The Problem of the value of truth came before us – or was it we who came before the problem? Who of us is Oedipus here? Who the Sphinx? It is a rendezvous, it seems, of questions and question marks.– NietzscheArthur Fine, in his defense of the Natural Ontological Attitude, has argued that any attempt to analyze truth will fail because any such analysis presupposes an untenable essentialism. In particular, he asserts that the anti-realist analysis of truth commits itself to (...) there being an essential property which all true statements possess, qua true statements. It is this commitment which he castigates. For the concept of truth is the fundamental semantical concept. Its uses, history, logic, and grammar are sufficiently definite to be partially catalogued, at least for a time. But it cannot be “explained” or given an “account of” without circularity. Nor does it require anything of the sort. The concept of truth is open-ended, growing with the growth of science …. Thus there is no projectible sketch now of what truth signifies, nor of what areas of science truth is exempt from - nor will there ever be. (shrink)

In defending NOA against some contemporary antirealisms I distinguish two antirealist camps: the epistemology inflaters, who come to their antirealism by filling up inquiry and belief formation with various warrants and principles of justification, and the semantic inflaters, or truthmongers, who come to their antirealism by exchanging truth for some epistemic notion, like ideal rational acceptablility. In parity with arguments against the correspondence theory of truth, which I see at the heart of various realisms, I argue against antirealist truthmongering in (...) two ways. One is inductive and hortative. I point to the history of failures of all past attempts at theories of truth, and try to suggest better things for philosophy to do instead. The other way is deconstructive. I examine the attempted explications of truth in the terms set by their own discourses, and try to show that they cannot actually stand on their own there. Lily Knezevich looks at this deconstructive work in her ‘Truthmongering‘ and finds it flawed by what I will call ‘Knezevich’s fallacy.’. (shrink)

The essays included in this volume are a mixture of old and new. Three of them make their first appearance in print on this occa sion (Nos III, IV, and V). The remaining four are based upon materials previously published in learned journals or anthologies. (However, these previously published papers have been revised and, generally, expanded for inclusion here.) Detailed acknowl edgement of prior publications is made in the notes to the relevant articles. I am grateful to the editors of (...) these several publications for their kind permission to use this material. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for the Western Ontario Series for some useful corrigenda. And I should like to thank John Horty and Lily Knezevich for their help in seeing this material through the press. NICHOLAS RESCHER Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania May, 1980 xi INTRODUCTION The unifying theme of these essays is their concern with Leibniz's metaphysics of nature. In particular, they revolve about his cos mology of creation and his conception of the real world as one among infinitely many equipossible alternatives. (shrink)

Recent advances in machine learning methods have created opportunities to eliminate unfairness from algorithmic decision making. Multiple computational techniques (i.e., algorithmic fairness criteria) have arisen out of this work. Yet, urgent questions remain about the perceived fairness of these criteria and in which situations organizations should use them. In this paper, we seek to gain insight into these questions by exploring fairness perceptions of five algorithmic criteria. We focus on two key dimensions of fairness evaluations: distributive fairness and procedural fairness. (...) We shed light on variation in the potential for different algorithmic criteria to facilitate distributive fairness. Subsequently, we discuss procedural fairness and provide a framework for understanding how algorithmic criteria relate to essential aspects of this construct, which helps to identify when a specific criterion is suitable. From a practical standpoint, we encourage organizations to recognize that managing fairness in machine learning systems is complex, and that adopting a blind or one-size-fits-all mentality toward algorithmic criteria will surely damage people’s attitudes and trust in automated technology. Instead, firms should carefully consider the subtle yet significant differences between these technical solutions. (shrink)

