Our study considers the governance, ethics and operational challenges associated with the acquisition, manipulation and commodification of ‘big data’ in the financial services sector. To the best of our knowledge, there are no published studies describing empirical research undertaken within companies in this sector to understand how they are responding to such challenges: our field-based research is a significant initial contribution in this respect. We describe the results of a micro-ethnographic study undertaken in a small-to-medium-sized company developing disruptive, technology-related platforms (...) and services in the banking and retail sectors based on big data and associated analytics: these are used to derive commercially valuable insights from personal customer data in exchange for cash back and targeted rewards. The company was found to employ a multi-level innovation governance approach, underpinned by an ethical strategy based on a principle of mutual benefit. Opt-in and informed consent for using data for specific purposes was supported by principles of data minimisation and anonymisation, with unrestricted use of secondary, anonymised and aggregated data to develop insights. Governance, which included contextual data protection legislation, payment-card industry data usage standards and internal corporate controls, presented as bespoke organisational practices relating to data security and privacy. These in total set the governance and ethics frame for big data innovation at the company within which it has had to be both adaptive and responsive under conditions of normative and regulatory uncertainty. (shrink)

Surveys are odd tools. The facts they reveal are often said to speak for themselves but it isn’t always obvious what to make of their findings. While this might not initially seem so with respect t...

This is the first volume compiling English translations of Leibniz's journal articles on natural philosophy, presenting a selection of 26 articles, only three of which have appeared before in English translation. It also includes in full Leibniz's public controversies with De Catelan, Papin, and Hartsoeker. The articles include work in optics, on the fracture strength of materials, and on motion in a resisting medium, and Leibniz's pioneering applications of his calculus to these issues by construing them as mini-max and inverse (...) tangent problems. Other topics covered by the articles include: criticisms of the Cartesian estimate of motive force and Leibniz's proposal of a different way of estimating force to replace it; a proposed theory of celestial motions and gravitation, and derivation of the inverse square law; challenge problems concerning the isochronous curve and the catenary; a sample of work on gaming theory; and Leibniz's critique of atomism. (shrink)

. . . The book is enhanced by the polished and lucid style of Mr. Waley's translations.

The aim of this article is to assess the impact of Big Data technologies for insurance ratemaking, with a special focus on motor products.The first part shows how statistics and insurance mechanisms adopted the same aggregate viewpoint. It made visible regularities that were invisible at the individual level, further supporting the classificatory approach of insurance and the assumption that all members of a class are identical risks. The second part focuses on the reversal of perspective currently occurring in data analysis (...) with predictive analytics, and how this conceptually contradicts the collective basis of insurance. The tremendous volume of data and the personalization promise through accurate individual prediction indeed deeply shakes the homogeneity hypothesis behind pooling. The third part attempts to assess the extent of this shift in motor insurance. Onboard devices that collect continuous driving behavioural data could import this new paradigm into these products. An examination of the current state of research on models with telematics data shows however that the epistemological leap, for now, has not happened. (shrink)

The work of Giorgio Agamben relies heavily on two rather opaque notions: the messianic and the irreparable. This essay is devoted to an analysis of the latter. After surveying the existing literature, I take my cue from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's prison letters and prepare the way for my own analysis of Agamben's irreparable. In the final part of the essay, I compare the irreparable with Agamben's use of Benjamin's thought of something unforgettable. I understand the role of the irreparable in this (...) light, since, for Agamben, it means the chance of something given up by language, something given up altogether, and as such serves as entry to the paradigmatic. (shrink)

