Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly permeating many types of high-stake societal decision-making such as the work at the criminal courts. Various types of algorithmic tools have already been introduced into sentencing. This article concerns the use of algorithms designed to deliver sentence recommendations. More precisely, it is considered how one should determine whether one type of sentencing algorithm (e.g., a model based on machine learning) would be ethically preferable to another type of sentencing algorithm (e.g., a model based on old-fashioned programming). (...) Whether the implementation of sentencing algorithms is ethically desirable obviously depends upon various questions. For instance, some of the traditional issues that have received considerable attention are algorithmic biases and lack of transparency. However, the purpose of this article is to direct attention to a further challenge that has not yet been considered in the discussion of sentencing algorithms. That is, even if is assumed that the traditional challenges concerning biases, transparency, and cost-efficiency have all been solved or proven insubstantial, there will be a further serious challenge associated with the comparison of sentencing algorithms; namely, that we do not yet possess an ethically plausible and applicable criterion for assessing how well sentencing algorithms are performing. (shrink)

In the past few years, we have become increasingly focused on technology use that is impulsive, unthinking, and distractive. There has been a strong push to understand such technology use in terms of dopamine addiction. The present article demonstrates the limitations of this so-called neurobehaviorist approach: Not only is it inconsistent in regard to how it understands humans, technologies, and their mutual relationship, it also pathologizes everyday human behaviors. The article proceeds to discuss dual-systems theory, which helpfully discusses impulsive technology (...) use in terms of habit instead of addiction, but can be criticized for its mentalist celebration of conscious control. Finally, the article introduces a phenomenological approach whose conceptualization of habit manifests many of the experiential qualities that we try to capture with addiction, but remains non-pathologizing and opens a space for learning: While tech addiction is bad and must be eliminated, good tech habits can be trained and cultivated. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that pharmacological treatment may have an impact on aggressive and impulsive behavior. Assuming that these results are correct, would it be morally acceptable to instigate violent criminals to accept pharmacological rehabilitation by offering this treatment in return for early release from prison? This paper examines three different reasons for being skeptical with regard to this sort of practice. The first reason concerns the acceptability of the treatment itself. The second reason concerns the ethical legitimacy of making (...) offers under coercive conditions. The third relates to the acceptability of the fact that those criminals who accepted the treatment would be exempted from the punishment they rightly deserved. It is argued that none of these reasons succeeds in rejecting this sort of offer. (shrink)

This book gives an analysis of Hertz's posthumously published Principles of Mechanics in its philosophical, physical and mathematical context. In a period of heated debates about the true foundation of physical sciences, Hertz's book was conceived and highly regarded as an original and rigorous foundation for a mechanistic research program. Insisting that a law-like account of nature would require hypothetical unobservables, Hertz viewed physical theories as images of the world rather than the true design behind the phenomena. This paved the (...) way for the modern conception of a model. Rejecting the concept of force as a coherent basic notion of physics he built his mechanics on hidden masses and rigid connections, and formulated it as a new differential geometric language.Recently many philosophers have studied Hertz's image theory and historians of physics have discussed his forceless mechanics. The present book shows how these aspects, as well as the hitherto overlooked mathematical aspects, form an integrated whole which is closely connected to the mechanistic world view of the time and which is a natural continuation of Hertz's earlier research on electromagnetism. Therefore it is also a case study of the strong interactions between philosophy, physics and mathematics. Moreover, the book presents an analysis of the genesis of many of the central elements of Hertz's mechanics based on his manuscripts and drafts. Hertz's research program was cut short by the advent of relativity theory but its image theory influenced many philosophers as well as some physicists and mathematicians and its geometric form had a lasting influence on advanced expositions of mechanics. (shrink)

