In response to calls for greater interdisciplinary involvement from the social sciences and humanities in the development, governance, and study of artificial intelligence systems, this paper presents one sociologist’s view on the problem of algorithmic bias and the reproduction of societal bias. Discussions of bias in AI cover much of the same conceptual terrain that sociologists studying inequality have long understood using more specific terms and theories. Concerns over reproducing societal bias should be informed by an understanding of the ways (...) that inequality is continually reproduced in society—processes that AI systems are either complicit in, or can be designed to disrupt and counter. The contrast presented here is between conservative and radical approaches to AI, with conservatism referring to dominant tendencies that reproduce and strengthen the status quo, while radical approaches work to disrupt systemic forms of inequality. The limitations of a conservative approach to racial bias are discussed through the specific example of biased criminal risk assessments and Indigenous overrepresentation in Canada’s criminal justice system. This illustrates the dangers of treating racial bias as a generalizable problem and equality as a generalizable solution, emphasizing the importance of considering inequality in context. Societal issues can no longer be out of scope for AI and machine learning, given the impact of these systems on human lives. This requires engagement with a growing body of critical AI scholarship that goes beyond biased data to analyze structured ways of perpetuating inequality, opening up the possibility for interdisciplinary engagement and radical alternatives. (shrink)

We take up the challenge of developing an international network with capacity to survey the world's scientists on an ongoing basis, providing rich datasets regarding the opinions of scientists and scientific sub-communities, both at a time and also over time. The novel methodology employed sees local coordinators, at each institution in the network, sending survey invitation emails internally to scientists at their home institution. The emails link to a ‘10 second survey’, where the participant is presented with a single statement (...) to consider, and a standard five point Likert scale. In June 2023, a group of 30 philosophers and social scientists invited 20,085 scientists across 30 institutions in 12 countries to participate, gathering 6,807 responses to the statement 'Science has put it beyond reasonable doubt that COVID-19 is caused by a virus'. The study demonstrates that it is possible to establish a global network to quickly ascertain scientific opinion on a large international scale, with high response rate, low opt-out rate, and in a way that allows for significant (perhaps indefinite) repeatability. Measuring scientific opinion in this new way would be a valuable complement to currently available approaches, potentially informing policy decisions and public understanding across diverse fields. (shrink)

Although there is much discussion exploring the potential causes of plagiarism, there is limited research available which provides evidence as to the academic interventions which may help reduce this. This paper discusses a bespoke English for Academic Purposes programme introduced at the university level, aimed at improving the academic writing standards of students, reducing plagiarism, and detecting cases of contract cheating. Results from 12 semesters of academic misconduct data demonstrate a 37.01% reduction in instances of detected plagiarism following the intervention, (...) but due to limited data, cannot demonstrate a direct impact on reducing detected rates of contract cheating. The results also show a lower than expected proportion of plagiarised assignments among submissions. (shrink)

What critical characteristics do firms have that determine the scale and scope of corporate social responsibility activities they undertake? This paper examines two disparate predictors of corporate social performance. First, using the lens of the resource-based view, we examine the role of alliance network centrality on corporate social performance. We find that centrality enhances corporate social performance. Second, we investigate how board composition affects corporate social performance. Specifically, drawing on stakeholder theory, we find that the percentage of female directors predicts (...) greater corporate social performance. In addition, we look at the influence of outside directors on this relationship. Our findings show that the presence of more outside directors positively moderates the relationship between female directors and corporate social performance. (shrink)

Scholars have long suggested that CEOs can benefit from corporate philanthropy. However, little is known about this relationship in contexts of authoritarian capitalism such as China, where the state not only uses its control of economic entities to pursue social goals but also plays a key role in CEOs’ careers. We theorize how corporate philanthropy among state-controlled firms increases the CEO’s likelihood of receiving career benefits from the state in the form of outside directorships. Outside directorships represent an important form (...) of social capital in the Chinese context, and corporate philanthropy is an important mechanism through which social capital can be acquired. In addition, we theorize how two factors—the degree of state ownership and the number of independent directors on the CEO’s board—moderate this relationship. Analyzing a 12-year panel of state-controlled, publicly-listed firms in China comprising 6,594 firm-year observations, we find general support for our ideas. In so doing, we contribute to scholarship on the business–society relationship and corporate governance in the context of authoritarian capitalism. (shrink)

We present three natural but distinct formalisations of Einstein’s special principle of relativity, and demonstrate the relationships between them. In particular, we prove that they are logically distinct, but that they can be made equivalent by introducing a small number of additional, intuitively acceptable axioms.

