O objetivo deste artigo é, primeiro, apresentar e considerar as críticas de Paley com mais detalhes e, em seguida, discutir algumas das aplicações significativas da fenomenologia que muitas vezes foram negligenciadas pelos pesquisadores qualitativos. Como foi amplamente demonstrado ao longo dos anos, a fenomenologia pode não apenas fazer a diferença no manuseio, análise e interpretação dos dados disponíveis, mas também em como os dados são obtidos em primeiro lugar, por exemplo, através de técnicas especiais de entrevista. Consideraremos algumas figuras centrais (...) da psicologia fenomenológica clássica e da psiquiatria fenomenológica e apresentaremos alguns dos desenvolvimentos mais recentes na ciência cognitiva. Em seguida, discutiremos três casos concretos que demonstram como a fenomenologia foi aplicada no trabalho clínico com pacientes com esquizofrenia, paralisia cerebral e negligência hemispatial. (shrink)

During recent decades various researchers from health and social sciences have been debating what it means for a person to be disabled. A rather overlooked approach has developed alongside this debate, primarily inspired by the philosophical tradition called phenomenology. This paper develops a phenomenological model of disability by arguing for a different methodological and conceptual framework from that used by the existing phenomenological approach. The existing approach is developed from the phenomenology of illness, but the paper illustrates how the case (...) of congenital disabilities, looking at the congenital disorder called cerebral palsy (CP), presents a fundamental problem for the approach. In order to understand such congenital cases as CP, the experience of disability is described as being gradually different from, rather than a disruption of, the experience of being abled, and it is argued that the experience of disability is complex and dynamically influenced by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Different experiential aspects of disability— pre-reflective, attuned and reflective aspects—are described, demonstrating that the experience of disability comes in different degrees. Overall, this paper contributes to the debates about disability by further describing the personal aspects and experience of persons living with disabilities. (shrink)

Despite a long history of researchers who combine phenomenology with qualitative or quantitative methods, there are only few examples of working with a phenomenological mixed method—a method where phenomenology informs both qualitative and quantitative data generation, analysis, and interpretation. Researchers have argued that in working with a phenomenological mixed method, there should be mutual constraint and enlightenment between the qualitative and quantitative methods for studying consciousness. In this article, we discuss what a framework for phenomenological mixed methods could look like (...) and we aim to provide guidance of how to work within such framework. We are inspired by resources coming from research in mixed methods and existing examples of phenomenological mixed-method research. We also present three cases of phenomenological mixed methods where we study complex social phenomena and discuss the process of how we conducted the studies. From both the research inspiration and our own studies, we depict the landscape of possibilities available for those interested in mixing phenomenology with qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as the challenges and common pitfalls that researchers face. To navigate in this landscape, we develop a three-fold structure, focusing on the phenomenological frame, the phenomenologically informed generation of qualitative and quantitative data, and the phenomenologically informed analysis and interpretation of data. (shrink)

The paper defends the position that phenomenological interviews can provide a rich source of knowledge and that they are in no principled way less reliable or less valid than quantitative or experimental methods in general. It responds to several skeptic objections such as those raised against introspection, those targeting the unreliability of episodic memory, and those claiming that interviews cannot address the psychological, cognitive and biological correlates of experience. It argues that the skeptic must either heed the methodological and epistemological (...) justification of the phenomenological interview provided, or embrace a more fundamental skepticism, a “deep mistrust”, in which scientific discourse can have no recourse to conscious processes as explananda, with ensuing dire consequences for our conception of science. (shrink)

The contact hypothesis has dominated work on prejudice reduction and is often described as one of the most successful theories within social psychology. The hypothesis has nevertheless been criticized for not being applicable in real life situations due to unobtainable conditions for direct contact. Several indirect contact suggestions have been developed to solve this “application challenge.” Here, we suggest a hybrid strategy of both direct and indirect contact. Based on the second-person method developed in social psychology and cognition, we suggest (...) working with an engagement strategy as a hybrid hypothesis. We expand on this suggestion through an engagement-based intervention, where we implement the strategy in a theater performance and investigate the effects on prejudicial attitudes toward people with physical disabilities. Based on the results we reformulate our initial engagement strategy into the Enact hypothesis. To deal with the application challenge, this hybrid hypothesis posits two necessary conditions for prejudice reduction. Interventions should: work with engagement to reduce prejudice, and focus on the second-order level of attitudes formation. Here the aim of the prejudice reduction is not attitude correction, but instead the nuancing of attitudes. (shrink)