Based on the conception of life and semiosis as co-extensive an attempt is given to classify cognitive and communicative potentials of species according to the plasticity and articulatory sophistication they exhibit. A clear distinction is drawn between semiosis and perception, where perception is seen as a high-level activity, an integrated product of a multitude of semiotic interactions inside or between bodies. Previous attempts at finding progressive trends in evolution that might justify a scaling of species from primitive to advanced levels (...) have not met with much success, but when evolution is considered in the light of semiosis such a scaling immediately catches the eye. The main purpose of this paper is to suggest a scaling of this progression in semiotic freedom into a series of distinct steps. The elleven steps suggested are: 1) molecular recognition, 2) prokaryote-eukaryote transformation, 3) division of labor in multicellular organisms, 4) from irritability to phenotypic plasticity, 5) sense perception, 6) behavioral choice, 7) active information gathering, 8) collaboration, deception, 9) learning and social intelligence, 10) sentience, 11) consciousness. In light of this, the paper finally discusses the conceptual framework for biosemiotic evolution. The evolution of biosemiotic capabilities does not take the form of an ongoing composition of simple signs into composite wholes. Rather, it takes the shape of the increasing subdivision and control of a primitive, holophrastic perception-action circuit already committed to “proto-propositions” reliably guiding action already in the most primitive species. (shrink)

In recent years, we have witnessed the rise of a contemporary approach to cognitive psychology known as 4E cognition. According to this ‘extracranial’ view of cognition, the mind is not ensconced in the head, but dynamically intertwined with a host of different entities, social as well as technological. The purpose of the present article is to raise a concern about 4E cognition. The concern is not about whether the mind is in fact extended, but about how this condition is currently (...) portrayed in the 4E literature. It is argued that 4E scholars tend to paint an overly idealized picture of human–technology relations in which all entities are presumed to cooperate and collaborate. The article first describes the basic tenets of extended cognition and distributed cognition, two of the most thingly approaches in this new wave of cognitive psychology. It then proceeds to discuss the twin notions of cognition and representation and argues that it may be time to leave these concepts behind. Finally, it sketches out the so-called ‘dogma of harmony’ in the 4E literature and argues for the importance of making analytical room for conflictual human–technology relations. Two examples of such conflictual relations are provided: bad habits and deskilling. (shrink)

A version of Birkhoff's theorem is proved by constructive, predicative, methods. The version we prove has two conditions more than the classical one. First, the class considered is assumed to contain a generic family, which is defined to be a set-indexed family of algebras such that if an identity is valid in every algebra of this family, it is valid in every algebra of the class. Secondly, the class is assumed to be closed under inductive limits.

Being the parent of a disabled child is not easy, it is experienced as a situation marked by stress, crises and grief. As Vygotsky described eighty years ago, the development of children with disabilities and the culture do not fit as they do for non-disabled children. The development of a child with disabilities is not determined by the child’s physical defect alone, but constituted by the incongruence between the physical defect and the culture. In this study, the lives of four (...) families with deafblind children were followed for two years. Interviews and observations were conducted in different settings. This study finds that because of the incongruence between the physical defect and the culture, it is difficult to reach and maintain the zone of proximal development for a child with disabilities. This study illustrates how the network of professionals and parents around the child can make a local congruence that creates a platform for the child’s development. (shrink)

Natural (non-cultivated) systems are nmed to economize their use of energy as much as possible, and thereby to produce minimal amounts of entropy. It is suggested that this has been obtained by optimizing the evolutionary creation of semiotic controls on all processes of life. As long as biological (ultimately photosynthetic) energy sources satisfied most human needs for energy consumption, these biosemiotic controls remained largely undisturbed, with the result that production systems remained sustainable. The industrial revolution instantiated a ruphure of this (...) balanced situation. The semiotic control function (S) would no longer match the size of the energy flow (E). In the industrial production system, energy flows have dramatically been increased, while the S component has not been taken care of. This has created a dangerously low S/E ratio, and it is suggested that this low S/E ratio constitutes a fundamental explanation of the environmental crisis. In order to restore a sustainable production system, we will now have to develop technological means for a strong increase in the S factor of the production system. It is suggested that this can be obtained through a development of considerate, gentle, and clever forms of biosemiotic technology. (shrink)

