Crowdsourcing platforms are powerful tools for academic researchers. Proponents claim that crowdsourcing helps researchers quickly and affordably recruit enough human subjects with diverse backgrounds to generate significant statistical power, while critics raise concerns about unreliable data quality, labor exploitation, and unequal power dynamics between researchers and workers. We examine these concerns along three dimensions: methods, fairness, and politics. We find that researchers offer vastly different compensation rates for crowdsourced tasks, and address potential concerns about data validity by using platform-specific tools (...) and user verification methods. Additionally, workers depend upon crowdsourcing platforms for a significant portion of their income, are motivated more by fear of losing access to work than by specific compensation rates, and are frustrated by a lack of transparency and occasional unfair treatment from job requesters. Finally, we discuss critical computing scholars’ proposals to address crowdsourcing’s problems, challenges with implementing these resolutions, and potential avenues for future research. (shrink)

The phenomenological effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) on the self of the patient remains poorly understood and under described in the literature, despite growing evidence that a significant number of patients experience postoperative neuropsychiatric changes. To address this lack of phenomenological evidence, we conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with 17 patients with Parkinson's disease who had undergone DBS. Exploring the subjective character specific to patients' experience of being implanted gives empirical and conceptual understanding of the potential phenomenon of DBS-induced self-estrangement. (...) Our study concluded that (1) the more patients preoperatively felt alienated by their illness, the more they experienced postoperative self-estrangement, and (2) the notion of self-estrangement seems to exist in association with certain common qualitative characters, namely, loss of control, which reflects a deteriorative estrangement, and distorted perception of capacities, which reveals a restorative estrangement. These findings indicate that subjective self-reports help us to understand some aspects of the potential phenomenon of DBS-induced self-estrangement. (shrink)

It is almost commonplace to suggest that what is morally right for one person to do must also be right for anyone else similarly situated. The author suggests that this "universalization requirement" applies to only a limited sphere of the moral life, chiefly to duties of perfect obligation. Extending the requirement beyond this sphere fails to leave room for human freedom in vocation or for a clear recognition of human finitude.

This article explains problems and opportunities created by standardized ethics initiatives (e.g., the UN Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative, and SA 8000) from the perspective of stakeholder theory. First, we outline differences and commonalities among currently existing initiatives and thus generate a common ground for our discussion. Second, based on these remarks, we critically evaluate standardized ethics initiatives by drawing on descriptive, instrumental, and normative stakeholder theory. In doing so, we explain why these standards are helpful tools when it (...) comes to ‘managing’ stakeholder relations but also face considerable limitations that can eventually hamper their successful expansion. We suspect that this discussion is necessary to conduct meaningful empirical research in the future and also to provide managers with a more clear-cut picture about a successful application of such initiatives. Third, we outline possible ways to cope with the identified problems and thus demonstrate how standard-setting institutions can improve the initiatives they offer. (shrink)

Do moral questions have objective answers? In this great debate, Gilbert Harman explains and argues for relativism, emotivism, and moral scepticism. In his view, moral disagreements are like disagreements about what to pay for a house; there are no correct answers ahead of time, except in relation to one or another moral framework. Independently, Judith Jarvis Thomson examines what she takes to be the case against moral objectivity, and rejects it; she argues that it is possible to find out (...) the correct answers to some moral questions. In her view, some moral disagreements are like disagreements about whether the house has a ghost. Harman and Thomson then reply to each other. This important, lively accessible exchange will be invaluable to all students of moral theory and meta-ethics. (shrink)

Abstract In a 1967 article that is considered a classic of criminal justice scholarship, Abraham Blumberg portrayed defense attorneys for accused offenders as more responsive to the demands of the court entourage for smooth and expeditious functioning than to the needs of their clients for a stalwart representation. The article suggests that Blumberg's view, while provocative and with a considerable element of accuracy, may have reflected a somewhat jaundiced and overstated perspective when he was on the verge of leaving law (...) practice for academia. The article also speculates about the current accuracy of Blumberg's observations. (shrink)

Analogies are often theoretically useful. Important principles of electricity are suggested by an analogy between water current flowing through a pipe and electrical current “flowing” through a wire. A basic theory of sound is suggested by an analogy between waves caused by a stone being dropped into a still lake and “sound waves” caused by a disturbance in air.