Research in phenomenology has benefitted from using exceptional cases from pathology and expertise. But exactly how are we to generate and apply knowledge from such cases to the phenomenological domain? As researchers of cerebral palsy and musical absorption, we together answer the how question by pointing to the resource of the qualitative interview. Using the qualitative interview is a direct response to Varela’s call for better pragmatics in the methodology of phenomenology and cognitive science and Gallagher’s suggestion for phenomenology to (...) develop its methodology and outsource its tasks. We agree with their proposals, but want to develop them further by discussing and proposing a general framework that can integrate research paradigms of the well-established disciplines of phenomenological philosophy and qualitative science. We give this the working title, a “phenomenological interview”. First we describe the what of the interview, that is the nature of the interview in which one encounters another subject and generates knowledge of a given experience together with this other subject. In the second part, we qualify why it is worthwhile making the time-consuming effort to engage in a phenomenological interview. In the third and fourth parts, we in general terms discuss how to conduct the interview and the subsequent phenomenological analysis, by discussing the pragmatics of Vermersch’s and Petitmengin’s “Explicitation Interview”. (shrink)

Despite the growing interest and supporting evidence for person-centered care, there is still a fundamental disagreement about what makes healthcare person-centered. In this article, we define PCC as operating with three fundamental conditions: personal, participatory and holistic. To further understand these concepts, we develop a framework based on the theory of affordances, which we apply to the healthcare case of rehabilitation and a concrete experiment on social interactions between persons with cerebral palsy and physio- and occupational therapists. Based on the (...) application of the theory, we argue that in order for healthcare to be considered as PCC, professionals need to adopt a personalistic attitude in their care, defined in terms of mutual affordances: how the professional and the person of care acknowledges each other as a person in an interaction. In opposition, we define the functionalistic attitude in terms of object affordances, those related to a concrete goal. We show that PCC requires a balance of personalistic and functionalistic attitudes, since this contributes to a participatory and holistic conception of, and interaction with, the person of care. (shrink)

Capacities for abstract thinking and problem‐solving are central to human cognition. Processes of abstraction allow the transfer of experiences and knowledge between contexts helping us make informed decisions in new or changing contexts. While we are often inclined to relate such reasoning capacities to individual minds and brains, they may in fact be contingent on human‐specific modes of collaboration, dialogue, and shared attention. In an experimental study, we test the hypothesis that social interaction enhances cognitive processes of rule‐induction, which in (...) turn improves problem‐solving performance. Through three sessions of increasing complexity, individuals and groups were presented with a problem‐solving task requiring them to categorize a set of visual stimuli. To assess the character of participants’ problem representations, after each training session, they were presented with a transfer task involving stimuli that differed in appearance, but shared relations among features with the training set. Besides, we compared participants’ categorization behaviors to simulated agents relying on exemplar learning. We found that groups performed superior to individuals and agents in the training sessions and were more likely to correctly generalize their observations in the transfer phase, especially in the high complexity session, suggesting that groups more effectively induced underlying categorization rules from the stimuli than individuals and agents. Crucially, variation in performance among groups was predicted by semantic diversity in members’ dialogical contributions, suggesting a link between social interaction, cognitive diversity, and abstraction. (shrink)

This volume presents the proceedings of the Computer Science Logic Workshop CSL '92, held in Pisa, Italy, in September/October 1992. CSL '92 was the sixth of the series and the first one held as Annual Conference of the European Association for Computer Science Logic (EACSL). Full versions of the workshop contributions were collected after their presentation and reviewed. On the basis of 58 reviews, 26 papers were selected for publication, and appear here in revised final form. Topics covered in the (...) volume include: Turing machines, linear logic, logic of proofs, optimization problems, lambda calculus, fixpoint logic, NP-completeness, resolution, transition system semantics, higher order partial functions, evolving algebras, functional logic programming, inductive definability, semantics of C, classes for a functional language, NP-optimization problems, theory of types and names, sconing and relators, 3-satisfiability, Kleene's slash, negation-complete logic programs, polynomial-time oracle machines, and monadic second-order properties. (shrink)

