social robots designed to appear as if they understand and care for humans necessarily involve some deception, and could increase the risk of reduced human contact. Children could form attachments to robot companions, or robot teachers and this could have a deleterious effect on their social development. There are also concerns about the ability, and use of robots to control or make decisions about children’s behaviour in the classroom. It is concluded that there are good reasons not to welcome fully fledged robot teachers, and that robot companions should be given a cautious welcome at best. The limited circumstances in which robots could be used in the classroom to improve the human condition by offering otherwise unavailable educational experiences are discussed. (shrink)

This contribution is a review article on the three most important books by F. Gerrit Immink in practical theology. His approach to this discipline is studying faith praxis of the Protestantse Kerk in Nederland which is a church in the Reformed tradition. In his first book he explained his approach to practical theology in a discussion with the action theory and hermeneutical-communucative approaches. His choice for the study of faith praxis opens the way for a more theological approach to him (...) in which communication between God and people is an important aspect. His second book forms the central part of this article. He uses the concept performance in the liturgy which is adopted from the theater world. In the performance by means of the execution of the liturgy by the congregation they all get involved in the message from the Bible of that Sunday, they are touched by it, it has an effect on them, and they get a new perspective on the problems of everyday life. This is possible through the work of the Holy Spirit. The epiclese prayers in the liturgy are prayers for the enlightening and work by the Spirit. He discusses singing, praying, preaching, baptism and Holy Communion in detail. The main idea is that the performance in the liturgy does something to you, it has an effect on you, something happens to you. To my mind there is no need to choose between the ritual approach and the approach he is putting on the table. The approaches can enrich each other. (shrink)

What does it take for a positive epistemic status to obtain? I argue throughout my thesis that if a positive epistemic status obtains, this is not a brute fact. Instead, if for example a belief is justified, it is justified in virtue of some further condition(s) obtaining. A fundamental topic in epistemology is the question of what sorts of factors can be relevant to determining the positive epistemic status of belief. Epistemic Internalism holds that these factors must be “internal” (in (...) a sense that needs to be specified). Epistemic Externalism is the denial of internalism. My thesis is an explanation and defense of an internalist theory of epistemic justification. -/- The central claim of my thesis is that something is “internal” in this sense only if it is, or can easily be, the object of the agent’s conscious awareness. By considering key cases, I show that without an awareness requirement on justification, the subject cannot avoid what I call the Subject’s Perspective Objection. In developing this objection I examine and respond to an argument against the awareness requirement which claims that such awareness either leads to a vicious regress of requiring higher order beliefs of increasing complexity (if any beliefs are to be justified), or else requiring such awareness is unmotivated. This regress is generated because it is assumed that the relevant kind of awareness must be doxastic. My solution invokes what I call ‘strong non-doxastic awareness’ that grounds non-inferential justification and thereby avoids this dilemma, while meeting the Subject’s Perspective Objection. -/- I also argue that external factors, such as the reliability (actual or conditional) of the mechanism supporting the belief, are not necessary for justification. I argue for this conclusion by comparing what constitutes justified belief in the actual world with one’s counterpart in a ‘demon world’. I argue that this intuition, correctly interpreted, counts in favour of internalism. As I explain, many philosophers moved by arguments presented by externalists about mental content deny that such a case is possible. In opposition I argue that the awareness requirement remains substantially unaffected, no matter which view of content turns out to be correct. What is key is that the two worlds are completely subjectively indistinguishable from each other for those who inhabit them in all the ways of which they are consciously aware. -/- If neither the obtaining of truth nor reliability is necessary for epistemic justification, what makes justification genuinely epistemic? In the final chapter I argue against recent work that assimilates justification with knowledge, as well as for a positive account of the truth connection. As to the former question, I defend the orthodoxy that they are distinct epistemic statuses; as to the latter, I argue that the connection between justification and truth is conceptual. That is, epistemic justification is epistemic because it turns on evidence; evidence is epistemic because it is conceptually linked with truth. Epistemic justification, therefore, is conceptually linked with the truth (via evidence), which is what makes it distinctively epistemic. -/- In short, this thesis is an explanation and defense of an internalist theory of epistemic justification. The central claim of the thesis is that something is “internal” in this sense only if it is, or can easily be, the object of the agent’s conscious awareness. I argue that conscious awareness is a necessary condition of epistemic justification obtaining, and that factors external to consciousness play no justificatory role. (shrink)