According to robust virtue epistemology, knowledge is a cognitive achievement, where this means that the agent's cognitive success is because of her cognitive ability. One type of objection to robust virtue epistemology that has been put forward in the contemporary literature is that this view has problems dealing with certain kinds of testimonial knowledge, and thus that it is in tension with standard views in the epistemology of testimony. We build on this critique to argue that insofar as agents epistemically (...) depend on third-party members of their epistemic community as many social epistemologists contend, then there will be cases where two agents differ epistemically despite being virtue-theoretic duplicates. This means that robust virtue epistemology, at least insofar as it is understood along standard lines such that it endorses epistemic individualism, is also in tension with a central commitment of contemporary social epistemology. (shrink)

79. This study of the interaction between mechanics and differential geometry does not pretend to be exhaustive. In particular, there is probably more to be said about the mathematical side of the history from Darboux to Ricci and Levi Civita and beyond. Statistical mechanics may also be of interest and there is definitely more to be said about Hertz (I plan to continue in this direction) and about Poincaré's geometric and topological reasonings for example about the three body problem [Poincaré (...) 1890] (cf. also [Poincaré 1993], [Andersson 1994] and [Barrow-Green 1994]). Moreover, it would be interesting to find out how the 19th century ideas discussed here influenced the developments in the 20th century. Einstein himself is a hotly debated case. Yet, despite these shortcommings, I hope that this paper has shown that the interactions between mechanics and differential geometry is not a 20th century invention. Klein's view (see my Introduction) that Riemannian geometry grew out of mechanics, more specifically the principle of least action, cannot be maintained. On the other hand, when Riemannian geometry became known around 1870 it was immediately used in mechanics by Lipschitz. He began a continued tradition in this field, which had several elements in common with the new view of mechanics conceived by the physicists and explicitly carried out by Hertz. Before 1870 we found only scattered interactions between differential geometry and mechanics and only direct ones for systems of two or three degrees of freedom. For more degrees of freedom the geometrical ideas were in some interesting cases taken over by analogy, but these analogies did not lead to formal introduction of geometries of more than three dimensions. (shrink)

A popular form of virtue epistemology—defended by such figures as Ernest Sosa, Linda Zagzebski and John Greco—holds that knowledge can be exclusively understood in virtue-theoretic terms. In particular, it holds that there isn't any need for an additional epistemic condition to deal with the problem posed by knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. It is argued that the sustainability of such a proposal is called into question by the possibility of epistemic twin earth cases. In particular, it is argued that such cases demonstrate (...) the need for virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge to appeal to an independent epistemic condition which excludes knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. (shrink)

The allocation of resources among different stakeholders is an ethical dilemma for chief executive officers (CEOs). In this study, we investigate the association between CEO power and workplace injuries and illnesses. We use an establishment-level dataset comprising 31,924 establishment-year observations between 2002 and 2011. Our main result shows that employees at firms with structurally powerful CEOs experience fewer workplace injuries and illnesses and days away from work. We reason that CEOs derive a private benefit from low injury and illness rates (...) and that powerful CEOs are better at influencing employees to take workplace safety and health seriously. Additional analyses reveal fewer injuries and illnesses in firms led by CEOs with expertise power. However, increased injuries and illnesses were linked to firms controlled by CEOs with ownership power. Moreover, we find that structurally powerful CEOs mitigate injury and illness differences in relation to geographical proximity to corporate headquarters. We contribute with both research and practical implications on the topics of CEO power and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in general and workplace safety and health in particular. (shrink)

Are virtual objects real? I will claim that the question sets us up for the wrong type of conclusion: Chalmers (2017) argues that a virtual calculator (like other entities) is a real calculator when it is “organizationally invariant” with its non-virtual counterpart—when it performs calculation. However, virtual reality and games are defined by the fact that they always selectively implement their source material. Even the most detailed virtual car will still have an infinite range of details which are missing (gas, (...) engines, pistons, fuel, chemical reactions, molecules, atoms). This means that even the most detailed virtual object will still have fictional aspects. Rather than argue that virtual objects are, or aren’t, real, it is preferable to think of overlaps and continuities between the fictional and the real, where even the most painstakingly detailed virtual reality implementation of a non-virtual object is still art: a human process of selection and interpretation. Virtual reality should therefore not be philosophically understood just as a technological implementation on a trajectory to perfection, but as a cultural artifact which derives its value in part from its simplification and difference from its source material. (shrink)

This volume contains work by the very best young scholars working in Applied Ethics, gathering a range of new perspectives and thoughts on highly relevant topics, such as the environment, animals, computers, freedom of speech, human enhancement, war and poverty. For researchers and students working in or around this fascinating area of the discipline, the volume will provide a unique snapshot of where the cutting-edge work in the field is currently engaged and where it's headed.