The concept of a Liberal Proviso introduced in “Neutrality and Perfectionism in Public Health” provides some ideas on how to limit excessive or unjustified interventions from...

Recent studies suggest that insects use pattern recognition molecules to distinguish prokaryotic pathogens and fungi from “self” structures. Less understood is how the innate immune system of insects recognizes endoparasitic Hymenoptera and other eukaryotic invaders as foreign. Here we discuss candidate recognition factors and the strategies used by parasitoids to overcome host defense responses. We suggest that host–parasitoid systems are important experimental models for studying how the innate immune system of insects recognizes foreign invaders that are phylogenetically more closely related (...) to their hosts. The strategies used by parasitoids suggest that insects may employ “hidden-self” recognition molecules for attacking foreign objects intruding the open circulatory system. BioEssays 23:344–351, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Faculty continue to address academic dishonesty in their classes. In this follow-up to an earlier study on general perceived faculty student cheating, using a sample of business school faculty, we compared three levels of faculty classification: full-time non-tenure track, full-time tenured/tenure-track, and part-time adjuncts. Results showed that NTTs perceived higher levels for three different types of student cheating, i.e., paper-based, forbidden teamwork, and hiring someone to take an exam. In addition, NTTs were more likely to report a student for cheating. (...) NTTs reported a higher course load and average class size, and average class size was positively related to all five types of cheating measured. Given the predicted increase in NTTs across all disciplines, making sure that all faculty,, have the resources needed to deter student cheating is important. All faculty have an obligation to hold students accountable for their behavior. Individual integrity is paramount; and it is what employers expect. Regardless of the chosen field or discipline, an employer’s expectations, in terms of character, is to hire individuals who possess a level of honesty that is above reproach. Addressing cheating is an obligation that all faculty need to address purposefully. Providing resources to help faculty address cheating is critical. Resources might include conflict resolution training to provide instructors with the necessary guidance so that they can better handle these difficult situations. This is important not only for the student while in school, but also for a university/college’s reputation. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Sport is a landmark publication in sport studies. It goes further than any book has before in tracing the contours of the discipline of the philosophy of sport and in surveying the core themes, approaches and theories that form its disciplinary fabric. The book explores the ways in which an understanding of philosophy can inform our understanding of important prevailing issues in sport. Edited by two of the most significant figures in the development (...) of the philosophy of sport, Mike McNamee and Bill Morgan, and with contributions from many of the world’s leading sport philosophers, this is an invaluable companion reference volume for any course in the social scientific study of sport, and an essential addition to the bookshelf of any serious scholar of the philosophy and/or ethics of sport. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, humans are the rational animal. The borderline between rationality and irrationality is fundamental to many aspects of human life including the law, mental health, and language interpretation. But what is it to be rational? One answer, deeply embedded in the Western intellectual tradition since ancient Greece, is that rationality concerns reasoning according to the rules of logic – the formal theory that specifies the inferential connections that hold with certainty between propositions. Piaget viewed logical reasoning as defining (...) the end-point of cognitive development; and contemporary psychology of reasoning has focussed on comparing human reasoning against logical standards. (shrink)