The contemporary discussion of non-conceptual content inaugurated by Gareth Evans and John McDowell has generated a range of differing views as to Kant's position on the issues raised. I argue that for Kant perception is prior to thought and that it is as being prior that perception connects us to reality in outer intuition. I then argue that for Kant thought relates to perception by being the rule for perceptual procedures. This accounts for thought's extending in scope beyond what we (...) actually perceive to all that is manifest in space and time. As against Merleau-Ponty this Kantian understanding of thought beyond perception does not distort the nature of reality which remains essentially that which can be engaged. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus in Britain on the importance of character, and on the belief that the virtues that contribute to good character are part of the solution to many of the challenges facing modern society. Parents, teachers and schools understand the need to teach basic moral virtues to pupils, such as honesty, self-control, fairness, and respect, while fostering behaviour associated with such virtues today. However, until recently, the materials required to help deliver this ambition have been missing in (...) Britain. The Knightly Virtues Programme, devised by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, aims to help solve this challenge. The programme, designed for 9 to 11 year olds, draws on selected classic stories to help teach moral character in schools. This approach has proved to be popular with children and teachers, with more than 5,000 pupils from one hundred schools having participated in the programme so far. Fifty-five of these schools and 3,272 pupils were directly involved in different stages of the research. Based at the University of Birmingham, the Jubilee Centre houses leading academics dedicated to researching the various ways in which good character, which underpins the building blocks of society, can be developed. Recent research from the Centre has shown that the qualities that make up character can be learnt and taught, and suggests that we need a new emphasis on their importance in schools and in professional education. This report from the Centre into the use of classic literature within schools sets out the ways in which the Knightly Virtues Programme is able to develop the virtue literacy of school pupils, and the extent to which an understanding and awareness of good moral character can make positive changes to behaviour. The impact of the programme has been tested using several rigorous research methods, detailed in this report alongside their findings, which provide substantial empirical evidence for the effectiveness of using stories to develop virtue literacy. (shrink)

This is an original and stimulating collection of articles by scholars trained in classics, moral philosophy, political science, literature, and intellectual history. Its principal objective is to convey to the modern reader a sophisticated understanding of Homeric and Classical Greek morality and how it differs from our own. Some of the articles focus primarily on Greek value concepts, especially the concept of arete. Others compare those concepts to modern notions of virtue and tolerance, as well as to the work of (...) contemporary literary figures and philosophers, including T.S. Eliot, Alasdair Macintyre, John Wallace, and Philippa Foot. Throughout, the juxtaposition of ancient and modern ideas and the worldviews they presuppose makes these readings both intellectually exciting and revealing. (shrink)

Translation of William James' "Are ew automaton ?".

Heidegger's thought has recently been made more available to English readers by the publication of two books: one a translation of one of Heidegger's works, the other, by Thomas Langan, an American scholar, described as a critical study of Heidegger. Heidegger's philosophy has had little or no influence in England; and this seems a good opportunity for considering whether this neglect is merited, or whether some defence can be offered of Heidegger's curious manipulations of the German and Greek tongues. Since (...) An Introduction to Metaphysics philosophises on a basis of Greek, though it purports to be philosophy, not history of philosophy, most of this article will be concerned with Heidegger's use and abuse of that language. I shall suggest, however, that the same conclusions hold good of Heidegger's use of German. (shrink)

In this article, I examine whether the concept of testimony can be used in order to clarify the epistemological value of literary fiction. It seems that it cannot: a testimony can be wrong while it makes no sense to say that a literary fiction can be wrong. However, in the wake of a hermeneutic philosophy, the fictional story has often been qualified as a testimony of an experience, even in cases which are not merely autobiographical. I try to unravel this (...) paradoxical connection between literary fiction and testimony. Starting from an examination of Kafka’s short story “Metamorphosis”, I intend to articulate the distinction between literary fiction and testimony, on the one hand and on the other, to understand the importance of the perspective of the witness in literary fiction. The main argument for both statements is given by an analysis of the visibility in literary fiction. (shrink)

Robustness is a significant constraint in machine learning models. The performance of the algorithms must not deteriorate when training and testing with slightly different data. Deep neural network models achieve awe-inspiring results in a wide range of applications of computer vision. Still, in the presence of noise or region occlusion, some models exhibit inaccurate performance even with data handled in training. Besides, some experiments suggest deep learning models sometimes use incorrect parts of the input information to perform inference. Active image (...) augmentation is an augmentation method that uses interpretability methods to augment the training data and improve its robustness to face the described problems. Although ADA presented interesting results, its original version only used the vanilla backpropagation interpretability to train the U-Net model. In this work, we propose an extensive experimental analysis of the interpretability method’s impact on ADA. We use five interpretability methods: vanilla backpropagation, guided backpropagation, gradient-weighted class activation mapping, guided GradCam and InputXGradient. The results show that all methods achieve similar performance at the ending of training, but when combining ADA with GradCam, the U-Net model presented an impressive fast convergence. (shrink)

