Fueled by ever-growing amounts of (digital) data and advances in artificial intelligence, decision-making in contemporary societies is increasingly delegated to automated processes. Drawing from social science theories and from the emerging body of research about algorithmic appreciation and algorithmic perceptions, the current study explores the extent to which personal characteristics can be linked to perceptions of automated decision-making by AI, and the boundary conditions of these perceptions, namely the extent to which such perceptions differ across media, (public) health, and judicial (...) contexts. Data from a scenario-based survey experiment with a national sample (N = 958) show that people are by and large concerned about risks and have mixed opinions about fairness and usefulness of automated decision-making at a societal level, with general attitudes influenced by individual characteristics. Interestingly, decisions taken automatically by AI were often evaluated on par or even better than human experts for specific decisions. Theoretical and societal implications about these findings are discussed. (shrink)

“When Species Meet is a breathtaking meditation on the intersection between humankind and dog, philosophy and science, and macro and micro cultures.” —Cameron Woo, Publisher of Bark magazine In 2006, about 69 million U.S. households had pets, giving homes to around 73.9 million dogs, 90.5 million cats, and 16.6 million birds, and spending over $38 billion dollars on companion animals. As never before in history, our pets are truly members of the family. But the notion of “companion species”—knotted from human (...) beings, animals and other organisms, landscapes, and technologies—includes much more than “companion animals.” In When Species Meet, Donna J. Haraway digs into this larger phenomenon to contemplate the interactions of humans with many kinds of critters, especially with those called domestic. At the heart of the book are her experiences in agility training with her dogs Cayenne and Roland, but Haraway’s vision here also encompasses wolves, chickens, cats, baboons, sheep, microorganisms, and whales wearing video cameras. From designer pets to lab animals to trained therapy dogs, she deftly explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal-human encounters. In this deeply personal yet intellectually groundbreaking work, Haraway develops the idea of companion species, those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion. “A great deal is at stake in such meetings,” she writes, “and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no assured happy or unhappy ending—socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace.” Ultimately, she finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal-human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism. One of the founders of the posthumanities, Donna J. Haraway is professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Author of many books and widely read essays, including The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness and the now-classic essay “The Cyborg Manifesto,” she received the J. D. Bernal Prize in 2000, a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Social Studies in Science. (shrink)

We argue that Néron and Norman’s article stops short of the point where it would truly advance our understanding of corporate citizenship. Their article, in our view, fosters normative confusion and displays significant gaps in logic. In addition, the large and useful literature on business-government relations has for the most part been overlooked by Néron and Norman, even though their article ends with an enthusiastic call for scholarly attention to this subject.

This paper aims to show current philosophical anthropology pertinence to face up the question of meaning of human life. Exploring Marquard’s theory and his comprehension of human being as Homo Compensator‒ which allow to overcome the problems of modernity plunged in the gnosis dilemma, that in the absence of an absolute meaning it fails to understand the problem of evil‒ this paper firstly analyzes how modernity answered that problem from theodicy and philosophy of history. Afterwards, due to the failures of (...) these attempts, Marquard’s compensation proposal will be discussed as a search on a substitute meaning in the context of a philosophy of finitude, which advocates for a rhetorical-narrative meaning. The paper concludes with the problem of the non-compensable and its dilemmas on understanding meaning. (shrink)

This empirical study examines corporate responses to activist shareholder groups filing social-policy shareholder resolutions. Using resource dependency theory as our conceptual framing, we identify some of the drivers of corporate responses to shareholder activists. This study departs from previous studies by including a fourth possible corporate response, engaging in dialogue. Dialogue, an alternative to shareholder resolutions filed by activists, is a process in which corporations and activist shareholder groups mutually agree to engage in ongoing negotiations to deal with social issues. (...) Based on a unique dataset of resolutions filed by member organizations of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility from 2002 to 2005 and the outcomes of these resolutions, our analysis finds that corporate managers are more likely to engage in dialogue with shareholder activists when the firm is larger, is more responsive to stakeholders, the CEO is the board chair, and the firm has a relatively lower percentage of institutional investors. (shrink)

Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse explores the roles of stories, figures, dreams, theories, facts, delusions, advertising, institutions, economic arrangements, publishing practices, scientific advances, and politics in twentieth- century technoscience. The book's title is an e-mail address. With it, Haraway locates herself and her readers in a sprawling net of associations more far-flung than the Internet. The address is not a cozy home. There is no innocent place to stand in the world where the book's author figure, FemaleMan, encounters DuPont's controversial laboratory rodent, OncoMouse. (...) Haraway sees the world of contemporary technoscience as a drama. Information sciences and life sciences are at the center of the dramatic action. Scenes are set in landscapes where maps of human genetic differences are stored in databases, racialized bodies are reconfigured by morphing for photographs in popular magazines, and transgenic mice important to breast cancer research are patented intellectual property. The actors are many, and not all are human. Beginning with the Modest Witness, the key figure in the Science Revolution, Haraway shows us the trouble lurking in race and gender- marked practices for attesting to matters of fact. In later scenes, Haraway explores the kinship relations among the many cyborg creatures produced in the late twentieth-century--in nuclear research, genetic engineering, reproductive technologies, computer-mediated representational practices, and mutations in biological approaches to "race.". (shrink)

Evolution is frequently concentrated in bursts of rapid morphological change and speciation followed by long‐term stasis. We propose that this pattern of punctuated equilibria results from an evolutionary tug‐of‐war between host genomes and transposable elements (TEs) mediated through the epigenome. According to this hypothesis, epigenetic regulatory mechanisms (RNA interference, DNA methylation and histone modifications) maintain stasis by suppressing TE mobilization. However, physiological stress, induced by climate change or invasion of new habitats, disrupts epigenetic regulation and unleashes TEs. With their capacity (...) to drive non‐adaptive host evolution, mobilized TEs can restructure the genome and displace populations from adaptive peaks, thus providing an escape from stasis and generating genetic innovations required for rapid diversification. This “epi‐transposon hypothesis” can not only explain macroevolutionary tempo and mode, but may also resolve other long‐standing controversies, such as Wright's shifting balance theory, Mayr's peripheral isolates model, and McClintock's view of genome restructuring as an adaptive response to challenge. (shrink)

Some philosophers have claimed that it is meaningless or paradoxical to consider the probability of a probability. Others have however argued that second-order probabilities do not pose any particular problem. We side with the latter group. On condition that the relevant distinctions are taken into account, second-order probabilities can be shown to be perfectly consistent. May the same be said of an infinite hierarchy of higher-order probabilities? Is it consistent to speak of a probability of a probability, and of a (...) probability of a probability of a probability, and so on, {\em ad infinitum}? We argue that it is, for it can be shown that there exists an infinite system of probabilities that has a model. In particular, we define a regress of higher-order probabilities that leads to a convergent series which determines an infinite-order probability value. We demonstrate the consistency of the regress by constructing a model based on coin-making machines. (shrink)

President Barack Obama ordered federal regulatory agencies to engage in a retrospective regulatory review process in early 2011. This paper reports the initial results of an analysis of participation in the notice and comment process by business and public interest groups. The focus of the analysis is on comments given to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Some attention is given to the EPA’s identification of regulations to be reviewed, as a result of this process.

This article aims to analyze The free negress Elisabeth: prisoner of color, a historical novel from Suriname written by Cynthia McLeod. The focus given to the research intends to problematize the way the place of speech acts in the construction of the fiction, highlighting historically silenced voices. In addition, the study of the place of speech of black women during the Dutch colonization in Suriname aims to contribute to the debate on racial and gender inequality that underlies colonial societies and (...) remains to today. For the discussions, this research will be based on the reflections of Akotirene, Morrison and hooks, among others. (shrink)

The book includes 13 contributions that deal with the first attempts of opposition to the of Aristotle's thought. From Theophrastus to Epicurus, and to Plotinus. The best specialists have collaborated (among others: M. Mignucci, E. Berti, K. Ierodiakonou, C. Natali, S. Maso, F. Ferrari, D. Taormina, A. Falcon, A. Schiaparelli).