"The work is on an important topic that has been oft debated but rarely systematically studied – the political, cultural, and moral effects of distant news coverage of suffering. [The book] is extremely well steeped in the relevant literature, including semiotics, discourse analysis, meda and social theory and makes a fresh methodological contribution by looking at the codes and formats of news about suffering. It has a fresh vision and answer to some of the stickiest moral and media problems of (...) our time … and deserves to find its place among important books about the moral aspects of media and society in our times." —John D. Peters, F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor, University of Ohio This book is about the relationship between the spectators in countries of the west, and the distant sufferer on the television screen; the sufferer in Somalia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, but also from New York and Washington DC. How do we relate to television images of the distant sufferer? The question touches on the ethical role of the media in public life today. They address the issue of whether the media can cultivate a disposition of care for and engagement with the far away other; whether television can create a global public with a sense of social responsibility towards the distant sufferer. (shrink)

Addiction appears to be a deeply moralized concept. To understand the entwinement of addiction and morality, we briefly discuss the disease model and its alternatives in order to address the following questions: Is the disease model the only path towards a ‘de-moralized’ discourse of addiction? While it is tempting to think that medical language surrounding addiction provides liberation from the moralized language, evidence suggests that this is not necessarily the case. On the other hand non-disease models of addiction may seem (...) to resuscitate problematic forms of the moralization of addiction, including, invoking blame, shame, and the wholesale rejection of addicts as people who have deep character flaws, while ignoring the complex biological and social context of addiction. This is also not necessarily the case. We argue that a deficit in reasons responsiveness as basis for attribution of moral responsibility can be realized by multiple different causes, disease being one, but it also seems likely that alternative accounts of addiction as developed by Flanagan, Lewis, and Levy, may also involve mechanisms, psychological, social, and neurobiological that can diminish reasons responsiveness. It thus seems to us that nondisease models of addiction do not necessarily involve moralization. Hence, a non-stigmatizing approach to recovery can be realized in ways that are consistent with both the disease model and alternative models of addiction. (shrink)

The development of highly humanoid sex robots is on the technological horizon. If sex robots are integrated into the legal community as “electronic persons”, the issue of sexual consent arises, which is essential for legally and morally permissible sexual relations between human persons. This paper explores whether it is conceivable, possible, and desirable that humanoid robots should be designed such that they are capable of consenting to sex. We consider reasons for giving both “no” and “yes” answers to these three (...) questions by examining the concept of consent in general, as well as critiques of its adequacy in the domain of sexual ethics; the relationship between consent and free will; and the relationship between consent and consciousness. Additionally we canvass the most influential existing literature on the ethics of sex with robots. (shrink)

Much of the research on theory of mind (ToM) approaches ToM as a unitary construct; on such an account, mental state understanding across different contexts reflects the same cognitive process. Some researchers, however, suggest that ToM can be separated into different components that contribute differently to the understanding of people's minds. Evidence from developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience supports the notion that ToM consists of at least two components. Three different componential views are discussed: (1) early‐ versus late‐developing components, (2) (...) social‐perceptual versus social‐cognitive components, and (3) affective versus cognitive components. (shrink)

Moral bioenhancement, nudge-designed environments, and ambient persuasive technologies may help people behave more consistently with their deeply held moral convictions. Alternatively, they may aid people in overcoming cognitive and affective limitations that prevent them from appreciating a situation’s moral dimensions. Or they may simply make it easier for them to make the morally right choice by helping them to overcome sources of weakness of will. This paper makes two assumptions. First, technologies to improve people’s moral capacities are realizable. Second, such (...) technologies will actually help people get morality right and behave more consistently with whatever the ‘real’ right thing to do turns out to be. The paper then considers whether or not humanity loses anything valuable, particularly opportunities for moral progress, when being moral is made much easier by eliminating difficult moral deliberation and internal moral struggle. Ultimately, the worry that moral struggle has value as a catalyst for moral progress is rejected. Moral progress is understood here as the discovery and application of new values or sensitization to new sources of harm. (shrink)

Kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) en systemen die met machine learning (ML) werken, kunnen veel onderdelen van het medische besluitvormingsproces ondersteunen of vervangen. Ook zouden ze artsen kunnen helpen bij het omgaan met klinische, morele dilemma’s. AI/ML-beslissingen kunnen zo in de plaats komen van professionele beslissingen. We betogen dat dit belangrijke gevolgen heeft voor de relatie tussen een patiënt en de medische professie als instelling, en dat dit onvermijdelijk zal leiden tot uitholling van het institutionele vertrouwen in de geneeskunde.