This introduction to philosophy offers a selection of readings based on an interdisciplinary, applied approach and illustrating the challenges religion, science, and morality pose to one another. It demonstrates to readers how philosophy is practiced today, rather than in years past, and engages them in a relevant and immediately comprehensible manner. The book maintains the critical, rational edge of traditional philosophical writing, while at the same time incorporating material and approaches not usually found in introductory volumes. Reason sections provide traditional (...) philosophical truth claims made in each subject; Culture sections investigate the social issues that arise from these claims. What Is Morality? Morality and the Good Life. Morality in Higher Education. Morality in Film. Morality in Law. Morality in Markets. Morality and Rational Self-Interest. Classical Theories of Morality. Critical Perspectives on Morality. Feelings and Reason in Morality. What Is Science? Science and a Meaningful Life. The Scientific World View and Its Critics. Science, Technology and the Transformation of Culture. Biology and Ethics. Scientific Determinism and Human Responsibility. Objectivity and Values in Science. Truth and Progress in Science. How Much Can Science Explain? What Is Religion? Religion and the Meaning of Life. Pluralism and Religious Diversity. Religion and Politics. Religion and Education. Evidence for the Existence of God? Evidence Against the Existence of God? Faith and Reason? Religious Practice without God? For anyone interested in philosophy. (shrink)

Since 9/11 the European Court of Human Rights (the European Court) has raised anew the question of the relationship between religion and public education. In its reasoning, the European Court has had to consider competing normative accounts of the secular, either to accept or deny claims to religious liberty within Europe's public education system. This article argues that the trajectory on which the term 'secularism' had been used by the European Court pointed increasingly towards secular fundamentalism. This study is located (...) at the cutting edge of religion, education and the law and builds on previous work in the field (Arthur, 1998, 2008). It examines, through extensive research of legal cases, the most important developments of the usage of secular and secular education in modern discourse and explores the background to these concepts. Unless otherwise stated, religion in this article shall refer to the Christian tradition because Christianity has been the historical context for the development of the concept of 'secular' in Europe. The paper outlines three models of secular education before moving on to scrutinise how the European Court has understood and evaluated various legal cases before it on the interaction between secular States, public education and notions of religious symbolism and influence. The paper will discuss the significance of the European Court's reasoning and decisions for public education within a secular State context and offer some conclusions on the implications of these decisions. It examines the legal principles that underpin the European Court's supervision of the State's role in the provision of education. It focuses on the chimeric goal of neutrality and highlights the risks attached to the use of an ideological conception of secularism that could lead potentially to the complete removal of the religious as a vital cultural and intellectual dimension of public education. (shrink)

America is experiencing a cultural malaise. As art historians Arthur Pontynen and Rod Miller show in this penetrating new book, our current cultural struggles result from repeated attempts to deny the qualitative foundation for culture that distinguishes civilization from barbarism. Tracing American art, science, and philosophy from the colonial era to the present, Western Culture at the American Crossroads reveals how a distinctively American culture emerged and where it went wrong. Culture cannot be merely a matter of personal or (...) group preferences; it must be dedicated to the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. But as Pontynen and Miller skillfully chronicle, modernism and postmodernism have developed dangerously limited understandings of science and reason that do not simply limit art but actually lead to bitter conflict and violence. The authors discuss dozens of works of art and architecture -- many of them featured in this beautifully illustrated work. But Western Culture at the American Crossroads in no mere art history treatise; it connects many dots in American intellectual history, demonstrating how what a culture believes relates to how it acts and what art it produces. Standing athwart trends that reduce culture to a matter of lifestyle and "taste," Western Culture at the American Crossroads makes a powerful case that the free and responsible pursuit of wisdom desperately needs to be renewed. Pontynen and Miller ultimately reveal the emerging threats not only to American and Western culture but to the very possibility of culture itself. - Publisher. (shrink)

Examples of tipping suggest that the distinction between tipping, bribery and extortion can be questioned. Some well known ideas about bribery will not work if extended to tipping and, indeed, these analyses may founder whether or not tipping, bribery and extortion merge. I suggest that more case study analysis as well as a discussion of the relationship between character and actions are needed.

Starting from cardinals κ κ is measurable, we construct a model for the theory “ZF + n < ω[DCn] + ω + 1 is a measurable cardinal”. This is the maximum amount of dependent choice consistent with the measurability of ω + 1, and by a theorem of Shelah using p.c.f. theory, is the best result of this sort possible.