In this paper, I develop an ecological-enactive perspective on the role rules play in linguistic behaviour. I formulate and motivate the hypothesis that metalinguistic reflexivity – our ability to talk about talking – is constitutive of linguistic normativity. On first sight, this hypothesis might seem to fall prey to a regress objection. By discussing the work of Searle, I show that this regress objection originates in the idea that learning language involves learning to follow rules from the very start. I (...) propose an ecological-enactive response to the regress objection. The key move is to deny that language learning consists initially in learning rules. A child first engages in regular communicative behaviour, by learning first-order linguistic skills, and then retroactively interprets her own behaviour in normative metalinguistic terms, i.e., as being guided by rules by relying on reflexive or second-order linguistic skills. On this view, metalinguistic reflexivity enables regulation of already regular communicative behaviour, and thereby constitutes linguistic normativity. Finally, I argue that linguistic rules are resources: they are available to participants in order to (re)negotiate properties of situated language behaviour and thereby reorganize linguistic practices. The account developed in this paper thus allows us to understand the constitutive role of metalinguistic reflexivity for linguistic normativity without falling prey to the regress objection. (shrink)

Situated normativity is the ability of skilled individuals to distinguish better from worse, adequate from inadequate, appropriate from inappropriate, or correct from incorrect in the context of a particular situation. Situated normativity consists in a situated appreciation expressed in normative behaviour, and can be experienced as a bodily affective tension that motivates a skilled individual to act on particular possibilities for action offered by a concrete situation. The concept of situated normativity has so far primarily been discussed in the context (...) of skilled unreflective action. In this paper, we aim to explore and sketch the role of the concept of situated normativity in characterising more reflective forms of normativity. The goal of the paper is two-fold: first, by showing more reflective forms of normativity to be continuous with unreflective situated normativity, we bring these reflective forms into the reach of embodied accounts of cognition; and second, by extending the concept of situated normativity, new light is thrown on questions regarding reflective forms of cognition. We show that sociomaterial aspects of situations are crucial for understanding more reflective forms of normativity. We also shed light on the important question of how explicit rules can compel people to behave in particular ways. (shrink)

The Radical Enactive/embodied view of Cognition, or REC, claims that all cognition is a matter of skilled performance. Yet REC also makes a distinction between basic and content-involving cognition, arguing that the development of basic to content-involving cognition involves a kink. It might seem that this distinction leads to problematic gaps in REC’s story. We address two such alleged gaps in this paper. First, we identify and reply to the concern that REC leads to an “interface problem”, according to which (...) REC has to account for the interaction of two minds co-present in the same cognitive activity. We emphasise how REC’s view of content-involving cognition in terms of activities that require particular sociocultural practices can resolve these interface concerns. The second potential problematic gap is that REC creates an unjustified difference in kind between animal and human cognition. In response, we clarify and further explicate REC’s notion of content, and argue that this notion allows REC to justifiably mark the distinction between basic and content-involving cognition as a difference in kind. We conclude by pointing out in what sense basic and content-involving cognitive activities are the same, yet different. They are the same because they are all forms of skilled performance, yet different as some forms of skilled performance are genuinely different from other forms. (shrink)

This paper proposes an account of linguistic knowledge in terms of knowing-how, starting from Love's seminal distinction between first-order linguistic activity and second-order (or metalinguistic) practices. Metalinguistic practices are argued to be constitutive of linguistic knowledge. Skilful linguistic behaviour is subject to correction based on criterial support provided through metalinguistic practices. Linguistic know-how is knowing-how to provide and to recognise criterial support for first-order linguistic activity. I conclude that participation in first-order linguistic activity requires a critical reflective attitude, which implies (...) that all first-order linguistic activity has a second-order dimension. -/- . (shrink)