Though there has been much debate about whether Abelard's ethics are dangerously subjective or surprisingly absolutist, one thing is unanimous: they are intentionalist. The goal of this article is to parse out what should be meant by this claim, distancing his ethical account from the popular Kantian appraisal. Though much of the secondary literature on Abelard likens him to Kant, I argue that this is mistaken. For Abelard, an agent's intentions are informed by their affections—whether carnal or spiritual. This becomes (...) clear when contextualizing Abelard's use of intentio with a view to his Commentary on Romans. Using the account of intention I suggest—one nuanced by Abelard's own theological commitments and biblical exegesis—it will be clear that Abelard's ethics is not a case for the moral neutrality of the passions nor an ethic of pure reason. (shrink)

Machine learning algorithms bring out an under-appreciated puzzle of discrimination, namely figuring out when a decision made on the basis of a factor correlated with race is a decision made on the basis of race. I argue that prevailing approaches, which are based on identifying and then distinguishing among causal effects of race, in their metaphysical timidity, fail to get off the ground. I suggest, instead, that adopting a constructivist theory of race answers this puzzle in a principled manner. On (...) what I call a “thick constructivist” account of race, to be raced is to be socially positioned in the way indicated by a certain set of statistical regularities on the basis of particular phenotypical traits. A thick constructivist sees that acting on the basis of correlations that constitute race qua social position just is acting on the basis of race, because races just are social positions that subject their member individuals to a particular matrix of social relations that define the raced position. This conclusion has considerable ramifications for our understanding of discrimination, algorithms and beyond. (shrink)

In this chapter we identify three potentially morally problematic behaviours that are common among users of dating and hook-up apps (DHAs) and provide arguments as to why they may or may not be considered (a) in a category of their own, distinct from similar behaviours outside of DHAs; (b) caused or facilitated by affordances and business logic of DHAs; (c) as indeed morally wrong. We also consider ways in which morally problematic behaviours can be anticipated, mitigated, or even prevented by (...) analysis of the ethical and moral dimensions of technologies and their afforded uses. Finally, we offer some possible directions for future work on these topics in particular and on the ethical consequences of DHAs in general. (shrink)

This study investigates the relationship between abusive supervision and employee creativity by shedding light on the mediating role of negative affect and the moderating role of interpersonal harmony. Based on affective events theory, it was hypothesized that abusive supervision impacts employees’ negative affect and their creativity. Data from a questionnaire survey of 398 Chinese employee–supervisor dyads were collected and analyzed. The results support our hypotheses, address unexplored theoretical predictions, and suggest that organizations should deal with the factors undermining employees’ emotions (...) to improve their creativity. (shrink)

Digital peddling of fake news is influential to persuasive political participation, with veritable social media platforms. Social media, with their instantaneous and widespread usage, have been exploited by ‘anonymous’ political influencers who fabricate and inundate internet community with unverified and false information. Using van Leeuwen’s Discourse Legitimation approach and insights from Discourse Analysis, this study analyses 120 purposively sampled fake news posts on Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter, shared during the 2019 general elections in Nigeria. WhatsApp allows for the easy and (...) fast sharing of fake news as it pulled the largest occurrence of legitimation strategies, followed by Facebook. Authorisation is the highest occurring legitimation strategy at 46.6% frequency; this is followed by Moralisation which has 27% and Rationalisation at 26.4%; while Mythopoesis did not feature at all in the sampled data, leaving it at 0%. In particular, expert and role model authority are most often deployed to validate fake news such as the demise and cloning of President Buhari, ruling party’s plan to rig and destabilise the 2019 election, massive corruption in the current administration and imminent ethnic violence. The study argues that these strategies are viable persuasive tools owing to their use of discourse markers like make-believe images, emotive language, appeal to emotions, rational conclusions, hateful comments, verbal indictment and coercive verbs. (shrink)

