Given the complexity of teams involved in creating AI-based systems, how can we understand who should be held accountable when they fail? This paper reports findings about accountable AI from 26 interviews conducted with stakeholders in AI drawn from the fields of AI research, law, and policy. Participants described the challenges presented by the distributed nature of how AI systems are designed, developed, deployed, and regulated. This distribution of agency, alongside existing mechanisms of accountability, responsibility, and liability, creates barriers for (...) effective accountable design. As agency is distributed across the socio-technical landscape of an AI system, users without deep knowledge of the operation of these systems become disempowered, unable to challenge or contest when it impacts their lives. In this context, accountability becomes a matter of building systems that can be challenged, interrogated, and, most importantly, adjusted in use to accommodate counter-intuitive results and unpredictable impacts. Thus, accountable system design can work to reconfigure socio-technical landscapes to protect the users of AI and to prevent unjust apportionment of risk. (shrink)

EDITED BY SLAVENKO ŠLJUKIĆBOOK SYMPOSIUM ON KENNETH R. WESTPHAL’S HOW HUME AND KANT RECONSTRUCT NATURAL LAW.

Reasons are given for believing that it is premature to abandon the idea that domain-general models of concept learning can explain how human beings understand the biological world. Questions are raised about whether the evidence for domain specificity is convincing, and it is suggested that two constraints on domain-general concept learning models may be sufficient to account for the available data.

Kenneth R. Westphal presents an original interpretation of Hume's and Kant's moral philosophies, the differences between which are prominent in current philosophical accounts. Westphal argues that focussing on these differences, however, occludes a decisive, shared achievement: a distinctive constructivist account of the basic principles of justice which justifies their strict objectivity without invoking moral realism nor moral anti- or irrealism. Westphal explores how Hume developed a kind of constructivism for basic property rights and for government, and how Kant greatly (...) refined Hume's construction of justice within his 'metaphysical principles of justice', whilst preserving the core model of Hume's innovative account. Westphal contends that Hume's and Kant's constructivism avoids the conventionalist and relativist tendencies latent if not explicit in contemporary forms of moral constructivism. (shrink)

I argue that Harry Frankfurt’s doctrine of sufficiency, properly understood, presents a plausible alternative to egalitarianism. My position may be more general than Frankfurt’s, insofar as he limits himself to economic sufficiency; on my view, insufficiency is a generic reason for the rejection of principles governing permissible behavior. By situating sufficiency within a contractualist framework of moral permissibility, I provide an alternative to common (and, I think, mistaken) characterizations of the doctrine of sufficiency as either subordinate to equality or primarily (...) concerned with maximizing cases of sufficiency. (shrink)

A radical, optimistic exploration of how humans evolved to develop reason, consciousness, and free will. Lately, the most passionate advocates of the theory of evolution seem to present it as bad news. Scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, and Sam Harris tell us that our most intimate actions, thoughts, and values are mere byproducts of thousands of generations of mindless adaptation. We are just one species among multitudes, and therefore no more significant than any other living creature. Now comes (...) Brown University biologist Kenneth R. Miller to make the case that this view betrays a gross misunderstanding of evolution. Natural selection surely explains how our bodies and brains were shaped, but Miller argues that it’s not a social or cultural theory of everything. In The Human Instinct, he rejects the idea that our biological heritage means that human thought, action, and imagination are pre-determined, describing instead the trajectory that ultimately gave us reason, consciousness and free will. A proper understanding of evolution, he says, reveals humankind in its glorious uniqueness—one foot planted firmly among all of the creatures we’ve evolved alongside, and the other in the special place of self-awareness and understanding that we alone occupy in the universe. Equal parts natural science and philosophy, The Human Instinct is a moving and powerful celebration of what it means to be human. (shrink)

Focusing on the ground-breaking and often controversial science of Charles Darwin, the author seeks to bridge the gulf between science and religion on the subject of human evolution.