Should public opinion determine--or even influence--sentencing policy and practice? Should the punishment of criminal offenders reflect what the public regards as appropriate? These deceptively simple questions conceal complex theoretical and methodological challenges to the administration of punishment. In the West, politicians have often answered these questions in the affirmative; penal reforms have been justified with direct reference to the attitudes of the public. This is why the contention that politicians should bridge the gap between the public and criminal justice practice (...) has widespread resonance. Criminal law scholars, for their part, have often been more reluctant to accept public input in penal practice, and some have even held that the idea of consulting public opinion constitutes a populist approach to punishment. The purpose of this book is to examine the moral significance of public opinion for penal theory and practice. For the first time in a single volume the editors, Jesper Ryberg and Julian V. Roberts, have assembled a number of respected criminologists, philosophers, and legal theorists to address the various aspects of why and how public opinion should be reflected in the way the criminal justice system deals with criminals. The chapters address the myriad complexities surrounding this issue by first weighing the justifications for incorporating public views into punishment practices and then considering the various ways this might be achieved through juries, prosecutors, restorative justice programs, and other means. (shrink)

We review the use of introspective and phenomenological methods in experimental settings. We distinguish different senses of introspection, and further distinguish phenomenological method from introspectionist approaches. Two ways of using phenomenology in experimental procedures are identified: first, the neurophenomenological method, proposed by Varela, involves the training of experimental subjects. This approach has been directly and productively incorporated into the protocol of experiments on perception. A second approach may have wider application and does not involve training experimental subjects in phenomenological method. (...) It requires front-loading phenomenological insights into experimental design. A number of experiments employing this approach are reviewed. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for both the cognitive sciences and phenomenology. (shrink)

The present article focuses on the issue of ignoring conversational partners in favor of one’s phone, or what has also become known as phubbing. Prior research has shown that this behavior is associated with a host of negative interpersonal consequences. Since phubbing by definition entails adverse effects, however, it is interesting to explore why people continue to engage in this hurtful behavior: Are they unaware that phubbing is hurtful to others? Or do they simply not care? Building on interviews with (...) students in a Danish business college, the article reveals a pronounced discrepancy in young people’s relationship to phubbing: While they emphatically denounce phubbing as both annoying and disrespectful, they readily admit to phubbing others. In other words, they often act against their own moral convictions. Importantly, participants describe this discrepancy as a result of an unintentional inclination to divert attentional engagement. On the basis of these results, the article develops the notion of digital akrasia, which can be defined as a tendency to become swept up by ones digital devices in spite of better intentions. It is proposed that this phenomenon may be the result of bad technohabits. Further implications are discussed. (shrink)

The opposing views in the scholarly debate on evidence-based policy (EBP) have recently been labeled ‘rationalist’ and ‘constructivist’, where the former are positive to EBP and the latter are not. This framing of the debate is suboptimal, as it conflates critical positions that should be kept separate. This article suggests that the debate should be understood as one between idealists, realists, and counter-idealists about EBP. The realist position, that is, that EBP is difficult or impossible to achieve in practice, has (...) already been treated at length in the debate. The conflict between idealism and counter-idealism, to the contrary, has been neglected. This article aims to stimulate the scholarly debate on EBP by initiating a principled discussion between idealism and counter-idealism about EBP, which should motivate proponents of EBP to formulate their ideal with substantial moral arguments. This places the debate on EBP in the context of normative political theory, where it rightfully belongs. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that autonomous decision-making requires that the decision-maker’s desires are authentic, i.e., “genuine,” “truly her own,” “not out of character,” or similar. In this article, it is argued that a method to reliably determine the authenticity (or inauthenticity) of a desire cannot be developed. A taxonomy of characteristics displayed by different theories of authenticity is introduced and applied to evaluate such theories categorically, in contrast to the prior approach of treating them individually. The conclusion is drawn that, (...) in practice, the authenticity of desires cannot be reliably determined. It is suggested that authenticity should therefore not be employed in informed consent practices in healthcare. (shrink)