In birds and frogs, species pairs retain the capacity to produce viable hybrids for tens of millions of years, an order of magnitude longer than mammals. What accounts for these differences in relative rates of pre- and postzygotic isolation? We propose that reproductive mode is a critically important but previously overlooked factor in the speciation process. Viviparity creates a post-fertilization arena for genomic conflicts absent in egg-laying species. With viviparity, conflict can arise between: mothers and embryos; sibling embryos in the (...) womb, and maternal and paternal genomes within individual embryos. Such intra- and intergenomic conflicts result in perpetual antagonistic coevolution, thereby accelerating interpopulation postzygotic isolation. In addition, by generating intrapopulation genetic incompatibility, viviparity-driven conflict favors polyandry and limits the potential for precopulatory divergence. Mammalian diversification is characterized by rapid evolution of incompatible feto-maternal interactions, asymmetrical postzygotic isolation, disproportionate effects of genomically-imprinted genes, and “F2 hybrid enhancement.” The viviparity-driven conflict hypothesis provides a parsimonious explanation for these patterns in mammalian evolution. BioEssays 22:938–946, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

In A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume presents an argument according to which all knowledge reduces to probability, and all probability reduces to nothing. Many have criticized this argument, while others find nothing wrong with it. In this paper we explain that the argument is invalid as it stands, but for different reasons than have been hitherto acknowledged. Once the argument is repaired, it becomes clear that there is indeed something that reduces to nothing, but it is something other (...) than what, according to many, Hume had in mind. Thus two views emerge of what exactly it is that reduces. We surmise that Hume failed to distinguish the two, because he lacked the formal means to differentiate between a rendering of his argument that is in accordance with the probability calculus, and one that is not. (shrink)

We use the method of fixed points to describe a form of probabilistic truth approximation which we illustrate by means of three examples. We then contrast this form of probabilistic truth approximation with another, more familiar kind, where no fixed points are used. In probabilistic truth approximation with fixed points the events are dependent on one another, but in the second kind they are independent. The first form exhibits a phenomenon that we call ‘fading origins’, the second one is subject (...) to a phenomenon known as ‘the washing out of the prior’. We explain that the two phenomena may seem very similar, but are in fact quite different. (shrink)

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) withits Optional Protocol is the first binding legal act and leading international instrumentregarding the rights of persons with disabilities. One of the principles of CRPDis “respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to makeone’s own choices and independence”, whereby persons with disabilities are recognizedas holders of rights taking into account their specific situation. CRPD recognizes inArticle 6 that “women and girls with disabilities are subject to multiple discrimination”and (...) mandates signatory countries to “take measures to ensure their full and equalenjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.” The research was done inorder to examine the readiness of the state to institutionally cover the awareness of girlsand women with disabilities, their education on the issue of violence, access to servicesand information appropriate to the needs of each category separately, as well as systemicsolutions for their protection from violence. A qualitative research strategy was applied,and the research was conducted with representatives of the Centers for Social Work, representativesfrom the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, professionals who are directproviders of services in the field of non-family protection, as well as the girls and womenwith disabilities themselves. The main conclusions that emerge from the research saythat girls and women with disabilities are more susceptible to violence, especially bytheir partners or family members. More awareness is needed to recognize and encouragereporting of violence. (shrink)

Donna Haraway's work has transformed the fields of cyberculture, feminist studies, and the history of science and technology. Her subjects range from animal dioramas in the American Museum of Natural History to research in transgenic mice, from gender in the laboratory to the nature of the cyborg. Trained as an historian of science, she has produced a series of books and essays that have become essential reading in cultural studies, gender studies, and the history of science. The Haraway Reader brings (...) together a generous selection of Donna Haraway's work. Included is her "Manifesto for Cyborgs," in which she famously wrote that she "would rather be a cyborg than a goddess." Other selections are taken from her three major works, Primate Visions, Modest Witness , and Simians, Cyborgs and Women , as well as some of her more recent writing on animals. For readers in cultural studies, feminist theory, science studies, and cyberculture, Donna Haraway is one of our keenest observers of nature, science, and the social world. This volume is the best introduction to her thought. (shrink)