The author develops and elaborates on her account of collective belief, something standardly referred to, in her view, when we speak of what we believe. This paper focuses on a special response hearers may experience in the context of expressions of belief, a response that may issue in offended rebukes to the speaker. It is argued that this response would be appropriate if both speakers and hearers were parties to what the authors calls a joint commitment to believe a certain (...) proposition as a body. This joint commitment puts speakers under an obligation to refrain from speaking in certain ways, and gives hearers a correlative right to such refraining, and hence a basis for offended rebukes. (shrink)

The question whether and in what way languages and language use involve convention is addressed, With special reference to David Lewis's account of convention in general. Data are presented which show that Lewis has not captured the sense of 'convention' involved when we speak of adopting a linguistic convention. He has, In effect, attempted an account of social conventions. An alternative account of social convention and an account of linguistic convention are sketched.

Optogenetics is being optimistically presented in contemporary media for its unprecedented capacity to control cell behavior through the application of light to genetically modified target cells. As such, optogenetics holds obvious potential for application in a new generation of invasive medical devices by which to potentially provide treatment for neurological and psychiatric conditions such as Parkinson's disease, addiction, schizophrenia, autism and depression. Design of a first-in-human optogenetics experimental trial has already begun for the treatment of blindness. Optogenetics trials involve a (...) combination of highly invasive genetic and electronic interventions that results in irreversible and permanent modifications of an individual's nervous system. Given its novelty, its uncertain benefit to patients, and its unique risk profile of irreversible physiological alteration, optogenetics requires a reassessment of the ethical challenges for protecting human participants in clinical trials, particularly at formative stages of clinical evaluation. This study explores the evolving ethical issues surrounding optogenetics’ potential harm to participants within trial design, especially focusing on whether Phase 1 trials should incorporate efficacy as well as safety endpoints in ways that are fair and respectful to research trial participants. (shrink)

Can someone be reasonable or justified in accepting a specific moral judgment not based on the prior acceptance of a general exceptioness moral principle, where acceptance of a general principle might be tacit or implicit and might not be expressible in language? This issue is an instance of a wider issue about direct or transductive inference. Developments in statistical learning theory show that such an inference can be more effective than alternative methods using inductive generalization and so can be reasonable. (...) This result carries over to moral transduction, although it is a difficult empirical issue whether people actually engage in any sort of transduction, including moral transduction. (shrink)

In The Vitality of Contradiction, Bruce Gilbert provides an exposition of Hegel's political philosophy to establish not only that societies fail because of their contradictions, but also how the unsurpassable oppositions of social life cultivate freedom. He moves beyond Hegel's works to consider the limits of liberal-capitalism and the contemporary social movements around the world that stretch us beyond the global economic system. Drawing on key Hegel texts such as Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right, Gilbert (...) shows how societies outgrow themselves as they come to recognize key aspects of freedom and justice. He argues that the dialectic requires that we recognize how liberal-capitalism has both cultivated freedom and yet fails to lead us to more sophisticated forms of freedom. Gilbert also highlights organizations including Brazil's Movement of Landless Workers and the Mondragon cooperative in Spain and the sophisticated ways in which they are teaching the world new and better ways to be free. Engaging and perceptive, The Vitality of Contradiction illuminates the basic principles behind Hegel's political thought and indicates the ways in which his work encourages people to strive for a form of socialist democracy. (shrink)

