The concept of evolvability—the capacity of a population to produce and maintain evolutionarily relevant variation—has become increasingly prominent in evolutionary biology. Paleontology has a long history of investigating questions of evolvability, but paleontological thinking has tended to neglect recent discussions, because many tools used in the current evolvability literature are challenging to apply to the fossil record. The fundamental difficulty is how to disentangle whether the causes of evolutionary patterns arise from variational properties of traits or lineages rather than being (...) due to selection and ecological success. Despite these obstacles, the fossil record offers unique and growing sources of data that capture evolutionary patterns of sustained duration and significance otherwise inaccessible to evolutionary biologists. Additionally, there exist a variety of strategic possibilities for combining prominent neontological approaches to evolvability with those from paleontology. We illustrate three of these possibilities with quantitative genetics, evolutionary developmental biology, and phylogenetic models of macroevolution. In conclusion, we provide a methodological schema that focuses on the conceptualization, measurement, and testing of hypotheses to motivate and provide guidance for future empirical and theoretical studies of evolvability in the fossil record. (shrink)

In this chapter, we integrate three distinct strands of thought to argue that the concept of “fairness” varies significantly across cultures. As a result, ensuring that human-AI interactions meet relevant fairness standards requires a deep understanding of the cultural contexts in which AI-enabled systems are deployed. Failure to do so will not only result in the generation of unfair outcomes by an AI-enabled system, but it will also degrade legitimacy of and trust in the system. The first strand concerns the (...) dominant approach taken in the technology industry to ensure that AI-enabled systems are fair. This approach is to reduce fairness to some mathematical formalism that can be applied universally, a quintessentially Western conception of fairness. The second strand concerns alternative conceptions of fairness that have their roots in philosophical traditions of the East, namely Confucian virtue ethics. Understanding how individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds perceive fairness—particularly their beliefs about fairness in human-to-human interactions—is crucial for understanding how they will interpret fairness in human-AI interactions. Building on these philosophical and behavioral differences, as highlighted by empirical research, the third strand integrates insights from political science and interdisciplinary studies. This perspective offers valuable guidance on designing AI-enabled systems to align with contextually relevant standards of fairness. Examining existing beliefs about fairness within the context of institutional decision-making provides valuable insights into what people expect from AI-generated decisions. These expectations often include key elements such as a sufficient degree of transparency, clear lines of accountability, and mechanisms to contest decisions made by the system—all of which are essential components of procedural fairness. Rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to ensuring fairness, the design and deployment of AI systems must carefully account for the operating environment, including the socio-political and cultural context, to ensure that the system aligns with the relevant standards of fairness. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “The Circular Conditions of Second-order Science Sporadically Illustrated with Agent-based Experiments at the Roots of Observation” by Manfred Füllsack. Upshot: The aim of my commentary is to reflect on fundamental issues related to circularity, distinction and the properties of observers.

Currently living people cannot be said to be wronged because of the wrongless emissons of greenhouse gases by past people. According to the usual subjunctive-historical understanding of harm, currently living people cannot be said to be harmed by the impact of greenhouse emissions on their well-being. By relying on a subjunctive-threshold notion of harm we can justify conclusions about both the present generation’s duties not to violate the rights of future generations, and the present generation’s duties to compensate currently living (...) people for the harms inflicted upon them through the lasting impact of wrongless past harms. This interpretation supports a forward-looking understanding of the grounds of our relating to wrongless past harms. The significance of past harms lies in their consequences for the well-being of currently living and future people. The subjunctive-threshold notion of harm lends support to a standard of minimal, general, and universal justice. Those actors who are in a position to fulfill its requirements are under a duty to do so. Especially the rich and powerful countries ought to counteract the harmful impact of past greenhouse emissions. (shrink)

In this field questions arise which are certainly difficult; but as I listened last time to members of the group, I felt that the main difficulty perhaps lay in determining precisely what questions we are trying to answer. I have the conviction that if we could only say clearly what the questions are, the answers to them might not appear so elusive. So I have begun with a simple list of questions about discretion which in one form or another were, (...) as it seemed to me, expressed by the group last time. I may indeed have omitted something and inserted something useless: if so, no doubt I shall be informed of this later. The central questions then seem to me to be the following: 1. What is discretion, or what is the exercise of discretion? 2. Under what conditions and why do we in fact accept or tolerate discretion in a legal system? 3. Must we accept discretion or tolerate discretion, and if so, why? 4. What values does the use of discretion menace, and what values does it maintain or promote? 5. What can be done to maximize the beneficial operation of the use of discretion and to minimize any harm that it does? (shrink)

