Decision support systems, which incorporate artificial intelligence and big data, are receiving significant attention in the public sector. Decision support systems are sociocultural artefacts that are subject to a mix of technical and political choices, and critical investigation of these choices and the rationales they reflect are paramount since they are inscribed into and may cause harm, violate fundamental rights and reproduce negative social patterns. Applying and merging the concepts of sense-making and translation, this article investigates the rationales, translations and (...) critical reflections that shape the development of a decision support system to support social workers assessing referrals concerning child neglect. It presents findings from a qualitative case study conducted in 2019–2020 at the Citizen Centre Children and Young People, Copenhagen Municipality, Denmark. The analysis shows how key actors through processes of translation construct, negotiate and readjust problem definitions, roles, interests, responsibilities and ideas of ambiguity and accountability. Although technological solutionism is present in these processes, it is not the only rationale invested. Rather, technological and data-driven rationales are adjusted to and merged with rationales of efficiency, return on investment and child welfare. Through continuous renegotiation of roles, responsibilities and problems according to these rationales, the key actors attempt to orchestrate ways of managing the complexity facing child welfare services by projecting images of future potentials of the decision support system that are yet to be realised. (shrink)

Modal propositional logic; Modal predicate logic; A survey of modal logic.

In this paper we examine the case of Tay, the Microsoft AI chatbot that was launched in March, 2016. After less than 24 hours, Microsoft shut down the experiment because the chatbot was generating tweets that were judged to be inappropriate since they included racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic language. We contend that the case of Tay illustrates a problem with the very nature of learning software that interacts directly with the public, and the developer's role and responsibility associated with it. (...) We make the case that when LS interacts directly with people or indirectly via social media, the developer has additional ethical responsibilities beyond those of standard software. There is an additional burden of care. (shrink)

In list-method directed forgetting, reexposure to forgotten List 1 items has been shown to reduce directed forgetting. proposed that reexposure to a few List 1 items only during a direct test of memory reinstates the entire List 1 episode. In the present experiments, part-list reexposure in the context of indirect as well as direct memory tests reduced directed forgetting. Directed forgetting was reduced when 50% or more of the items were reexposed, and was intact when only 25% were reexposed. Furthermore, (...) part-list reexposure appeared to reinstate only reexposed items-not the entire List 1 episode. (shrink)

Vaidya and Wallner [2021] claim that most relevant theories in recent epistemology of modality, that is, Conceivability-Theory, Counterfactual-Theory, and Deduction-Theory, face what they name “the problem of modal epistemic friction”, in a nutshell, the need to add some relevant information about the nature of the world that is not provided by the theories as such. Their proposal is that essences supply the needed information. In this paper I will agree with Vaidya and Waller’s detection of the problem of modal epistemic (...) friction, but I will importantly disagree with their solution in terms of a metaphysics and epistemology of essences. I will argue that knowledge of essence is neither necessary nor sufficient for metaphysical modal knowledge and claim instead that modal knowledge is firstly grounded in the categories that conform the facts of reality. Categorial knowledge does the job of creating the friction needed in all cases of modal metaphysical knowledge.Moreover, given the structural character of metaphysical categories, intuition is the basic proper form of modal knowledge. In fact, I will contend that intuition is the source of a priori knowledge invoked in Kripkean schemas for a posteriori modal truths. (shrink)

The growth of knowledge and its effects on the practice of medicine have been issues of philosophical and ethical interest for several decades and will remain so for many years to come. The outline of the present volume was conceived nearly three years ago. In 1987, a conference on this theme was held in Maastricht, the Netherlands, on the occasion of the founding of the European Society for Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care (ESPMH). Most of the chapters of this (...) book are derived from papers presented at that meeting, and for the purpose of editing the book Stuart Spicker, Ph. D., joined two founding members of ESPMH, Henk ten Have and Gerrit Kimsma. The three of them successfully brought together a number of interesting contribu tions to the theme, and ESPMH is grateful and proud to have initiated the production of this volume. The Society intends that annual meetings be held in different European countries on a rotating basis and to publish volumes related to these meetings whenever feasible. In 1988, the second conference was held in Aarhus, Denmark on "Values in Medical Decision Making and Resource Allocation in Health Care". In 1989, a meeting was held in Czestochowa, Poland, on "European Traditions in Philosophy of Medicine. From Brentano to Bieganski". It is hoped that these conferences and the books to be derived from them, will initiate a new European tradition, lasting well into the 21 st century! P. J. (shrink)

An orthodox review of work on kant from 1955 to 1965 concentrating on (1) the continental school, Holding kant's interest to be in founding a practical-Dogmatic metaphysics, With its main work being done on the early period, Things in themselves, And the categories; (2) questions about the fischer-Trendelenburg controversy on the relation of "transcendentally ideal" to "transcendentally real"; (3) english work throwing light on the aesthetic and on the analytic, With the still obsessive concern for the second analogy; (4) the (...) continuing debate on whether the categorical imperative is a moral criterion, And its relation to the golden rule; and (5) the important work on the concepts of freedom and the highest good. (shrink)

A recently published collection of articles focuses upon a relatively small group of texts dealing mainly with astronomical calculations and omens as well as physiognomic omens, attempting to use these as a basis for reconstructing ancient Jewish science in the Persian and Hellenistic periods. The present review raises questions regarding the aims and methods employed, offering an alternative suggestion for the transfer of technical knowledge from Babylonia to ancient Palestine.

Soon after the Hegel Society of Great Britain was inaugurated in September 1979, the Chairman received a congratulatory letter from the President of the Hegel Society of America, suggesting that every effort should be made to develop, “more concrete and personal forms of collaboration and communication.” The generosity of this response has now borne fruit in a joint meeting of the two Societies, marking the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Hegel’s death. It took place between the first and fourth (...) of September 1981, at Merton College Oxford, and was devoted to the discussion of “Hegel’s philosophy of action: individual, culture and society”. (shrink)

People judge that an individual who attempts to harm someone but fails should be blamed and punished more when they imagine how things could have turned out worse, compared to when they imagine how things could have turned out the same, or when they think only about what happened. This moral counterfactual amplification effect occurs when people believe the protagonist had no reason for the attempt to harm, and not when the protagonist had a reason, as Experiment 1 shows. It (...) occurs for intentional failed attempts to harm and also for accidental near-misses, as Experiment 2 shows, but not for failed attempts in which the harm occurs anyway by another cause, for both general judgments about the event and specific judgments about the individual's actions, as Experiments 3 and 4 show. The implications for understanding the role of counterfactual thoughts in moral judgement are discussed. (shrink)

While H. Odera Oruka is best known for his views on sage philosophy, he spent a considerable portion of his philosophical career agonizing over the question of human rights. The present paper argues that there is need for further philosophical reflection on Oruka’s account of the foundation of human rights with a view to refining it.

Arguments by Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta for evidence of a Self that is one and the same as the Great Lord Śiva are interpreted. The views of these authors are clarified and the contradictory relationship between the limited individual subject and the recognition of the true Self is shown. With the help of Utpaladeva's distinction between "seeing" and "noticing," a further interpretation is attempted. Some remarks are made concerning practical meditation and the theoretical presuppositions of this way of thinking in order (...) to find starting points for a comparison with Western philosophy. (shrink)