Screen time has become a hot button issue in psychology with researchers fiercely debating its mental effects. If we want to understand the psychological dynamics of technology use, however, a numerical conceptualization of screen time will lead us to gloss over crucial distinctions. To make this point, the present article takes a hermeneutic approach to a negative form of screen time known as ‘phubbing’, which is the practice of snubbing conversational partners in favor of one’s phone. Using interview data, it (...) is demonstrated that whether or not phone use amounts to phubbing, that is, whether or not it tips over and becomes harmful, depends on a host of contextual factors such as relation (who), content (what), purpose (why), timing (when), and communication (how). These findings demonstrate that not all screen time is created equal: what is harmful and inappropriate in one context is benign in another, and vice versa. Simply put, screen time is not a numerical entity whose causal effects we can measure and explain, but a meaningful activity that we must try to understand. (shrink)

A traditional assumption in retributivist thinking is the view that an offender's desert is determined exclusively on the basis of the gravity of the crime committed. However, this assumption has r...

In a recent article in this journal, Isaac Taylor warned against the unconstrained use of algorithms as instruments to determine sentences in criminal cases. More precisely, what he argued is that it is important that the sentencing process serves a condemnatory function, and that the introduction of sentencing algorithms threatens to undermine this function. In this reply to Taylor, it is argued that even though his considerations are interesting as they direct attention to the sentencing process and not merely the (...) output of algorithmic sentencing, there are nevertheless reasons to be skeptical of his argument. More precisely, it is argued, first, that it is far from clear that we must accept the basic premise underlying Taylor’s argument, namely, that the sentencing process should serve a condemnatory function and, second, that even if this premise is true, it does not follow that the condemnatory element of the sentencing process is undermined by introducing algorithms as advisory instruments at sentencing. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to provide an introduction to a recent example of applied ethics, namely, the discussion of how and when neuroscientific knowledge and technology should be used in the work of the criminal justice system. More precisely, an overview is provided of the ethical challenges that arise from the use of brain imaging and brain interventions in the work of the guilt phase and sentencing phase of the criminal court.

In the Original publication of the article the revised date was erroneously published as: 20 August 2017 the correct date is: 20 August 2020.

We survey concepts at the frontier of research connecting artificial, animal, and human cognition to computation and information processing—from the Turing test to Searle’s Chinese room argument, from integrated information theory to computational and algorithmic complexity. We start by arguing that passing the Turing test is a trivial computational problem and that its pragmatic difficulty sheds light on the computational nature of the human mind more than it does on the challenge of artificial intelligence. We then review our proposed algorithmic (...) information-theoretic measures for quantifying and characterizing cognition in various forms. These are capable of accounting for known biases in human behavior, thus vindicating a computational algorithmic view of cognition as first suggested by Turing, but this time rooted in the concept of algorithmic probability, which in turn is based on computational universality while being independent of computational model, and which has the virtue of being predictive and testable as a model theory of cognitive behavior. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2014 Issue: 198 Pages: 11-31.

In response to Kripke's modal argument contemporary descriptivists suggest that referring terms, e.g., ‘water’, are synonymous with actually-rigidified definite descriptions, e.g., ‘the actual watery stuff’. Following Scott Soames, this strategy has the counterintuitive consequence that possible speakers on Perfect Earth cannot be ascribed water-beliefs without beliefs about the actual world. Co-indexing the actuality and possibility operators has the equally untoward result that possible speakers on Twin Earth are ascribed water-beliefs. So, Soames's dilemma is that the descriptivist can account for either (...) Twin Earth or Perfect Earth but not both. In response, this paper argues that since ‘actual’ is an indexical, the content of water-beliefs is egocentric, and so if the descriptivist avails herself of relativized propositions as the content of such beliefs, she is able to account for both Twin Earth and Perfect Earth. The lesson is that we have to tread carefully when making inferences about the contents of beliefs from the semantics of belief-reporting sentences that contain actually-rigidified expressions. (shrink)