The concept of affordances is rapidly gaining traction in the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. Affordances are opportunities for action provided by the environment. An important open question is whether affordances can be used to explain mental action such as attention, counting, and imagination. In this paper, we critically discuss McClelland’s (‘The Mental Affordance Hypothesis’, 2020, Mind, 129(514), pp. 401–427) mental affordance hypothesis. While we agree that the affordance concept can be fruitfully employed to explain mental action, we argue (...) that McClelland’s mental affordance hypothesis contain remnants of a Cartesian understanding of the mind. By discussing the theoretical framework of the affordance competition hypothesis, we sketch an alternative research program based on the principles of embodied cognition that evades the Cartesian worries. We show how paradigmatic mental acts, such as imagination, counting, and arithmetic, are dependent on sensorimotor interaction with an affording environment. Rather than make a clear distinction between bodily and mental action, the mental affordances highlight the embodied nature of our mental action. We think that in developing our alternative research program on mental affordances, we can maintain many of the excellent insights of McClelland’s account without reintroducing the very distinctions that affordances were supposed to overcome. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

This commentary discusses three main requirements for models of vision, namely, translation and scale invariance, scalability, and hierarchy. Edelman's Chorus model falls short of fulfilling these requirements because it ignores the highly dynamic nature of vision. Incorporating an attentional mechanism and assuming geon-like prototype representations may enhance Chorus's plausibility as a model of human object recognition.

The natural input memory (NIM) model is a new model for recognition memory that operates on natural visual input. A biologically informed perceptual preprocessing method takes local samples (eye fixations) from a natural image and translates these into a feature‐vector representation. During recognition, the model compares incoming preprocessed natural input to stored representations. By complementing the recognition memory process with a perceptual front end, the NIM model is able to make predictions about memorability based directly on individual natural stimuli. We (...) demonstrate that the NIM model is able to simulate experimentally obtained similarity ratings and recognition memory for individual stimuli (i.e., face images). (shrink)

There has been much talk of the need to build intermediate models of the expertise required preparatory to constructing a knowledge-based system in the legal domain. Such models offer advantages for verification, validation, maintenance and reuse. As yet, however, few such models have been reported at a useful level of detail. In this paper we describe a method for conceptualising legal domains as well as its application to a substantial fragment of the Dutch Unemployment Benefits Act (DUBA).We first discuss the (...) intermediate models (called expertise models), then present a three-stage method for their construction, drawing on the CommonKADS work in knowledge acquisition, conceptual models of statute law, and the KANT method of knowledge analysis. Subsequently, we describe how these techniques were applied to the DUBA, and provide detailed examples of the resulting model. Finally, conclusions on the framework and guidelines are given as well as means of recording and presenting the various design choices. (shrink)

In the law, it is generally acknowledged that there are intuitive differences between reasoning with rules and reasoning with principles. For instance, a rule seems to lead directly to its conclusion if its condition is satisfied, while a principle seems to lead merely to a reason for its conclusion. However, the implications of these intuitive differences for the logical status of rules and principles remain controversial.A radical opinion has been put forward by Dworkin (1978). The intuitive differences led him to (...) argue for a strict logical distinction between rules and principles. Ever since, there has been a controversy whether the intuitive differences between rules and principles require a strict logical distinction between the two. For instance, Soeteman (1991) disagrees with Dworkin's opinion, and argues that rules and principles cannot be strictly distinguished, and do not have a different logical structure. (shrink)

We apply an online optimization process based on machine learning to the production of Bose-Einstein condensates. BEC is typically created with an exponential evaporation ramp that is optimal for ergodic dynamics with two-body s-wave interactions and no other loss rates, but likely sub-optimal for real experiments. Through repeated machine-controlled scientific experimentation and observations our ’learner’ discovers an optimal evaporation ramp for BEC production. In contrast to previous work, our learner uses a Gaussian process to develop a statistical model of the (...) relationship between the parameters it controls and the quality of the BEC produced. We demonstrate that the Gaussian process machine learner is able to discover a ramp that produces high quality BECs in 10 times fewer iterations than a previously used online optimization technique. Furthermore, we show the internal model developed can be used to determine which parameters are essential in BEC creation and which are unimportant, providing insight into the optimization process of the system. (shrink)

In this interview with Jan Hendrik van den Berg, the Dutch phenomenologist and psychiatrist addresses the origins of his work, his most significant influences, and the purpose of metabletic phenomenology in the modern age. In the course of the interview. Dr. Van den Berg provides a basic overview of his work, and highlights the central finding of his metabletic analyses: a loss of wonder before nature, which results from the more fundamental loss of genuine spirituality in the modern world.

Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic globally disrupted lives and contributed to the exacerbation of pre-existing inequalities. Women in research were also affected. The prominent role that women played in professional and personal care duties had a detrimental effect on their research outputs, potentially hindering their career progression. Moreover, the challenges faced by women academics during the pandemic, including job loss, increased mental health issues, and the intersection of gender with other socio-demographic traits exacerbated existing gender disparities within academia. By systematically (...) scoping the qualitative literature on the experiences of women researchers during the pandemic, this study sought to explore how women experienced and reacted to the challenges generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative meta synthesis of the included studies revealed three themes: gendered professional expectations, colliding identities and coping strategies. These themes show how gendered roles such as teaching and professional care work, associated with the hierarchical and gendered division of tasks both at home and in the workplace, made women feel unsupported and alienated as relevant agents in the academic context. The study reveals the importance of pastoral care, teaching and service work as the essential backbone of the academic infrastructure, especially in times of crises. It also exposes how productivity-focused researcher assessment criteria, rewarding mainly individual results and unrewarding of care and service work, can be viewed as perpetuating structural inequalities based on gender, parenting situations, contractual situations and background. In conclusion, this study exposes the need to proactively address the gendered practices and implicit biases which reproduce inequalities within academia and highlights how paying attention to the experiences and needs of women researchers is essential for improving the resilience and crises preparedness of academic the system. (shrink)

In the age of Big Data, companies and governments are increasingly using algorithms to inform hiring decisions, employee management, policing, credit scoring, insurance pricing, and many more aspects of our lives. Artificial intelligence systems can help us make evidence-driven, efficient decisions, but can also confront us with unjustified, discriminatory decisions wrongly assumed to be accurate because they are made automatically and quantitatively. It is becoming evident that these technological developments are consequential to people’s fundamental human rights. Despite increasing attention to (...) these urgent challenges in recent years, technical solutions to these complex socio-ethical problems are often developed without empirical study of societal context and the critical input of societal stakeholders who are impacted by the technology. On the other hand, calls for more ethically and socially aware AI often fail to provide answers for how to proceed beyond stressing the importance of transparency, explainability, and fairness. Bridging these socio-technical gaps and the deep divide between abstract value language and design requirements is essential to facilitate nuanced, context-dependent design choices that will support moral and social values. In this paper, we bridge this divide through the framework of Design for Values, drawing on methodologies of Value Sensitive Design and Participatory Design to present a roadmap for proactively engaging societal stakeholders to translate fundamental human rights into context-dependent design requirements through a structured, inclusive, and transparent process. (shrink)

BackgroundWith advances in sequencing technologies, increasing numbers of people are being informed about a genetic disease identified in their family. In current practice, probands are asked to inform at-risk relatives about the diagnosis. However, previous research has shown that relatives are sometimes not informed due to barriers such as family conflicts. Research on family communication in genetic diseases aims to explore the difficulties encountered in informing relatives and to identify ways to support probands in this.Main bodyResearch on family communication may (...) also reveal that participants did not inform their relatives about the risk of a serious genetic condition, even when preventive and treatment options are available. Researchers may then face a dilemma: Do they need to warn at-risk relatives about the finding? Or do they keep silent due to prior confidentiality agreements with study participants?ConclusionsWe believe that the absolute confidence promised to research participants outweighs the interests of their relatives, even though it can be claimed that relatives at risk of a genetic disease do, in principle, have a right to know information collected about their health. Not respecting confidentiality agreements could cause distrust between researchers and research participants and possibly harm the relationship between probands and relatives. Relatives' health interests can still be taken into account without jeopardizing participant trust, by considering alternative scenarios, including sharing general study findings on the barriers participants experience with their healthcare professionals and by offering participants psychosocial support for family communication. (shrink)

We propose a novel type of low distortion radial embedding which focuses on one specific entity and its closest neighbors. Our embedding preserves near-exact distances to the focus entity and aims to minimize distortion between the other entities. We present an interactive exploration tool SolarView which places the focus entity at the center of a "solar system" and embeds its neighbors guided by concentric circles. SolarView provides an implementation of our novel embedding and several state-of-the-art dimensionality reduction and embedding techniques, (...) which we adapted to our setting in various ways. We experimentally evaluated our embedding and compared it to these state-of-the-art techniques. The results show that our embedding competes with these techniques and achieves low distortion in practice. Our method performs particularly well when the visualization, and hence the embedding, adheres to the solar system design principle of our application. Nonetheless - as with all dimensionality reduction techniques - the distortion may be high. We leverage interaction techniques to give clear visual cues that allow users to accurately judge distortion. We illustrate the use of SolarView by exploring the high-dimensional metric space of bibliographic entity similarities. (shrink)