Some philosophers claim that perception immediately and prima facie justifies belief in virtue of its phenomenal character (Huemer, Skepticism and the veil of perception. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2001; Pryor, There is immediate justification. In: Steup M, Sosa E (eds) Contemporary debates in epistemology. Blackwell, London (2014), pp. 181–202, 2005). To explain this special justificatory power, some appeal to perception’s presentational character: the idea that perceptual experience presents its objects as existing here-and-now (Chudnoff, Intuition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013; Berghofer, (...) Husserl Stud 34(2):145–170, 2018). As some philosophers have noted, if perception justifies in virtue of its presentational character alone, the kind of content perception has should not matter for perceptual justification; more precisely, it should not matter whether perceptual content is propositional or not (e.g., Smithies, The epistemic role of consciousness. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019; Kriegel, Australas J Philos, 2021). However, most philosophers tend to resist this conclusion, holding that perception must be propositional in order to justify, on the ground that all our model of justification are propositional (e.g., Gauker, Philos Perspect 26(1):19–50, 2012). This paper challenges this claim. The paper consists of a negative and a positive part. In the negative part, I discuss and reject the master argument for the propositionality of perception; the conclusion is that propositional content is neither sufficient nor necessary to explain perception’s justificatory power. In the positive part, I take this conclusion seriously and outline an objectual model of perceptual justification. I define objectual attitudes as mental states whose content is not a full proposition, but a sub-propositional representational item, such as the representation of objects, properties, and kinds (Grzankowski and Montague, Non-propositional intentionality. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018), and show that it is plausible that some perceptions and some beliefs are attitudes of this kind. I then argue that objectual perceptual experiences have the right kind of phenomenal character and the right kind of structure to serve for immediate prima facie justification. I conclude by defending my objectual model from three objections. (shrink)

First published in 1954, and most recently reprinted in 2010, the self-stated aim of James’ book is to establish improved race relations in the world by revealing an underlying truth concerning the contribution of the African continent to the rest of the world. It is an attempt to show that the true authors of Greek philosophy were not the Greeks, but the Egyptians. This theft of the African philosophical legacy by the Greeks has led to the mistaken opinion that the (...) African continent has made no intellectual contribution to civilization – a misrepresentation that has become the root of racial prejudice. By bringing this information to the attention of the world, James hopes to remedy these prejudices which have corrupted human relations. (shrink)

Il volume contiene i testi più significativi relativamente alla nascita e allo sviluppo della dottrina dell'analogia dell'essere. I passi sono riportati a fronte con traduzioni originali annotate e sono raccolti in due sezioni: quella di filosofia antica e tardoantica e quella di filosofia medievale araba e latina. La prima sezione comprende i principali testi aristotelici che della dottrina dell'analogia dell'essere hanno costituito l'origine, e i passi fra i più rilevanti della tradizione commentaristica antica e tardoantica, da Alessandro di Afrodisia (II-III (...) sec. d.C) a Simplicio di Cilicia (VI sec. d.C.), nei quali è possibile individuare le prime fasi dello sviluppo di tale dottrina. La sezione di filosofia medievale araba e latina comprende passi scelti dei filosofi che rappresentano le tappe essenziali dello sviluppo della dottrina dell'analogia dell'essere nel medioevo arabo e latino, da al-Fārābī (m. 950 c.) a Tommaso d'Aquino (XIII sec.) a Tommaso de Vio, il “Gaetano” (XV-XVI sec.)--Back cover. (shrink)