Developing students’ skills to pose and respond to questions and actively engage in inquiry behaviours enables students to problem solve and critically engage with learning and society. The aim of this study was to analyse the impact of providing teachers with an intervention in inquiry pedagogy alongside inquiry science curriculum in comparison to an intervention in non-inquiry pedagogy alongside inquiry science curriculum on student questioning and other inquiry behaviours. Teacher participants in the comparison condition received training in four inquiry-based science (...) units and in collaborative strategic reading. The experimental group, the community of inquiry (COI) condition, received training in facilitating a COI in addition to training in the same four inquiry-based science units. This study involved 227 students and 18 teachers in 9 primary schools across Brisbane, Australia. The teachers were randomly allocated by school to one of the two conditions. The study followed the students across years 6 and 7 and students’ discourse during small group activities was recorded, transcribed and coded for verbal inquiry behaviours. In the second year of the study, students in the COI condition demonstrated a significantly higher frequency of procedural and substantive higher-order thinking questions and other inquiry behaviours than those in the comparison condition. Implementing a COI within an inquiry science curriculum develops students’ questioning and science inquiry behaviours and allows teachers to foster inquiry skills predicated by the Australian Science Curriculum. Provision of inquiry science curriculum resources alone is not sufficient to promote the questioning and other verbal inquiry behaviours predicated by the Australian Science Curriculum. (shrink)

In her article, Pascale Hess raises the issue of whether her proposed model may be extrapolated and applied to clinical research fields other than stem cell-based interventions in the brain (SCBI-B) (Hess 2012). Broadly summarized, Hess’s model suggests prioritizing efficacy over safety in phase 1 trials involving irreversible interventions in the brain, when clinical criteria meet the appropriate population suffering from “degenerative brain diseases” (Hess 2012). Although there is a need to reconsider the traditional phase 1 model, especially with respect (...) to first-in-human clinical trials involving novel technologies, the question arises as to whether it is appropriate to advocate for a new model that prioritizes efficacy over safety across all phase 1 clinical research trials involving irreversible interventions in the brain. -/- . (shrink)

In their article, Herrera-Ferra et al. (2023) highlight how the progress and implementation of neurotechnology, especially in conjunction with artificial intelligence, have revealed potential impli...

Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits is the most important philosophical discussion of knowledge in many years. It sets the agenda for epistemology for the next decade and beyond.

In their paper “Deflating the neuroenhancement bubble”, more precisely in their section entitled “How New is Neuroenhancement?”, Lucke and colleagues argue that neuroenhancement is nothing new to our epoch by demonstrating that the use of psychoactive stimulants in the 19th and 20th centuries was already common. The purpose of our comment is to show that the current bubble surrounding neuroenhancement in particular, and enhancement in general, is a recasting of an even older speculative engagement that can be traced back from (...) the 16th to the 18th centuries. As a consequence, there is a high risk that bioethicists might not have captured or found new conceptual challenges related to current enhancement debate. As well, by ignoring issues related to ancient debate, we argue that modern bioethicists risk spending effort on speculative ethics. (shrink)

Originally published in 1990. This study argues that scepticism is an intelligible view and that the issue scepticism raises is whether or not certain sceptical hypotheses are as plausible as the ordinary views we accept. It discusses psychological concepts, definitions of knowledge, belief and hypothetic inference. Starting from ‘Is skepticism a problem for epistemology’, the book takes us through the argument for the possibility of scepticism, including looking at sense data and considering memory and perception.

The use of symbols in calculation and other thinking is to be distinguished from the use of symbols in communication. Grice's analysis of speaker meaning fails for certain uses of symbols in calculation. Words and concepts have uses, not sentences or whole thoughts. Concepts have uses or functional roles in perception; inference and practical reasoning are to be understood in terms of ways an organism functions in relation to a presumed normal environment.

This article inquires into that which articulates the two texts brought together by Heidegger in Identity and Difference. It sets out from the indications provided in the Preface of the work concerning the “harmony” that reigns between what is at stake at the heart of the two texts, namely what Heidegger respectively calls the Ereignis (event of appropriation) and the Austrag (reconciling difference). The understanding of this harmony makes it possible to approach that which unveils itself as the articulation of (...) Being, but in so doing also raises the difficult problem of the very possibility of thinking Being setting out from its essential withdrawal. (shrink)