This~chapter~describes a philosophical approach to theorizing justice, mapping out some main strands of the tradition leading up to contemporary political philosophy. We first briefly discuss what distinguishes a~philosophical approach to justice from other possible approaches to justice, by explaining the~normative~focus of philosophical theories of justice a sh that is, a focus on questions not about how things actually~are, but about how things~ought~to be. Next, we explain what sorts of methods philosophers use to justify theories of justice. Following this, in the (...) longest section, we highlight major questions about justice that have drawn the attention of philosophers, and indicate how competing conceptions of justice have arisen from differing answers to these questions. The goal here is not to answer but to elucidate some of the larger questions about justice, as well as to establish a framework for understanding and distinguishing different kinds of claims about justice and some of the relations between them.KEYWORDS:Justice, political philosophy, normative theory, methods, theory of justice. (shrink)

Lee and Schwarz interpret meta-analytic research and replication studies as providing evidence for the robustness of cleansing effects. We argue that the currently available evidence is unconvincing because publication bias and the opportunistic use of researcher degrees of freedom appear to have inflated meta-analytic effect size estimates, and preregistered replications failed to find any evidence of cleansing effects.

Liberal political philosophy emphasizes the benefits of membership in a cultural group and, in the opinion of this challenging book, neglects its harmful, oppressive aspects. Andrew Kernohan argues that an oppressive culture perpetuates inegalitarian social meanings and false assumptions about who is entitled to what. Cultural pollution harms fundamental interests in self-respect and knowledge of the good and is diffuse, insidious, and unnoticed. This cultural pollution is analogous to environmental pollution, and though difficult to detect, is nonetheless just as real. (...) The book's conclusion is that a liberal state committed to the moral equality of persons must accept a strong role in reforming our cultural environment. (shrink)

Much clinical and ethnographic evidence suggests that humans, like many other organisms, are selected to avoid close inbreeding because of the fitness costs of inbreeding depression. The proximate mechanism of human inbreeding avoidance seems to be precultural, and to involve the interaction of genetic predispositions and environmental conditions. As first suggested by E. Westermarck, and supported by evidence from Israeli kibbutzim, Chinese sim-pua marriage, and much convergent ethnographic and clinical evidence, humans negatively imprint on intimate associates during a critical period (...) of early childhood.There is also much evidence that, like other social animals, humans do not seek to maximize outbreeding, but rather to maintain an optimal balance between outbreeding and inbreeding.Closeinbreeding reduces fitness through inbreeding depression, butsomeinbreeding brings the benefits of nepotism. For simple, stateless, horticultural societies, the optimal balance seems to be achieved by a combination of precultural inbreeding avoidance of relatives with anr≤·25 and cultural rules of preferential marriage with kin withr≥·25. Adjustment of the coefficient of inbreeding to other ecological settings seems to be largely cultural. An interactive model of “culture in nature” is presented, in which culture is seen as coevolving with genes to produce the maxiniization of individual inclusive fitness. (shrink)

The literature on the epistemology of ignorance already discusses how certain forms of discrimination, such as racism and sexism, are perpetuated by the ignorance of individuals and groups. However, little attention has been given to how speciesism—a form of discrimination on the basis of species membership—is sustained through ignorance_._ Of the few animal ethicists who explicitly discuss ignorance, none have related this concept to speciesism as a form of discrimination. However, it is crucial to explore this connection, I argue, as (...) ignorance is both an integral part of the injustice done to animals as well as an obstacle to improving their treatment. In order to adequately criticize sustained structural speciesism and injustices towards animals, I develop an epistemological account of ‘speciesist ignorance’. I begin by defining and distinguishing between individual and group-based accounts of speciesist ignorance. I argue that humans, taken as a group, enjoy a position of privilege, which allows them to comfortably remain ignorant of their participation in collective wrongdoings towards animals. Additionally, I point out that speciesist ignorance is structurally encouraged and thereby maintains the dominant view that the human-animal-relationship, as it stands, is just. In sum, this article lays the groundwork for a social epistemology of speciesist ignorance. In particular, it informs further debate about individual and institutional epistemic duties to inquire into speciesism and to inform the public, about the moral culpability of ignorant actions, and about effective animal advocacy and policy which actively rejects speciesist ignorance. (shrink)