This article describes a descriptive-qualitative method for analyzing and reviewing several textbooks for high school as samples commonly used by teachers and students in their teaching–learning to reveal possible misconceptions. This study focused on the subjects of quantum numbers and electronic configuration. From the advanced literature review to analyze the samples the occurrence of various misconceptions was noted. All textbooks described correctly the four symbols of quantum numbers, but none correlates correctly the magnetic-angular quantum number to the Cartesian labeled orbitals. (...) All textbooks consider mistakenly the meaning of aufbau as the building-up energy of orbitals by following (n + ℓ, n) rules on describing the electronic configuration for all atoms. Only one textbook states that the electronic configuration of transition metal atoms (3d series) can be described in the following order of shell (n), thus giving rise to two types of electronic configurations, [Ar] 3d 4s (Type I) beside [Ar] 4s 3d (Type II), leading further misconception. All textbooks described favorably an unpaired electron of ms = + ½ due to the specific agreement, which is a potential misconception in applying Hund’s rule. In drawing the diagram boxes of orbitals, they are arranged in increasing or decreasing the numeric mℓ, due to the specific agreement, and again leading to a potential misconception on describing the quantum number of electrons issued. Three textbooks introduced the terms of the last and the xth electron associated with the quantum numbers, leading to serious further misconceptions. No books stated that the ordering energy of the (n + ℓ, n) rule is true only for the first twenty atoms. (shrink)

In the last homily he gave before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger described modern life as ruled by a “dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely” of satisfying “the desires of one’s own ego.” An eminent scholar familiar with the centuries-old debates over relativism, Ratzinger chose to oversimplify or even caricature a philosophical approach of great sophistication and antiquity. His homily depicts the relativist as someone blown about “by every (...) wind of doctrine,” whereas the relativist sticks firmly to one argument—that human knowledge is not absolute. Gathering prominent intellectuals from disciplines most relevant to the controversy—ethics, theology, political theory, anthropology, psychology, cultural studies, epistemology, philosophy of science, and classics—this special double issue of _Common Knowledge_ contests Ratzinger’s denunciation of relativism. One essay relates the arguments of Ratzinger to those of two other German scholars—the conservative political theorist Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde and the liberal philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas—since all three men assume that social order depends on the existence of doctrinal authority. The contributors here argue for an intellectual and social life free of the desire for an “infantilizing” authority. One proposes that the Christian god is a relativist who prefers limitation and ambiguity; another, initially in agreement with Ratzinger about the danger relativism poses to faith and morals, then argues that this danger is what makes relativism valuable. The issue closes with the first English translation of an extract from a book on Catholic-Jewish relations by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, one of the Catholic Church’s most progressive figures. _Contributors_. David Bloor, Daniel Boyarin, Mary Baine Campbell, Lorraine Daston, Arnold I. Davidson, John Forrester, Kenneth J. Gergen, Simon Goldhill, Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Julia Kristeva, Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, Christopher Norris, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Richard Shusterman, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Jeffrey Stout, Gianni Vattimo. (shrink)

Mitte Oktober 1518 befand sich Luther in Augsburg, um sich einem Verhör durch den päpstlichen Sondergesandten Kardinal Thomas Cajetan (1469-1534) zu stellen. Die Zusammenkunft fand am Rande des gerade in der Reichsstadt tagenden Reichstags statt. Mit größtem Einsatz versuchte Luther, Cajetan von seiner Argumentation zu überzeugen, der Dominikaner lehnte eine inhaltliche Auseinandersetzung allerdings ab. Die katholische Kirche verfolgte mit dem Verhör einzig das Ziel, Luther zum Widerruf seiner Thesen zu bewegen, worauf dieser wiederum nicht einging. Die Augsburger Ereignisse fasste Luther (...) für die Öffentlichkeit Ende 1518 in den "Acta Fratris Martini Lutheri Augustiniani apud D Legatum Apostolicum Augustae", kurz "Acta Augustana", protokollartig zusammen. In das Dokument fügte er zusätzlich noch ein ursprünglich geheimes Schreiben Papst Leos X. (1513-1521) an Kardinal Cajetan ein. In dem Breve ermächtigte das Oberhaupt der katholischen Kirche Cajetan dazu, Luther zu verhaften und nach Rom bringen zu lassen, falls dieser in Augsburg weiter gegen die päpstliche Lehre anreden und seine Ansichten nicht revidieren sollte. Luther erfuhr von dem Brief und verließ Augsburg deshalb sofort nach dem letzten Verhör am Abend des 20. Oktober. // Autor: Matthias Bader // Datum: 2016. (shrink)