Like many discussions on the pros and cons of epistemic foundationalism, the debate between C. I. Lewis and H. Reichenbach dealt with three concerns: the existence of basic beliefs, their nature, and the way in which beliefs are related. In this paper we concentrate on the third matter, especially on Lewis’s assertion that a probability relation must depend on something that is certain, and Reichenbach’s claim that certainty is never needed. We note that Lewis’s assertion is prima facie ambiguous, but (...) argue that this ambiguity is only apparent if probability theory is viewed within a modal logic. Although there are empirical situations where Reichenbach is right, and others where Lewis’s reasoning seems to be more appropriate, it will become clear that Reichenbach’s stance is the generic one. We conclude that this constitutes a threat to epistemic foundationalism.Keywords: Epistemic foundationalism; Probability; Clarence Irving Lewis; Hans Reichenbach. (shrink)

Physically frail, badly educated girls, brought up to lead useless lives as idle gentlewomen, married to dominant husbands, and relegated to "separate spheres" of life—these phrases have often been used to describe Victorian upper-middle-class women. M. Jeanne Peterson rejects such formulations and the received wisdom they embody in favor of a careful examination of Victorian ladies and their lives. Focusing on a network of urban professional families over three generations, this book examines the scope and quality of gentlewomen's education, (...) their physical lives, their relationship to money, their experience of family illness and death, and their relationships to men (brothers and friends as well as fathers and husbands). Peterson also examines the prominent place of work in the lives of these "leisured" Victorian ladies, both single and married. Far from idle, the mothers, wives, and daughters of Victorian clergymen, doctors, lawyers, university dons, and others were accomplished and productive members of society who made substantial public and private contributions to virtually every sphere of Victorian life. (shrink)

Published in 1982, Carol Gilligan's _In a Different Voice_ proposed a new model of moral reasoning based on care, arguing that it better described the moral life of women. ____An Ethic of Care__ is the first volume to bring together key contributions to the extensive debate engaging Gilligan's work. It provides the highlights of the often impassioned discussion of the ethic of care, drawing on the literature of the wide range of disciplines that have entered into the debate. _Contributors:_ Annette (...) Baier, Diana Baumrind, Lawrence A. Blum, Mary Brabeck, John Broughton, Owen Flanagan, Marilyn Friedman, Carol Gilligan, Catherine G. Greeno, Catherine Jackson, Linda K. Kerber, Mary Jeanne Larrabee, Zella Luria, Eleanor E. Maccoby, Linda Nicholson, Bill Puka, Carol B. Stack, Joan C. Tronto, Lawrence Walker, Gertrud Nunner-Winkler. (shrink)

This article contributes to the philosophical inquiry of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by reframing the question “Where is the intelligence of Artificial Intelligence?” into “Where does AI intelligently operate?”. This rephrasing challenges our understanding of AI’s role in social practices and its integration into the human experience. Central to this discourse is the concept of the ‘cybork’ (a portmanteau of ‘cyborg’ and ‘work’), which symbolizes not just a physical entity but a dynamic system of actions and interactions within a socio-technical landscape: (...) work accomplished with machines. In this framework, intelligence in AI lies not in any function of isolated systems, but rather in the situated context of their use within collective and meaningful practices that give technology its sense and direction. Conversely, technology both enables and shapes these practices to the extent that distinguishing between the two can seem unnecessary, or even detrimental, to the optimal design of and for work practices. The cybork embodies this integration and entanglement, transcending the traditional boundaries between individuals and collectives, entities and actions. It reveals the inseparability and co-dependence of humans and technology, where technological artifacts become extensions of human capabilities, embody collective human history and development, and serve as both products and participants in societal practices, fundamentally shaping our interaction with the world. (shrink)