Sports have long played an important role in society. By exploring the evolving link between sporting behaviour and the prevailing ethics of the time this comprehensive and wide-ranging study illuminates our understanding of the wider social significance of sport. The primary aim of _Sports, Virtues and Vices_ is to situate ethics at the heart of sports via ‘virtue ethical’ considerations that can be traced back to the gymnasia of ancient Greece. The central theme running through the book is that sports (...) are effectively modern morality plays: universal practices of moral education for the masses and - when coached, officiated and played properly - a valuable vehicle for ethical development. Including a wealth of contemporary sporting examples, the book explores key ethical issues such as: How the pursuit of sporting excellence can lead to harm Doping, greed and shame Biomedical technology as a challenge to the virtue of elite athletes Defining a ‘virtue ethical account’ in sport Family vices and virtues in sport Written by one of the world's foremost sports philosophers, this book powerfully unites the fields of sports ethics and medical ethics. It is essential reading for all students and scholars with an interest in the ethics and philosophy of sport. (shrink)

This article utilizes Derrida's explorations of the archive in Archive Fever to debate the status of Greek myth as archive. It begins with out lining a conservative notion of the archive, particularly as it has been conceived by those whose object of study is myth. It ends with an interpretation of the myth of Cassandra that seeks to augment the archive, the archive that is now refigured in terms of metaphors of time and space. An archive has traditionally been considered (...) to be something to do with the past. In the case of myth, the archive is understood as the stories told by the ancient Greeks, which are separate from the cat egorization of those stories and explicit theories or ideas about them. This separation locates myth as something prior and organic, as the archive constituted as the object of study, and the interpretation as something secondary and derivative, a commentary on the archive, which is the thing that scholars do. But at what point does the past begin to be the past? Is Ovid's Metamorphoses part of the archive of Greek myth or a commentary upon it? What of Servius? Or Frazer? Or Freud? Or Bernal? Derrida's suggestion that the archive resides in the future perfect tense leads to a reformulation of the relationship between myth and interpretation, which relies what might be described as a typological model of knowledge. His question 'Where does the outside commence?' forces an examination of who has the right of appropria tion, an issue pertinent to the study of the history of the interpretation of myth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Wandering in Ancient Greek CultureVanda ZajkoSilvia Montiglio. Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. xii + 290 pp. Cloth, $50.Beginning at the beginning with Odysseus's poignant statement to Eumaeus at Odyssey 15.343 that "for mortals, nothing is worse than wandering," Silvia Montiglio seeks to present an overview of the conception of wandering from the archaic to the early Roman age. The introduction states clearly (...) that its approach is both synchronic and diachronic, and the way the chapters are organized reinforces this approach, as they focus on particular themes ("Wandering, Lying and Poetry," "The Meaning of 'Home' in One's Journey: From Apollonius' Argonautica to the Novel") while simultaneously pursuing an historical trajectory. The epilogue, entitled "What Greek Wanderers Did Not Do," expands the time fame and provides insights into the differences between pagan and Christian ideas about wandering, contrasting Neoplatonist and Cynic ascetics who describe wandering primarily as a figurative manifestation of the human condition with the peregrinatio of those Christian sages for whom "to wander means to renounce this world and one's earthly self in the expectation of the Kingdom of God" (264).Throughout, there is a preoccupation both with the semantic fields of the words used for wandering, such as, for example, in the second chapter, where the middle-passive voice of the words used for wandering are adduced to emphasize the fundamental passivity of the wanderer within Greek thought, and with the wider symbolic significance of wandering within mythological, geographical, and political landscapes as it is manifested in a variety of genres and historical periods. [End Page 129] This extensive concentration means that the potential readership of the book is a diverse one and includes both those with and without Greek and those interested in particular texts as well as in the ancient world as it is most broadly conceived. There are some places in the discussion where the material is openly and heavily dependent on other works, such as the discussion of liminality that occupies pages 16–23, which to a large extent reviews the insights of Ken Dowden, Death and the Maiden: Girls' Initiation Rites in Greek Mythology (1989), and 37–41, which revisit some of the points made by Ruth Padel, Whom Gods Destroy (1995); but in a work of such scope and eclecticism, this avowed indebtedness testifies to the thoroughness of the scholarship rather than the unoriginality of the thought involved in its production.One of the great strengths of the book is the forging of connections among different kinds of texts. In the chapter entitled "Wandering in Space and Time," Plato's theory of the wandering cause in the Timaeus is read alongside other narratives of beginnings so that the progress of the cosmos from wandering to stability is associated with that of the individual body: Herodotus contrasts the "much-wandering" of the ancestors of the Dorians with the autochthony of the Athenians who are by far the most developed of the Greeks; his successor Thucydides argues that migrations characterized the patterns of habitation of the earliest times; Democritus describes the mother's navel as an anchor that restrains the wandering womb, and he also considers the earth to have wandered before it thickened and became fixed in one position; pursued by Hera, the pregnant Leto searches far and wide for a place to deliver Apollo until she finds refuge on Delos, the island that, according to Callimachus (Hymn to Delos 191–92), also wandered until the birth of the god enabled it to put down roots. Montiglio describes the thematic and conceptual links among these different discourses in a typically fertile passage:Associating wandering within the amorphous beginnings of the cosmos is not idiosyncratic to the philosopher who disparagingly relegates wandering to the world of matter. The materialistic Democritus shares a similar notion, and so do myth and historiography. Wandering, the liminal condition, is systematically removed by growth and progress. Whether it be in biology, history, or geology, progress equals sedentariness, agglomeration, and fixity; whereas wandering defines the physical or social organism when still in the making and/or disjointed. Wandering marks cultural, biological, and geological protohistory.(12)The book... (shrink)