The Vestal Virgins are one of the most famous elements of Roman religion, yet despite their perennial appeal and the importance of some smaller scale studies of the priesthood, the priestesses have not received a monograph-length study since F. Giuzzi, Aspetti giuridici del sacerdozio romano. II sacerdozio di Vesta (Naples, 1968). Now we have books by R.L. Wildfang and M.C. Martini that could not be more different. The former offers a thorough survey of what the sources can tell us about (...) the priesthood in the period from the end of the Second Carthaginian War to the first century C.E. The latter is an analysis of early Roman historiography and the role the Vestals, in particular their periodic unchastity, played in the creation of the traditional account of the development of Rome. W's book puts forward two main arguments: (1) the Vestals were charged with the ritual purification of the city and with the storage and preparation of ritual materials, and (2) many aspects of the priesthood that have long puzzled scholars are tied to the Vestals' status as Roman citizens, but citizens who existed outside the traditional family structure. The book will be accessible to those new to the topic, but the notes will repay specialists. Ancient sources are quoted in translation, with original texts provided in an appendix. A second appendix provides a list of known Vestals. This slender volume could have been even thinner if the frequent repetitions were cut down. W's work might have been better as a hefty article, so little is there to know about the Vestals. The Classical Review vol. 58 no. 1 C The Classical Association 2008; all rights reserved This content downloaded from 204.235.148.90 on Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:47:09 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 213 In the Introduction, W makes a welcome distinction among types of rituals often lumped together in discussions of 'fertility' rituals, with which the Vestals are often associated (p. 4). W reserves 'fertility' to describe only those rites that deal with the reproduction of people, livestock and the growth of crops. Harvest rituals are linked to the harvesting of crops, while another set of rites, 'storage rites', are tied to the preservation of the harvest. The final group, purification rituals, aim at the cleansing of an individual, place or object of 'all forms of pollution that would render it or them unfit to come into contact with the religious sphere'. The book is arranged thematically. The first two chapters lay out all we can know about the priestesses' ritual obligations performed in the seclusion of the temple and out amongst the people. While a reader may not find W's interpretation of each of the Vestals' actions equally persuasive, the overall argument that the priestesses' activities were, by and large, purificatory is convincing. Two of the more interesting aspects of W.'s discussion are her considerations of Vesta's fire and of the water required for some of her rituals (pp. 8-11). Fire was seen by the Romans as both a fertile and a sterile force, and scholars have emphasised one or the other, or the contrast between them, in their interpretation of the Vestals. W points out that fertile fire is always described in masculine terms and is associated with Vulcan. Vesta's fire, however, is always associated with sterility and purity, and so should be understood as having a purificatory significance. W points out that Vesta's fire was used only in the manufacture of ritually necessary items: roasting spelt for mola salsa, baking brine for muries and burning ashes from the fetal cow from the Fordicidia and the tail of the October horse, both of which were used at the Parilia. For other rituals, the Vestals were required to use water, the purificatory substance par excellence, drawn only from the spring of Juturna and carried only in vessels that could not be set down. These restrictions ensured that the water was always fresh, running water that never touched profane earth. Chapters 3-5 trace out the unique position the Vestals occupied in Roman society, arguing that they existed outside the standard Roman familial and other social structures, yet remained fully part of the Roman state. W suggests that the initiation rite of captio removed the new priestess not only from her family but, more importantly, from her family cult, thus avoiding any potential contamination of familial and public cult. Virginity was required for multiple reasons, the most significant being that such a status allowed the priestess to remain a full member of the Roman state, but prevented her from being a member of a traditional family structure. Throughout the book, W makes much of the idea of Vestals as represen tatives of Roman citizen women without ever really dealing with the question to what