When thinking about ethics, technology is often only mentioned as the source of our problems, not as a potential solution to our moral dilemmas. When thinking about technology, ethics is often only mentioned as a constraint on developments, not as a source and spring of innovation. In this paper, we argue that ethics can be the source of technological development rather than just a constraint and technological progress can create moral progress rather than just moral problems. We show this by (...) an analysis of how technology can contribute to the solution of so-called moral overload or moral dilemmas. Such dilemmas typically create a moral residue that is the basis of a second-order principle that tells us to reshape the world so that we can meet all our moral obligations. We can do so, among other things, through guided technological innovation. (shrink)

Biology in the Critical Philosophy and the Opus postumum Hein van den Berg. Parts of Chap. 2 have been previously published in Hein van den Berg (2011), “ Kant's Conception of Proper Science.” Synthese 183 (1): 7–26. Parts of Chap.

Vaccination programmes against infectious diseases aim to protect individuals from serious illness but also offer collective protection once a sufficient number of people have been immunized. This so-called ‘herd immunity’ is important for individuals who, for health reasons, cannot be immunized or who respond less well to vaccines. For these individuals, it is pivotal that others establish group protection. However, herd immunity can be compromised when people deliberately decide not to be immunized and benefit from the herd’s protection. These agents (...) are often referred to as free riders: their omissions are deemed to be unfair to those who do contribute to the collective’s health. This article addresses the unfairness of such ‘free riding’. An argument by Garett Cullity is examined, which asserts that the unfairness of moral free riding lies neither in one’s intentions, nor in one’s reluctance to embrace a public good. This argument offers a strong basis for justifiably arguing that free riding is unfair. However, it is then argued that other considerations also need to be taken into account before simply holding free riding against non-compliers. (shrink)

It is argued that Pettit’s conception of “contestatory democracy” is superior to deliberative, direct and epistemic democracy. The strong and weak points of these conceptions are discussed drawing upon the work of a.o Bruce Bimber. It is further argued that ‘contestation’ and ‘information’ are highly relevant notions in thinking about, just, viable and sustainable design for E-democracy.

An analysis of a broad sample of Dutch judicial and semi-judicial decisions shows similar structures as the ones Bhatia and Mazzi found before. The question is posed what explains this seemingly unchangeable judicial format. From a perspective of argumentative and communicative efficacy and comprehensibility, the format is certainly not the optimal choice. The explanation is that the format is a sign of an ideology. The format suggests an objectivity of the decision taken. This is actually a myth. This makes a (...) decision to change the format an ideological one. (shrink)

Information technology is an integral part of the practices and institutions of post-industrial society. It is also a source of hard moral questions and thus is both a probing and relevant area for moral theory. In this volume, an international team of philosophers sheds light on many of the ethical issues arising from information technology, including informational privacy, digital divide and equal access, e-trust and tele-democracy. Collectively, these essays demonstrate how accounts of equality and justice, property and privacy benefit from (...) taking into account how information technology has shaped our social and epistemic practices and our moral experiences. Information technology changes the way that we look at the world and deal with one another. It calls, therefore, for a re-examination of notions such as friendship, care, commitment and trust. (shrink)

Pleidooi voor de beleving als kennis-instrument.

Liang Shuming’s 梁漱溟 China: the Country of Reason is a little-known, posthumously published manuscript composed between 1967 and 1970 during the Cultural Revolution. It offers a unique perspective on Liang’s philosophical attempt to reconcile the Communist revolutionary legacy with the Confucian tradition that he continued to uphold in mainland China after the founding of the People’s Republic. By presenting and analyzing the main themes and concepts of this book, I try to cast some light on Liang’s idiosyncratic repurposing of historical (...) materialist concepts in reinterpreting what he takes to be “early enlightenment” accomplished through the Confucian celebration of “reason” and its “replacement of religion by morality.” In doing so, I explore the complex relations between revolutionary, religious, and ethnic identity in his late philosophy. (shrink)