This article argues that the descriptive turn evident in contemporary capitalism challenges orthodox sociological emphases on the central importance of causality and the denigration of descriptive methods. The article reviews the different evocations of descriptive sociology pronounced by three very different contemporary sociologists: Andrew Abbott, John Goldthorpe, and Bruno Latour, and lays out their different approaches to the role of the `sociological descriptive'. It is argued that their apparent differences need to be placed in a broader re-orientation of sociology away (...) from its historical interface with the humanities and towards the natural sciences. How this reorientation involves a new role for visual methods which have traditionally been decried in orthodox sociology is examined, and the article concludes with suggestions for how sociology might best orient itself to the descriptive turn. (shrink)

This book explores a new approach to understanding the human mind - rational analysis - that regards thinking as a facility adapted to the structure of the world. This approach is most closely associated with the work of John R Anderson, who published the original book on rational analysis in 1990. Since then, a great deal of work has been carried out in a number of laboratories around the world, and the aim of this book is to bring this work (...) together for the benefit of the general psychological audience. The book contains chapters by some of the world's leading researchers in memory, categorisation, reasoning, and search, who show how the power of rational analysis can be applied to the central question of how humans think. It will be of interest to students and researchers in cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and animal behaviour. (shrink)

This essay explores how evidence-based policy can be developed for sport-related concussion (SRC), focusing particularly on the role and influence of the Consensus Statements of the Concussion in Sport Group (CiSG). Three credible policy purposes are suggested: (i) to mitigate acute health impacts of concussion events in sport; (ii) to reduce or eliminate the identified causes of SRC (direct blows to the head, neck, or body); and (iii) to improve long-term brain health outcomes for athletes. Eight of ten systematic reviews (...) commissioned for the most recent Consensus Statement, and ten of its thirteen headings, address the first purpose. The primary influence of the CiSG Consensus Statements has been to improve SRC acute response practice and protocols in professional/elite sport, which has always been their primary policy purpose, although evidence of improvement is more limited in child/adolescent and recreational sport. But a primary focus on mitigating acute health impacts has crowded out other credible policy purposes of concern to stakeholder groups with whom evidence-based policy for SRC must be co-produced. No recommendations are made to improve long-term brain outcomes for athletes because concerns about imperfections in evidence are cited to question the link between such outcomes and SRC. Modifications to reduce or eliminate purposive blows to the head, neck, or body that are permitted as a structural part of the way some sports are played are given very limited attention, even when discussing prevention, where they are just one approach considered alongside protective equipment, neuromuscular strengthening, and concussion management strategies. The essay concludes that the CiSG should shift the primary policy purpose of its Consensus Statements to address the identified causes of SRC: purposive blows to the head, neck, or body. Reducing or removing causes of SRC both better safeguards children/adolescents and renders debates about the link between SRC and long-term brain health outcomes superfluous. (shrink)