extent any Roman woman, priestess or not, was a ciuis. Though W is probably correct, it is not entirely certain to what extent women were citizens in the Republic, and at least a reference to some key ancient sources and to recent scholarship on this question should be made (e.g. L. Peppe, Posizione giuridica e ruolo sociale della donna romana in eta repubblicana [Milan, 1984]). The sixth chapter, 'The Vestals in the Romans' History', looks at the appearance of Vestals in the early history of Rome, refining the common assumption that accusations of, and convictions for, incestum arose only in periods of great stress and danger. W adds that a priestess's involvement, or her family's involvement, in one of the groups taking part in the conflict or struggle of the moment also played a role. This chapter traces changes over the course of 300 years in the attitudes of the priestesses and the Romans more generally toward the priesthood, its role in society This content downloaded from 204.235.148.90 on Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:47:09 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 214 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW and its requirement of 30 years of chastity. The argument hangs on even less evidence than other sections of the work. In contrast to their central place in W's book, the Vestals play only a small (though crucial, in her interpretation) role in M.'s work. The basic argument of the book is that episodes of Vestal incestum are linked in the historiographic tradition to key moments in the development of the Roman state: the separation of augurium from regnum, the development of a mixed patrician-plebeian aristocracy, the creation of a monetary system and the expansion of the colonial system outside Italy. The history of Rome can be seen as alternating phases of stasis and transformation; instances of Vestal incestum mark the transitions (p. 95). The work falls into two parts that are not well integrated. The first is a useful discussion of the historiography of the Roman Republic, taking in turn each element of the story of the founding of Rome from the arrival of Aeneas to the death of Remus. M. traces how early Roman writers, especially Fabius Pictor, reshaped the tradition already present in some Greek authors, distancing Rome from the Greek world and adding an Italic element to the tale. This detailed analysis is well worth consulting and will be of interest to those working on many aspects of cultural life in the Republic. The second, larger, section of the book comprises a series of studies of the Vestals known to have been convicted of incestum during the Republic. After dealing with issues of dating and sources, M. links each case of incestum to a major event in Roman history. Not all the events are equally important for the creation of the Rome of the middle and late Republic. One wonders why M. chose to tie the conviction of Minucia, somewhere between 339 and 332, to the admission of plebeians to the praetorship in 337 rather than to the conclusion of the Latin War in 338. Some explanation is warranted. The connection M. draws is often very vague, as in the case of Sextilia (pp. 144-54), convicted and interred alive in either 275 or 274. M. sees this as marking the end of any meaningful distinction between patricians and plebeians, following as it does the first time a plebeian censor completed a lustrum. The gap of five or six years between Sextilia's conviction and Cn. Domitius Calvinus Maximus' censorship in 280 passes unremarked. Similarly, in discussing the three Vestals accused of incestum in 114-113 (pp. 188-210), M. steps away from the commonly accepted interpretation of the event as part of the continuing struggle between Gracchan and senatorial forces, arguing instead that it is tied to the establishment in 118 of the colony of Narbo Martius, Rome's first colony in Gaul. Here, as elsewhere, there is no evidence that any ancient author linked the founding of the colony and Vestal unchastity; the temporal gap makes an association even more unlikely. Ultimately, it is not possible to accept M.'s argument that Vestal incestum punctuated key stages in the development of the 'cosmo Romano' in the way she imagines. Even so, M.'s effort to reintegrate the Vestals into the larger narrative of Rome's history is thought-provoking, and it is to be hoped that it will spark further work in the same vein. The field is perhaps in a better position to undertake work on this scale now that we have W's careful and comprehensive collection and interpre tation of what there is to know about the Vestals. Yale University CELIA E. SCHULTZ celia.schultz(yale.edu This content downloaded from 204.235.148.90 on Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:47:09 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions. (shrink)