Hegel’s aesthetic ideal is the perfect integration of form and content within a work of art. This ideal is incompatible with the predominant 20th-century principle of formalist criticism, that form is the sole important factor in a work of art. Although the formalist dichotomy between form and content has been criticized on philosophical grounds, that does not suffice to justify Hegel’s ideal. Justifying Hegel’s ideal requires detailed art criticism that shows how form and content are, and why they should be, (...) integrated in good works of art. This essay provides some of this criticism. By focusing on the work of the contemporary artist, Robert Turner, this criticism further suggests that Hegel’s aesthetic ideal is still relevant. Moreover, the nature of Turner’s work suggests that art is still relevant in our day in ways Hegel did not expect. (shrink)

Modern Philosophy bloomed into the Enlightenment, a cultural and philosophical movement still alive today, despite growing criticism. Some recent critics claim (roughly) that the alleged ‘universality’ of Enlightenment reason led directly to the imposition of Eurocentric reason on other, less militarily developed cultures. Some contend that there is no such thing as ‘universal’ reason. I contend that there are serious flaws in the Enlightenment notion of reason resulting from three basic dichotomies: (1) reason versus tradition, (2) knowledge versus customary belief, (...) and (3) individuals versus society. Identifying and remedying these flaws leads, not to the abandonment of rational enlightenment, but to an improved account of human rationality. (shrink)

A realist story of concepts like Millikan's can and should accommodate facts about how the context of items available for comparison during concept formation affects just what concept is formed or reidentified. Similarly, the contribution of the goals and purposes of the conceptualizer are relevant to how concepts are acquired and deployed, but can be understood as entirely consistent with a view of concepts as objectively evaluable.

Is parental control over children best understood in terms of trusteeship or similar fiduciary obligations? This essay contemplates the elements of legal trusts and fiduciarity as they might relate to the moral relationship between children and parents. Though many accounts of upbringing advocate parent-child relationship models with structural resemblance to trust-like relationships, it is unclear who grants moral trusts, how trustees are actually selected, or how to identify proper beneficiaries. By considering these and other classical elements of relationships of trust, (...) this essay seeks to clarify and explore the trust model’s role, if any, in understanding children’s rights. Such exploration raises the possibility that another element of common law, the duty to rescue, may serve to enhance the trust model of children’s rights. (shrink)

With a few incisive (and legitimate) criticisms of crucial experiments in psychology that purported to bring down the foundations of modern economics, together with a broad scholarly review that is praiseworthy, Gintis attempts to build a unifying framework for the behavioral sciences. His efforts fail, however, because he fails to break with the conventional methodology, which, regrettably, is the unifying basis of the behavioral sciences. As a result, his efforts will merely recapitulate the story of the past: interesting, provocative results (...) that are soon overthrown because they are limited to the conditions of the experiment. Gintis is keenly aware of this limitation – and thus meets Brunswik, but fails to recognize him; this we know because he seems unaware of the fact that Brunswik said it all – and provided a detailed defense – a half century ago. (Published Online April 27 2007). (shrink)

The formal properties of orbits in a plane are explored by elementary topology. The notions developed from first principles include: convex and polygonal orbits; convexity; orientation, winding number and interior; convex and star-shaped regions. It is shown that an orbit that is convex with respect to each of its interior points bounds a convex region. Also, an orbit that is convex with respect to a fixed point bounds a star-shaped region.Biological considerations that directed interest to these patterns are indicated, and (...) the implications of the prospect of higher orders of star-shapedness mentioned. (shrink)

A number of inconsistencies are pointed out in the conservation equations that describe the tensor bilinear densities for the conserved properties of spin-1/2 spinor fields. All the inconsistencies are related to the description of the spin density, and the origin of these difficulties is discussed.

One inescapable feature of the Covid-19 pandemic that has swept the world in 2020 is that it has shown how inter-connected and inter-dependent is the human community. It was soon apparent that the spread of the coronavirus was a global crisis calling for a global response. Yet the human community had to meet the pandemic after a period of systematic weakening of agencies of international cooperation as populist and nationalist political movements gained control of nation after nation. This put the (...) issue of internationalism, the belief that the nations of the world should work for greater mutual understanding and cooperation, high on the agenda. The focus of this article is on the role of faith, particularly the missionary dimension of Christianity, in relation to internationalism. It explores what recent thinking about Christian mission might have to contribute to the recovery of internationalism in the crisis of the 2020s. (shrink)

Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston's critical biography of the Romanian-born French philosopher E. M. Cioran focuses on his crucial formative years as a mystical revolutionary attracted to right-wing nationalist politics in interwar Romania, his writings of this period, and his self-imposed exile to France in 1937. This move led to his transformation into one of the most famous French moralists of the 20th century. As an enthusiast of the anti-rationalist philosophies widely popular in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century, Cioran (...) became an advocate of the fascistic Iron Guard. In her quest to understand how Cioran and other brilliant young intellectuals could have been attracted to such passionate national revival movements, Zarifopol-Johnston, herself a Romanian emigré, sought out the aging philosopher in Paris in the early 1990s and retraced his steps from his home village of Rasinari and youthful years in Sibiu, through his student years in Bucharest and Berlin, to his early residence in France. Her portrait of Cioran is complemented by an engaging autobiographical account of her rediscovery of her own Romanian past. (shrink)

There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as ‘sustainable’ there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption — the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means — has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequences of real consumption by redirecting some consumptive behavior from shifting (...) material states to shifting information states. (shrink)

I had the privilege of studying with Phil McShane in 1979-80, when he was Visiting Fellow at Lonergan University College, Concordia University, Montréal. If I were to choose two points of focus from Phil’s work that have stayed with me through the years following, they would be: stick with the method, and be content with beginnings.

Kant famously declares that “although all our cognition commences with experience, … it does not on that account all arise from experience”. This marks Kant’s disagreement with empiricism, and his contention that human knowledge and experience require both sensation and the use of certain a priori concepts, the Categories. However, this is only the surface of Kant’s much deeper, though neglected view about the nature of reason and judgment. Kant holds that even our a priori concepts are acquired, not from (...) sensation, but “originally,” because our mind has a fundamental capacity to judge that, upon sensory stimulation, generates the Categories through its basic logical functions of judgment. This “epigenesis” of reason and our fundamental capacity to judge that drives it is the topic of Longuenesse’s fascinating book, and the source of her title. (shrink)

This Open Access book provides both a broad perspective and a focused examination of cow care as a subject of widespread ethical concern in India, and increasingly in other parts of the world. In the face of what has persisted as a highly charged political issue over cow protection in India, intellectual space must be made to bring the wealth of Indian traditional ethical discourse to bear on the realities of current human-animal relationships, particularly those of humans with cows. Dharma, (...) yoga, and bhakti paradigms serve as starting points for bringing Hindu--particularly Vaishnava Hindu--animal ethics into conversation with contemporary Western animal ethics. The author argues that a culture of bhakti--the inclusive, empathetic practice of spirituality centered in Krishna as the beloved cowherd of Vraja--can complement recently developed ethics-of-care thinking to create a solid basis for sustaining all kinds of cow care communities. (shrink)

I have argued elsewhere that Nietzsche’s genealogical critique of religion and morality requires a cognitivist epistemology, including a correspondence conception of truth. In this essay I pose ten crucial questions concerning the consistency of Nietzsche’s epistemology with his genealogy: Does Nietzsche hold that the world is a totally characterless flux? Does he hold that there is a metaphysical distinction between appearance and reality? Does he believe that there is cognitively useful perceptual access to the world? Does he believe that there (...) is a distinction between language and reality? Does he hold that there are representations? Does he hold that (some) language is capable of expressing what is made available by the senses? Is Nietzsche himself limited by the inadequacies of language that bar others from knowledge? Does his talk of the ‘creation’ of truth have non-cognitivist implications? Does his ‘perspectivism’ entail non-cognitivism? Is Nietzsche’s perspectivism self-referentially consistent? In answering these questions, I defend Nietzsche’s consistency and his cognitivism by showing that his views on ‘philology’ respond to his own critique of language and that his ‘perspectivism’ is self-referentially consistent and is consistent with his cognitivism. (shrink)

Krueger & Funder (K&F) focus on an important problem, but they offer a political rather than a scientific remedy. “Balance” is not our problem; systematic, scientific research is. Only that sort of research will ever lead social psychology out of its current malaise that focuses on positive and negative aspects of human behavior.