Inspiriert von den Vordenkern des amerikanischen Pragmatismus - William James, John Dewey und Richard Rorty - entwickelt Mike Sandbothe ein normativ nachhaltiges Konzept von Medien und Philosophie. Anhand exemplarischer Fallstudien zeigt er auf, wie sich dies in den Kultur- und Medienwissenschaften, den Bildungs- und Sozialwissenschaften sowie in der Psychologie nutzen lässt. Seine pragmatische Medienphilosophie kann dazu beitragen, die Betriebssysteme unserer Bildungsanstalten mit Hilfe von achtsamkeits- und körperbasierten sowie spirituellen Praktiken gesundheitsförderlich zu transformieren.

This essay argues for the fruitfulness of Beck’s idea of cosmopolitanism for understanding the changing political, sociological and psychological attributes of climate change. This argument is illustrated through brief examinations of how climate change is contributing to the dissolution of three modern dualisms: nature-culture (ontology), present-future (epistemology) and global-local (geography). Not only does the cosmopolitan perspective help to understand the ways in which science and society are mutually constructing the phenomenon of climate change, it also offers us a way of (...) asking ‘what can climate change do for us?’ rather than ‘what can we do for climate change?’ Sociologists are needed for answering this question. (shrink)

The Concussion in Sport Group guidelines have successfully brought the attention of brain injuries to the global medical and sport research communities, and has significantly impacted brain injury-related practices and rules of international sport. Despite being the global repository of state-of-the-art science, diagnostic tools and guides to clinical practice, the ensuing consensus statements remain the object of ethical and sociocultural criticism. The purpose of this paper is to bring to bear a broad range of multidisciplinary challenges to the processes and (...) products of sport-related concussion movement. We identify lacunae in scientific research and clinical guidance in relation to age, disability, gender and race. We also identify, through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary analysis, a range of ethical problems resulting from conflicts of interest, processes of attributing expertise in sport-related concussion, unjustifiably narrow methodological control and insufficient athlete engagement in research and policy development. We argue that the sport and exercise medicine community need to augment the existing research and practice foci to understand these problems more holistically and, in turn, provide guidance and recommendations that help sport clinicians better care for brain-injured athletes. (shrink)

Over the last decade, fully distributed models have become dominant in connectionist psychological modelling, whereas the virtues of localist models have been underestimated. This target article illustrates some of the benefits of localist modelling. Localist models are characterized by the presence of localist representations rather than the absence of distributed representations. A generalized localist model is proposed that exhibits many of the properties of fully distributed models. It can be applied to a number of problems that are difficult for fully (...) distributed models, and its applicability can be extended through comparisons with a number of classic mathematical models of behaviour. There are reasons why localist models have been underused, though these often misconstrue the localist position. In particular, many conclusions about connectionist representation, based on neuroscientific observation, can be called into question. There are still some problems inherent in the application of fully distributed systems and some inadequacies in proposed solutions to these problems. In the domain of psychological modelling, localist modelling is to be preferred. Key Words: choice; competition; connectionist modelling; consolidation; distributed; localist; neural networks; reaction-time. (shrink)

A recent development in the cognitive science of reasoning has been the emergence of a probabilistic approach to the behaviour observed on ostensibly logical tasks. According to this approach the errors and biases documented on these tasks occur because people import their everyday uncertain reasoning strategies into the laboratory. Consequently participants' apparently irrational behaviour is the result of comparing it with an inappropriate logical standard. In this article, we contrast the probabilistic approach with other approaches to explaining rationality, and then (...) show how it has been applied to three main areas of logical reasoning: conditional inference, Wason's selection task and syllogistic reasoning. (shrink)