Government have in the past embarked on many infrastructural programmes such as building of roads, hospitals, health centers in the rural areas, schools, etc for its citizens. A lot of projects have been carried out in the past years, there are institutions formed to carter for the implementation of such programmes, institutions like NEMA to check disasters, repair of roads, collapse buildings etc. NDDC was formed to take care of roads in the South East but many of these programmes and (...) institutions have not fared well in recent years because of corruption. Take for instance in the channels news of Tuesdays 16/6/2020 the new NDDC Director revealed how projects awarded to contractors in the past were all not carried out, funds meant for those purposes were all embezzled into private pockets. With the coming of Covid 19, governments have now found cover to say Covid 19 has attacked all revenue sources and so cannot carry out projects in the country. This is the burden of this work. Is it true that it is Covid 19 that halted the success of programme implementation in Nigeria? This is what this paper is out to ascertain. (shrink)

This discussion concerns the under-explored influence of Jacques Derrida on Paul B. Preciado and the autotheoretical enterprise that is Testo Junkie. Picking up on the deconstructive logic of contamination at work in Preciado’s early writings, the article reckons with autotheory as both a theoretical mode motored by the first person and an autobiographical mode interested in self-shaping. In so doing, it offers a genealogy of autotheory that finds its origins in Derrida’s disinterest in disciplinary purity and dislike of philosophical detachment, (...) at the same time as positioning Testo Junkie firmly within a French literary and philosophical context where it both intervenes in the activity of queer theorizing and antagonizes the highly popular genre of autofiction through a series of generic contaminations. Autotheory, in this itinerary, is inseparable from the self-writing project that Preciado undertakes and advocates, one that disidentifies from the fiction of a privately sexed and interior ‘self’. (shrink)

This article relies on two international projects to argue for the existence of a ‘centrarchy’ in the fields of education and technology. Centrarchy denotes a power structure in which power rests with ‘the Centre’. The Centre signifies well-respected departments, top-tiered journals, the best editors, critical reviewers and leading authors; the Periphery denotes anyone else. The Centre has assigned itself the mission of guiding the Periphery out of its underdevelopment. It has served as a proxy for quality scholarship and believes that (...) Periphery’s societies require a saviour. It has ignored the knowledge that has been produced by the Periphery’s researchers. Its ways of researching the world have been internalised and taken for granted by the Periphery’s academics, who have come to see these ways as the natural order and common sense. It has seen the Periphery’s societies as outliers appropriate merely for local case studies, whereas its case studies transcend locality and have universal value. The Centre–Periphery ‘wall’ is unbreachable because of empirically uninspected factors, which are unearthed here. This article, furthermore, shows some academics to be on ‘the periphery of the Periphery’. (shrink)

Nowadays, Korea and Japan are in conflict arising from export restrictions launched by Japan on Korea, which have provoked a boycott of Japanese products in Korea, and even tourism to Japan. Animosity performs a momentous role in the context of crisis management communication. Hence, this article aims to investigate factors impacting boycott intention to visit Japan, with economic animosity being a principal mediating variable, whose antecedents and consequences have been probed into. A total of 333 respondents' survey data were collected (...) and analyzedviaSEM for the verification of research hypotheses. The findings manifest that ethnic identity engenders significant direct positive bearings upon economic animosity and boycott news, and boycott news significantly positively affects economic animosity; boycott news serves as the mediating role between ethnic identity and economic animosity. Additionally, the outcomes denote that economic animosity exerts a significant positive impact on boycott visit intention, economic animosity negatively affects Japanese government trust, and Japanese government trust negatively bears upon boycott visit intention; Japanese government trust mediates between economic animosity and boycott intention to visit Japan. Consequently, the research makes contributions to furnishing empirical evidence for influencing factors of boycott visit intention and enriching the literature on the antecedents and consequences of animosity. (shrink)