The task of aligning the philosophical and clinical perspectives on ethics is a challenging one. Clinical practice informs philosophy, not merely by supplying cases, but through shaping and testing philosophical concepts in the reality of the clinical world. In this paper we explore several aspects of the relationship between the philosophical and the clinical within a framework of palliative care for people living with Alzheimer's disease. We suggest that health professionals have a moral obligation to question previous assumptions concerning the (...) quality of life among people with Alzheimer's, and to address the question: does the concept of palliative care properly embrace people with severe dementia? We propose an ethic of palliative care for people with Alzheimer's that is based, not on the traditionally understood principle of autonomy, but on the need to listen to those living with the disease, acknowledging their profound loss of cognitive abilities, with a focus on preventing and relieving suffering, and improving the individual's quality of life. (shrink)

Can some evidence confirm a conjunction of two hypotheses more than it confirms either of the hypotheses separately? We show that it can, moreover under conditions that are the same for ten different measures of confirmation. Further we demonstrate that it is even possible for the conjunction of two disconfirmed hypotheses to be confirmed by the same evidence.

Electrifying, provocative, and controversial when first published thirty years ago, Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" is even more relevant today, when the divisions that she so eloquently challenges--of human and machine but also of gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and location--are increasingly complex. The subsequent "Companion Species Manifesto," which further questions the human-nonhuman disjunction, is no less urgently needed in our time of environmental crisis and profound polarization.Manifestly Haraway brings together these momentous manifestos to expose the continuity and ramifying force of (...) Haraway's thought, whose significance emerges with engaging immediacy in a sustained conversation between the author and her long-term friend and colleague Cary Wolfe. Reading cyborgs and companion species through and with each other, Haraway and Wolfe join in a wide-ranging exchange on the history and meaning of the manifestos in the context of biopolitics, feminism, Marxism, human-nonhuman relationships, making kin, literary tropes, material semiotics, the negative way of knowing, secular Catholicism, and more.The conversation ends by revealing the early stages of Haraway's "Chthulucene Manifesto," in tension with the teleologies of the doleful Anthropocene and the exterminationist Capitalocene. Deeply dedicated to a diverse and robust earthly flourishing, Manifestly Haraway promises to reignite needed discussion in and out of the academy about biologies, technologies, histories, and still possible futures. (shrink)

El presente artículo pretende proponer una reflexión sobre la vida buena desde la filosofía de la enfermedad. Asume que para entender los desafíos que la enfermedad suscita a nivel social y político vale la pena concebir el cuerpo como frontera. Esta idea de frontera, presentada por Anzaldúa, permite comprender tres relaciones esenciales: la particular comprensión de identidad del sujeto enfermo que en suma complejiza toda forma de identidad personal; la relación entre tecnología y cuerpo en la condición de una vida (...) buena desde la perspectiva posthumanista, y, finalmente, la comprensión de una biopolítica que, al asumir la radicalidad de la relación entre enfermedad y salud, reconduzca a nuevas prácticas sociales de la vida buena. (shrink)

We intend to analyze the relationship between Hans Blumenberg and Hannah Arendt around their anthropological perspectives to complement the vision of the former based on the particular way that the philosopher has of connecting with the practical and political world and, also to think about the implications that the anthropological perspective provided by Blumenberg has for practical reflection. In this sense, we focus on two themes: their reflection on the metaphor and the anthropological reading of the astronautical company. We will (...) link these topics with the development of a contempo- rary anthropology, that is to say, although it is not possible to achieve a substantialist definition of the human being, even so, the question about our own occurrence is fun- damental; in this case, the access route to anthropological doubt will be the metaphor. (shrink)

El presente artículo analiza las violencias e injusticias epistémicas que sufren las mujeres trans*, que se pueden rastrear en enunciados convencionales de los discursos médico, jurídico y mediático en torno al asesinato de mujeres trans*; dichos enunciados se refuerzan entre sí, perpetuando injusticias epistémicas contra estas mujeres en Colombia. Para esto, usaremos la noción de injusticia epistémica de Miranda Fricker y las propuestas de otrxs autorxs contemporáneos, como Moira Pérez, Blas Radi y Judith Butler, y mostraremos cómo los prejuicios identitarios (...) y la injusticia testimonial y hermenéutica a la que se ven expuestas las feminidades trans* implican marginarlas por medio de prácticas sociales de significación. (shrink)