In a previous paper we have shown that in quantum chromodynamics the gluon propagator vanishes in the infrared limit, while the ghost propagator is more singular than a simple pole. These results were obtained after angular averaging, but in the current paper we go beyond this approximation and perform an exact calculation of the angular integrals. The powers of the infrared behaviour of the propagators are changed substantially. We find the very intriguing result that the gluon propagator vanishes in the (...) infrared exactly like p2, whilst the ghost propagator is exactly as singular as 1/p4. We also find that the value of the infrared fixed point of the QCD coupling is much decreased from the y-max estimate: it is now equal to 4π/3. Following a recent study by von Smekal et al.[1], we analyzed in Ref.[2] the coupled Dyson- Schwinger equations for the gluon and ghost form factors F and G. The approximations were two-fold: firstly the vertices were taken bare, and secondly angular averaging was introduced (the so-called y-max approximation). Deferring to later work an improvement of the vertices. (shrink)

My thesis is on the intersection of epistemology and the philosophy of religion. Contemporary religious epistemology asks the question of how, if at all, can religious belief be rationally justified. I focus on a relatively new tradition that responds to this question known as Reformed Epistemology, as advanced by Alvin Plantinga. Reformed Epistemologists argue that belief in God can be rational, reasonable, and justified without appeal to evidence as was traditionally thought. Plantinga argues that religious belief stems from an innate (...) faculty which produces properly basic beliefs that need not rest on any other beliefs for their justification. My aim is to critically examine these claims. My thesis begins in section I with a discussion of Plantinga’s early attacks on classical foundationalism and Evidentialism, that is, the view that being rational means according one's belief with the evidence. His early goal is to discredit the Evidentialist objection by rebutting the flawed epistemological system he argues it presupposes. In so doing, Plantinga attempts to loosen the canons of basicality to include the belief in God as properly basic. -/- In section II I then discuss Plantinga’s notion of warrant, which is his term for justification – the hallmark difference between true belief and knowledge. After examining the tenability of Plantinga’s concept of what makes belief warranted, I examine how successfully he specifically applies this notion of justification to religious belief. Plantinga’s contention is that religious belief can enjoy enough warrant so that if the belief is true, it will constitute knowledge. In examining this claim I evaluate in section III Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism, his Aquinas/Calvin model in section IV, potential rationality defeaters in section V and in section VI the larger question of the internalism / externalism debate and its influence on these central issues. (shrink)

In this article, I present a critical literature study of the theoretical approach of practical theologians in South Africa to our discipline, in honour of Yolanda Dreyer on her 60th birthday. Some of my colleagues' approaches at the universities of Stellenbosch, Free State, Pretoria, Unisa and NWU are discussed. All of them work with practical theological hermeneutics. The basic hermeneutic approach of Daniël Louw is widened with an integrated approach by Richard R. Osmer in which practical theology as a hermeneutic (...) discipline also includes the empirical aspect which the action theory approach has contributed to the discussion. After discussing Louw's basic hermeneutic approach, all the other colleagues who basically accepted Osmer's approach in their publications are discussed. Important and new ground is being broken by contemporary colleagues, including research in public practical theology, without neglecting the focus on Christian congregations, and new work is being done at the grass roots level of African issues in our country. (shrink)

A case is made for supposing that the total probability accounted for in a decision analysis is less than unity. This is done by constructing a measure on the set of all codes for computable functions in such a way that the measure of every effectively accountable subset is bounded by a number <1. The consistency of these measures with the Savage axioms for rational preference is established. Implications for applied decision theory are outlined.

ABSTRACT Amartya Sen’s capability approach is often used in disability research as a normative framework for describing and evaluating the well-being of people with disabilities. Nevertheless, recently, the possibility of going beyond description to the use of the capability approach as an explanatory tool has been raised. However, to allow the use of the capability approach in this way requires grounding it in an appropriate research paradigm. In this paper, critical realism is adopted for this purpose. It is argued that (...) critical realism can provide the ontology needed to justify finding explanations for the way that people with disabilities achieve their valued capabilities. The assumption here is that there are real, emergent structures and mechanisms that underlie empirical capabilities; and that these structures and mechanisms are related to people’s agency, as described by critical realism’s conception of the relationship between structure and agency. (shrink)