In attending to surfaces, as they wrap, layer and grow within sentient bodies, material formations and cosmological sates, this volume presents a series of ten anthropological studies stretching across five continents and in observation of earthly practices of making, knowing, living and dying. Through theoretically reflecting on time spent with Aymara and Mapuche Andean cultures, the Malagasy people of Madagascar, craftspeople and designers across Europe and Oceania, amongst the architectures of Australia and South Korea, and within the folds of books, (...) screens, landscape and the sea, the anthropologists in this volume communicate diverse ways of considering, working with and knowing surfaces. Together, these writings advance a knowledge of the world which resists any definitive settlement of existential categories and rather seeks to know the world in its emergence and transformation, as entities grow, cohere, shift, dissolve, decay and rebirth through the contact and exchange of surfaces, persisting with varying time, power and effect. The book principally invites readers from anthropology, the creative arts and environmental studies, but also across the wider humanities and social sciences as well as those in neighbouring scientific fields of archeology, biology, geography, geoscience, material science, neurology and psychology interested in the intersections of mind, body, materials and world. (shrink)

This book revisits John Kenneth Galbraith's classic text The Affluent Society in the context of the background to, and causes of, the global economic crisis that erupted in 2008. Written in non-technical language, this book is accessible to students of economics and the social sciences as well as to those who would have read The Affluent Society and the general reader interested in contemporary affairs and public policy.

The ‘cosmological constant problem’ has historically been understood as describing a conflict between cosmological observations in the framework of general relativity and theoretical predictions from quantum field theory, which a future theory of quantum gravity ought to resolve. I argue that this view of the CCP is best understood in terms of a bet about future physics made on the basis of particular interpretational choices in GR and QFT, respectively. Crucially, each of these choices must be taken as itself grounded (...) in the sucesses of the respective theory for this bet to be justified. 1 Introduction 2 The Cosmological Constant Problem 2.1 The physics that anticipates ‘vacuum energy’ 2.2 Getting to zero-point energies 2.3 Getting to the cosmological constant 3 The Epistemology of Physical Interpretation 4 The View from High-Energy Physics 5 Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

What is happiness? How is it related to morality and virtue? Does living with illusion promote or diminish happiness? Is it better to pursue happiness with a partner than alone? Philosopher Mike W. Martin addresses these and other questions as he connects the meaning of happiness with the philosophical notion of "the good life." Defining happiness as loving one's life and valuing it in ways manifested by ample enjoyment and a deep sense of meaning, Martin explores the ways in (...) which happiness interacts with all other dimensions of good lives--in particular with moral decency and goodness, authenticity, mental health, self-fulfillment, and meaningfulness. He interweaves a variety of examples from memoirs, novels, and films along the way, connecting his discussion of the philosophical issues to related topics that interest all of us: virtue, love, philanthropy, suffering, simplicity, balancing work and leisure, and much more. Drawing on wide-ranging and robust evidence, Martin also makes the case that we need a "politics of happiness" whereby government would apply the results of recent "happiness studies" in psychology to public policy. (shrink)

By any reasonable reckoning, Gottlob Frege's ‘On Sense and Reference’ is one of the more important philosophical papers of all time. Although Frege briefly discusses the sense-reference distinction in an earlier work, it is through ‘Sense and Reference’ that most philosophers have become familiar with it. And the distinction so thoroughly permeates contemporary philosophy of language and mind that it is almost impossible to imagine these subjects without it.The distinction between the sense and the referent of a name is introduced (...) in the second paragraph of ‘Sense and Reference.’. (shrink)

I provide some philosophical groundwork for the recently proposed ‘trans-Planckian censorship’ conjecture in theoretical physics. In particular, I argue that structure formation in early universe cosmology is, at least as we typically understand it, autonomous with regards to quantum gravity, the high energy physics that governs the Planck regime in our universe. Trans-Planckian censorship is then seen as a means of rendering this autonomy an empirical constraint within ongoing quantum gravity research.