Context: The question of how to understand the epistemology of set theory has been a longstanding problem in the foundations of mathematics since Cantor formulated the theory in the 19th century, and particularly since Bertrand Russell articulated his paradox in the early twentieth century. The theory of types pioneered by Russell and Whitehead was simplified by mathematicians to a single distinction between sets and classes. The question of the meaning of this distinction and its necessity still remains open. Problem: I (...) am concerned with the meaning of the set/class distinction and I wish to show that it arises naturally due to the nature of the sort of distinctions that sets create. Method: The method of the paper is to discuss first the Russell paradox and the arguments of Cantor that preceded it. Then we point out that the Russell set of all sets that are not members of themselves can be replaced by the Russell operator R, which is applied to a set S to form R(S), the set of all sets in S that are not members of themselves. Results: The key point about R(S) is that it is well-defined in terms of S, and R(S) cannot be a member of S. Thus any set, even the simplest one, is incomplete. This provides the solution to the problem that I have posed. It shows that the distinction between sets and classes is natural and necessary. Implications: While we have shown that the distinction between sets and classes is natural and necessary, this can only be the beginning from the point of view of epistemology. It is we who will create further distinctions. And it is up to us to maintain these distinctions, or to allow them to coalesce. Constructivist content: I argue in favor of a constructivist perspective for set theory, mathematics, and the way these structures fit into our natural language and constructed speech and worlds. That is the point of this paper. It is only in the reach for absolutes, ignoring the fact that we are the authors of these structures, that the paradoxes arise. (shrink)

CHAPTER INTRODUCTION: SOME CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS Arguments and Argument Forms Argumentation takes place whenever reasons are offered to support some ...

Open peer commentary on the article “Circularity and the Micro-Macro-Difference” by Manfred Füllsack. Upshot: Circularity occurs as emergent from either process or context or a combination of process and context.

Upshot: Eigenform is a precondition for distinction and distinction is a precondition for eigenform. While my target article discussed eigenform and reflexivity, it could just as well have discussed distinctions and the emergence of distinctions. This theme was implicit in many of the comments. We make this circularity explicit for the sake of a deeper understanding.

Here, an epidemiological model considering pro and anti-vaccination groups is proposed and analyzed. In this model, susceptible individuals can migrate between these two groups due to the influence of false and true news about safety and efficacy of vaccines. From this model, written as a set of three ordinary differential equations, analytical expressions for the disease-free steady state, the endemic steady state, and the basic reproduction number are derived. It is analytically shown that low vaccination rate and no influx to (...) the pro-vaccination group have similar impacts on the long-term amount of infected individuals. Numerical simulations are performed with parameter values of the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate the analytical results. The possible relevance of this work is discussed from a public health perspective. (shrink)

Background: The Taiwan Nursing Accreditation Council has proposed eight core professional nursing qualities including ethical literacy. Consequently, nursing ethics education is a required course for student nurses. These courses are intended to improve the ethical literacy. Moral sensitivity is the cornerstone of ethical literacy, and learning moral sensitivity is the initial step towards developing ethical literacy. Objectives: To explore the effect of nursing ethics educational interventions based on multiple teaching strategies on student nurses moral sensitivity. Based on the visual, auditory (...) and kinaesthetic model, three strategies were developed for determining the programme components and corresponding learning styles. Research design: This was a quasi-experimental study. Participants: A total of 234 junior-college student nurses participated in this study. All participants were aged 18–19 years. Ethical considerations: The study protocol was approved by the institutional review boards of Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital. Only the participants who signed an informed consent form took part in the study. The participants were permitted to withdraw from the study at any point if they wished to do so without affecting their academic score. Results: The scores of Modified Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire for Student Nurses were significantly improved after the intervention of integrating multiple teaching strategies ( p =.042). Significant relationships were observed between the satisfaction scores of two teaching strategies and moral sensitivity. The results indicated that using multiple teaching strategies is effective for promoting nursing ethics learning. Conclusion: This strategy was consistent with the student nurses’ preferred learning style and was used to correct their erroneous ethical conceptions, assisting in developing their ethical knowledge. (shrink)