Prospect theory predicts a four-fold risk attitude, which means that people are risk seeking for low-probability gain and high-probability loss and risk averse for low-probability loss and high-probability gain because they overweight probability when it is low. The four-fold pattern of risk attitude has been supported by several former studies with mainstream industrialized populations but has never previously been tested in a non-industrialized society. In this work, we examined the robustness of the four-fold risk attitude in the DuLong minority ethnicity (...) in China, which is a small society with only 4,000 members that is isolated from modern civilization. We used simple lotteries for gain and loss with different probabilities to elicit the risk attitude of 37 DuLong villagers. Our results support prospect theory predictions in that DuLong people are risk seeking for low-probability gain and risk averse for low-probability loss. However, although they showed a tendency to decrease their degree of risk seeking for gain, their risk attitude did not reverse when the probability of the prospect increased to 50%. In summary, our results suggest a right-shifted weighting function in this non-industrialized small society. The deviation might be caused by the particular living situation of the DuLong people, their sensitivity to monetary payoffs, and the elicitation procedure. (shrink)

Since the user recommendation complex matrix is characterized by strong sparsity, it is difficult to correctly recommend relevant services for users by using the recommendation method based on location and collaborative filtering. The similarity measure between users is low. This paper proposes a fusion method based on KL divergence and cosine similarity. KL divergence and cosine similarity have advantages by comparing three similar metrics at different K values. Using the fusion method of the two, the user’s similarity with the preference (...) is reused. By comparing the location-based collaborative filtering algorithm, user-based collaborative filtering algorithm, and user recommendation algorithm, the proposed method has the preparation rate, recall rate, and experimental effect advantage. In different median values, the proposed method also has an advantage in experimental results. (shrink)

This paper will examine how the prominent image of the witch in Christian thought during the early modern period emerged from earlier images of the non-Christian Other, Jews and heretics for example. To do so the beliefs surrounding the ―rituals‖ and ―practices‖ of witches seen during the witch-craze of the fifteenth century are compared and contrasted with the images of Others within medieval Christian society. To do so a variety of both primary and secondary scholarship on the persecution of witches, (...) heretics, and Jews during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. (shrink)

In diesem für den Unterricht an französischen Universitäten konzipierten, reichhaltig mit Karten, Stadtplänen und Grundrissen ausgestatteten Studienbuch gibt der Autor, ein ausgewiesener Kenner der italienischen und insbesondere der genuesischen Seehandels- und Kolonialpolitik im östlichen Mittelmeer und im Schwarzmeergebiet nach 1204/1261 (La Romanie génoise. 2 Bde. [BEFAR 235], Roma 1978), dem wir bereits eine kleine Kreuzzugsgeschichte verdanken (Les Croisades, Paris, MA Editions, 1988), nicht nur einen elementaren Überblick über die Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, sondern zugleich einen Einblick in die Entwicklung der im (...) Vorderen Orient entstandenen Kreuzfahrerstaaten, wobei er gelegentlich auch auf die Quellenlage zu Spezialproblemen und auf den aktuellen Forschungsstand hinweist. (shrink)