Most bodies in this world do not have brains and the minority of animal species that do have brained bodies are descendents from species with more distributed or decentralized nervous systems. Thus, bodies were here first, and only relatively late in evolution did the bodies of a few species grow supplementary organs, brains, sophisticated enough to support a psychological life. Psychological life therefore from the beginning was embedded in and served as a tool for corporeal life. This paper discusses the (...) semiotically controlled dynamics of bodily existence that has allowed the evolution of these seemingly ‘unnatural’ mental and even linguistic kinds of species. It is shown how the skin, on the one hand, makes us belong in the world, and on the other hand, is part of the huge landscape of membranes across which the semiotic self incessantly must be reconstituted. The discussion moves on to the intracellular world of signal transduction through which the activity of single cells are put to service for bodily needs. The paper further considers the mechanisms behind homeostasis and the semiotics of the psycho-neuro-endocrine integration in the body. The concept of semiotic emergence is introduced and a holistic marker hypothesis for why some animals may have an experiential life is suggested. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to direct attention to a challenge—referred to as the threshold challenge —facing a non-absolutist retributivist view on international criminal justice. It is argued, on the one hand, that this challenge constitutes a practically pertinent problem for the retributivist approach to the punishment of mass crimes and, on the other, that it is very hard to imagine any principled way of meeting this challenge.

A vcry important question raised by Dcrck Parfit in the part 0i` Reasons and Persons which dcals with population ethics is how t0 compare thc future outcomes 0i` those policies which differ in thc way they afTcct population growth} Such comparisons arc complicated by the fact that thcsc 0utcomcs may differ not only in thc avcragc Icvcls 0f well-being they gcncratc but also in thc identity and number 0i` thc persons who cxist.

According to the discontinuity view we can have a (lower) pleasure which, no matter how often a certain unit of it is added to itself, cannot become greater in value than a unit of another (higher) pleasure. All recent adherents of this view seem to rely basically on the same sort of reasoning which is referred to here as the preference test. This article presents three arguments, each of which indicates that the inference from the preference test to the discontinuity (...) view is not conclusive. (shrink)

A sign is something that refers to something else. Signs, whether of natural or cultural origin, act by provoking a receptive system, human or nonhuman, to form an interpretant (a movement or a brain activity) that somehow relates the system to this "something else." Semiotics sees meaning as connected to the formation of interpretants. In a biosemiotic understanding living systems are basically engaged in semiotic interactions, that is, interpretative processes, and organic evolution exhibits an inherent tendency toward an increase in (...) semiotic freedom. Mammals generally are equipped with more semiotic freedom than are their reptilian ancestor species, and fishes are more semiotically sophisticated than are invertebrates. The evolutionary trend toward the production of life forms with an increasing interpretative capacity or semiotic freedom implies that the production of meaning has become an essential survival parameter in later stages of evolution. (shrink)

The belief in a world governed by natural law has meant that our ideas of good thinking have increasingly turned toward formalizable schemes, suitable to support ideas of consistency, accuracy, and disembodied clarity. The idea that thinking might be a bodily thing hasn't been much appreciated among philosophers of this tradition. Yet, we shall pursue this line of thought in this paper. It is suggested that knowledge is not something we have but something created in the very moment of use. (...) The same goes for other essential concepts such as for instance causality. Causality is seen as a human bodily experience. Causality is an experience, and from this fact follows that the Newtonian world must be turned upside down. The laws of gravity are not something "out-there" but something "in-here". (shrink)

Over the past decade the use of closed circuit television (CCTV) as a means of crime prevention has reached unprecedented levels. Though critics of this development do not speak with one voice and have pointed to a number of different problems in the use of CCTV, one argument has played a dominant role in the debate, namely, that CCTV constitutes an unacceptable violation of people’s right to privacy. The purpose of this paper is to examine this argument critically. It is (...) suggested that the argument is hard to sustain. (shrink)