Scientific understanding is a fundamental goal of science. However, there is currently no good way to measure the scientific understanding of agents, whether these be humans or Artificial Intelligence systems. Without a clear benchmark, it is challenging to evaluate and compare different levels of scientific understanding. In this paper, we propose a framework to create a benchmark for scientific understanding, utilizing tools from philosophy of science. We adopt a behavioral conception of understanding, according to which genuine understanding should be recognized (...) as an ability to perform certain tasks. We extend this notion of scientific understanding by considering a set of questions that gauge different levels of scientific understanding, covering information retrieval, the capability to arrange information to produce an explanation, and the ability to infer how things would be different under different circumstances. We suggest building a Scientific Understanding Benchmark (SUB), formed by a set of these tests, allowing for the evaluation and comparison of scientific understanding. Benchmarking plays a crucial role in establishing trust, ensuring quality control, and providing a basis for performance evaluation. By aligning machine and human scientific understanding we can improve their utility, ultimately advancing scientific understanding and helping to discover new insights within machines. (shrink)

How may we change ourselves and our society so that animals are treated more justly? To answer this question, I turn to the account of moral change developed by the philosopher Iris Murdoch. The chief obstacle to becoming better, she believed, is an attachment to fantasy, from which we are liberated only through a loving attention directed at the reality of other beings. Building on this account, I argue that human supremacy is one such fantasy—that it acts as an impediment (...) to interspecies justice. I end with a meditation on love as liberatory practice. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Varela’s Radical Proposal: How to Embody and Open Up Cognitive Science” by Kristian Moltke Martiny. Upshot: I examine Varela’s relationship with Husserl’s phenomenology, highlighting Varela’s acknowledgment of the pragmatic dimension of its phenomenological reduction. I argue that Varela sees, in some developments of phenomenology, a deconstruction of the subject-object duality and an embodied view of the mind. I also highlight the existential dimension of Varela’s radical proposal, which contributes to further opening up (...) and embodying cognitive science. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to consider the question of whether democratic legitimacy requires viewpoint neutrality with regard to political speech – including extremist political speech, such as hate speech. The starting point of my discussion is Jeremy Waldron’s negative answer to this question. He argues that it is permissible for liberal democracies to ban certain extremist viewpoints – such as vituperative hate speech – because such viewpoint-based restrictions protect the dignity of persons and a social and moral environment (...) of mutual respect. According to Waldron, well-drafted narrow hate speech bans are not democratically illegitimate, and they do not undermine systemic democratic legitimacy – that is, the legitimacy of a democratic political system. In contrast to Waldron, I will argue that democratic legitimacy requires viewpoint neutrality to respect persons as thinking agents. I will defend a civil libertarian doctrine of viewpoint neutrality, and this doctrine requires that citizens in liberal democracies ought to have a legal free speech right to do moral wrong – that is, a legal right to express and defend any political viewpoint or idea, even if it is morally wrong to express, or expose others to, such views. It will be argued that any viewpoint-based restriction on public discourse (including narrow hate speech bans) is democratically illegitimate, and that such restrictions undermine systemic democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

Within current debates about the future impact of Artificial Intelligence on human society, roughly three different perspectives can be recognised: the technology-centric perspective, claiming that AI will soon outperform humankind in all areas, and that the primary threat for humankind is superintelligence; the human-centric perspective, claiming that humans will always remain superior to AI when it comes to social and societal aspects, and that the main threat of AI is that humankind’s social nature is overlooked in technological designs; and the (...) collective intelligence-centric perspective, claiming that true intelligence lies in the collective of intelligent agents, both human and artificial, and that the main threat for humankind is that technological designs create problems at the collective, systemic level that are hard to oversee and control. The current paper offers the following contributions: a clear description for each of the three perspectives, along with their history and background; an analysis and interpretation of current applications of AI in human society according to each of the three perspectives, thereby disentangling miscommunication in the debate concerning threats of AI; and a new integrated and comprehensive research design framework that addresses all aspects of the above three perspectives, and includes principles that support developers to reflect and anticipate upon potential effects of AI in society. (shrink)

Peter Singer's argument against ‘speciesism’ has served as the theoretical foundation for the modern animal rights movement. His argument is that the wrongs we do to animals are analogous to those committed against marginalized humans; that if we are opposed to one, then we should also be opposed to the other. Despite the argument's popularity, those historically oppressed groups to whom animals are compared have been critical of it, perceiving the analogy as dehumanizing. Animal activists have struggled to understand this (...) criticism, arguing that the analogy is only dehumanizing if one believes animals to be inferior in the first place – which is exactly what they dispute. What they fail to realize, I argue, is that the disagreement cannot be reduced to a difference in what one chooses to value. It is, instead, fundamentally conceptual. To be likened to an ‘Animal’ is something different for they who have never been regarded as ‘fully human’ in the first place. It is only after animal activists appreciate this – the singular character of human oppression, how it differs conceptually from the injustice that animals can be subject to – that the building of alliances and the work of collaboration can begin in earnest. (shrink)