An accumulating amount of research has documented the harmful effects of abusive supervision on either its victims or third parties (peer abusive supervision). The abusive supervision literature, however, neglects to investigate the spillover effects of abusive supervision through third-party employees’ (i.e., peers’) mistreatment actions toward victims. Drawing on social learning theory, we argue that third parties learn mistreatment behaviors from abusive leaders and then themselves impose peer harassment and peer ostracism on victims, thereby negatively affecting victims’ performance. Further, we posit (...) that, if a victim has a proactive personality, this will weaken these indirect, negative effects. We conducted two studies, both with three-wave longitudinal data, to verify the hypotheses. The results of Study 1 evidence the significant indirect effects of abusive supervision on employee creative performance via both peer harassment and peer ostracism. Contrary to our moderation hypothesis, the analysis shows that victims’ proactive personality strengthens rather than weakens the negative indirect effects of peer harassment. Study 2 generally replicated the results of Study 1 with employee’s objective job performance as outcome. Our research contributes to the abusive supervision literature by highlighting a social learning process of third-party peer mistreatment, suggesting a spillover channel of abusive supervision on the victim’s performance. (shrink)

ObjectiveIndividuals with an evening chronotype prefer to sleep later at night, wake up later in the day and perform best later in the day as compared to individuals with morning chronotype. Thus, college students without ADHD symptoms with evening chronotypes show reduced cognitive performance in the morning relative to nighttime. In combination with symptoms presented in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, we predicted that having evening chronotype renders impairment in attention during the morning, when students require optimal performance, amplifying desynchrony.MethodFour hundred (...) college students were surveyed for evening chronotype and symptoms of ADHD. Of those surveyed, 43 students with evening chronotype performed laboratory attention tasks and were queried about fatigue during morning and evening sessions.ResultsStudents with ADHD symptoms demonstrated a greater decrement in sustained attentional vigilance when abstaining from stimulants and asked to perform cognitive tests at times misaligned with natural circadian rhythms in arousal compared to their non-ADHD counterparts with the same chronotype. While individuals with ADHD symptoms had slower reaction-times during sustained attention tasks in the morning session compared to those without symptoms, there was no significant group difference in working memory performance, even though both groups made more errors in the morning session compared to the evening session.ConclusionThese findings suggest that evening chronotype students with ADHD symptoms are at a greater disadvantage when having to perform sustained attention tasks at times that are not aligned to their circadian rhythm compared to their neuro-typical peers. The implications of this finding may be useful for the provision of disability accommodations to college age students with ADHD when they are expected to perform tasks requiring sustained attention at times misaligned with their circadian rhythms. (shrink)

Students with learning disabilities (LDs) suffer from executive function deficits and impaired prospective memory (PM). Yet the specificity of deficits associated with different types of LDs is still unclear. The object of the present research was to compare subgroups of students with different forms of LDs (<25th percentile) on executive function and PM. Students with a mathematics disability (MD,n= 30), reading disability (RD,n= 27), both (RDMD,n= 27), or neither (typically developing, TD,n= 30) were evaluated on a set of executive functioning (...) tasks (e.g., updating, inhibition, and shifting) and on PM. The results showed that students with MDs and RDMDs suffered from PM deficits. Among the subtypes of LDs, the deficit is different. The students with RDMDs showed a wide range of defects in PM, shifting, inhibition, and updating. In comparison, students with MDs experienced deficits in PM and shifting, while students with RDs experienced a deficit only in updating. For the RD group, the RDMD group and the TD group, updating, and shifting significantly predicted PM. For the MD group, only shifting significantly predicted PM performance, but PM deficits were not completely confined to shifting deficits. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 17 Many people like to identify as belonging to one church or another. Previous studies have explored the process of switching from one religious group to another, and this process has identified various factors that determine the likelihood and reasons for switching. Although this has been explored, little is known about the factors that influence switching among charismatic Christians in Ghana, and the potential implications of such switching on mental well-being. Our study therefore explored the reasons (...) given by members of selected neo-Pentecostal/charismatic churches in Ghana for their decision to switch to these churches. The study was conducted in six neo-Pentecostal churches in Accra and Kumasi through the use of individual and focus group interviews as well as observations of church activities. A total of 86 respondents cited reasons such as geographic mobility, marriage, answers to prayer, as well as miracles and prophecies as their determining factors. These are discussed with emphasis on the potential implications for mental health such as psychological distress, blind faith, and individual agency. (shrink)