Personality-disordered individuals of certain types tend to exhibit behaviors that cause particular problems for the Ethics and Compliance (E&C) function inorganizations. This paper defines personality-disordered individuals and focuses on three types that might create such problems: the psychopath, the narcissist, and the obsessivecompulsive personality. We provide a working hypothesis about the problems that they may cause in organizations and then report the results of an exploratory study of E&C personnel. The paper concludes with recommendations for managers and for future research.

La quinta parte de la Ética a Nicómaco (en adelante, EN) está dedicada al tema de la amistad. Su ubicación dentro del texto —en medio del discurso sobre el placer, el dolor y la eudaimonía— parece responder a que la amistad ya no es una virtud como tal, sino una clase de virtud o está acompañada de la virtud; por tanto, no se encuentra dentro de lo dedicado a la moralística, aunque parece que esta es fundamental dentro de la reflexión (...) de una vida buena. Podría situarse a la amistad dentro de los bienes relacionales, como aquellos absolutamente necesarios para una vida floreciente, pero que no obedecen a una virtud particular, sino que sus acciones se relacionan con el ejercicio de varias de ellas. También vale la pena apuntar el tratamiento de la philia dentro de un texto dedicado a la cosa pública, lo que evidencia que estamos entendiendo la philia dentro de un contexto amplio de relaciones sociales. El término philia es más extenso que nuestra versión reductiva de amistad, aunque lo implica. La amistad en Aristóteles permite ver la conexión entre las diferentes relaciones sociales que se tejen en una vida floreciente (dimensión familiar, social, política y económica). Así, dentro de un proyecto de vida buena, las actividades de interacción con el otro implican los vínculos de la amistad que permiten lograr la adquisición del bien, ya sea entendido como placer, utilidad y/o virtud. Lo anterior permite entender la importancia de seguir pensando con Aristóteles sobre el lugar de la amistad en nuestras vidas y la necesidad de un pensar filosófico sobre la amistad. En aras de la exposición, la reflexión sobre la amistad se puede descomponer en los siguientes apartados: la naturaleza de la amistad, el amor a sí mismo y la necesidad de la amistad. (shrink)

This article explores the circulation of #MyBodyMyChoice in a series of deeply divisive political debates – abortion rights and mask wearing during COVID-19. We trace the appropriation of this slogan for differing ideological purposes, and its shifts from collective political action concerning pro-choice to the rights of individuals to refuse to comply with mask mandates. Underpinning the values of each is a white liberal racism that operates to uphold dominant gender, class and economic structures.

We are again going through a period of expansion in biographical literature. There is an ever greater number of publications, demonstrating the libido biographica of the reading public and also showing the interest of authors for a genre that is often treated with a great deal of care and rigor. This is not the first time in the history of letters, and each of us can find in his library a quantity of ancient, classic or modern works proving the constancy (...) of this production. However, the contemporary phenomenon takes on a different meaning. The appetite for the biographical seems to be directly linked to its value as testimony. We are living in an era of distrust with regard to rules and codes. Every individual is called on to organize his conduct and invent his existence, from which comes, it seems, this need for an example that also expresses a taste for history and a need for more truth than entertainment from the author of biographies. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the use of effortless attention in performing daily activities and tasks. It details a study developed by The University of Chicago and Claremont Graduate University, and named the Experience Sampling Method to collect data from subjects of the study investigating the use of effortless attention in daily life. The findings are based on an ESM study of subjects consisting of middle and high school students from around the United States and the Sloan Study of Youth and (...) Social Development. The Sloan study focuses on investigating both effortful and effortless attention experiences of the subjects. A large number of students reveal how effortless attention has helped them to focus better on several tasks without much effort. (shrink)