Breaking with the orthodoxy, Compassionate Conservationists have taken issue with the way that individual wild animals are routinely sacrificed for the sake of species preservation or for the good of the ecosystem. Though explicitly aligning themselves with virtue ethics, there has been some confusion about what this means in practice. How is the perfectly compassionate person to act when the choice is between intentionally harming animals and protecting biodiversity? And what if the choice is between direct and indirect harm to (...) animals? Some critics suggest that when faced with these kinds of conflicts of value, Compassionate Conservationists will invariably base their choices either on the arbitrary feelings an action elicits in them, or else revert back to the decision-making procedures that characterize Traditional Conservation. In response, I argue (first) that these critics fail to appre- ciate that compassion often plays an essential role in moral deliberation. Second, that being compassionate matters even if it does not end up having a discernable effect on what one chooses to do. When one is faced with a tragic predicament in which harming individual animals is unavoidable, for instance, it matters here that one respond with an appropriate compassion. Third, that even when a situa- tion’s difficulty requires one to appeal to the impersonal norms of justice, here too it is required that one proceed with compassion. I end by illustrating these points through the close consideration of a case study: New Zealand’s controversial preda- tor extermination campaign. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate how inference to the best explanation (IBE) works in engineering science, focussing on the context of malfunction explanation. While IBE has gotten a lot of attention in the philosophy of science literature, few, if any, philosophical work has focussed on IBE in engineering science practice. We first show that IBE in engineering science has a similar structure as IBE in other scientific domains in the sense that in both settings IBE hinges on the weighing of (...) explanatory virtues. We then proceed to show that, due to the intimate connection between explanation and redesign in engineering science, there is a further engineering domain-specific virtue in terms of which engineering malfunction explanations are evaluated, viz. the virtue of redesign utility. This virtue entails that the explanatory information offered by a malfunction explanation should be instrumental in predicting counterfactual dependencies in redesigned systems. We illustrate and elaborate these points in terms of a number of engineering examples, focussing in particular on the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447. Our extension of analyses of IBE and explanation to engineering science practice offers new insights by identifying a new explanatory virtue in malfunction explanation: redesign utility. (shrink)

Machine learning models are becoming increasingly prevalent in algorithmic trading and investment management. The spread of machine learning in finance challenges existing practices of modelling and model use and creates a demand for practical solutions for how to manage the complexity pertaining to these techniques. Drawing on interviews with quants applying machine learning techniques to financial problems, the article examines how these people manage model complexity in the process of devising machine learning-powered trading algorithms. The analysis shows that machine learning (...) quants use Ockham’s razor – things should not be multiplied without necessity – as a heuristic tool to prevent excess model complexity and secure a certain level of human control and interpretability in the modelling process. I argue that understanding the way quants handle the complexity of learning models is a key to grasping the transformation of the human’s role in contemporary data and model-driven finance. The study contributes to social studies of finance research on the human–model interplay by exploring it in the context of machine learning model use. (shrink)

This paper outlines a procedure for assessing the quality of failure explanations in engineering failure analysis. The procedure structures the information contained in explanations such that it enables to find weak points, to compare competing explanations, and to provide redesign recommendations. These features make the procedure a good asset for critical reflection on some areas of the engineering practice of failure analysis and redesign. The procedure structures relevant information contained in an explanation by means of structural equations so as to (...) make the relations between key elements more salient. Once structured, the information is examined on its potential to track counterfactual dependencies by offering answers to relevant what-if-things-had-been-different questions. This criterion for explanatory goodness derives from the philosophy of science literature on scientific explanation. The procedure is illustrated by applying it to two case studies, one on Failure Analysis in Mechanical Engineering (a broken vehicle shaft) and one on Failure Analysis in Civil Engineering (a collapse in a convention center). The procedure offers failure analysts a practical tool for critical reflection on some areas of their practice while offering a deeper understanding of the workings of failure analysis (framing it as an explanatory practice). It, therefore, allows to improve certain aspects of the explanatory practices of failure analysis and redesign, but it also offers a theoretical perspective that can clarify important features of these practices. Given the programmatic nature of the procedure and its object (assessing and refining explanations), it extends work on the domain of computational argumentation. (shrink)