Well-being is an important policy concept including in discussions around the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics. Disabled people experience challenges in their well-being. Therefore, the aim of our scoping review study of academic abstracts employing Scopus, IEEE Xplore, Compendex and the 70 databases from EBSCO-HOST as sources was to better understand how academic literature focusing on AI/ML/robotics engages with well-being in relation to disabled people. Our objective was to answer the following research question: how and to what (...) extent does the AI/ML/robot literature we covered include well-being in relation to disabled people? We found 2071 academic abstracts covering AI/ML and well-being, and 1055 covering robotics and well-being. Within these abstracts, only 39 covered AI/ML and 48 robotics and well-being in relation to disabled people. The tone of the coverage was techno-positive and techno-optimistic arguing that AI/ML/robotics could improve the well-being of disabled people in general or improve well-being by helping disabled people overcome their ‘disability’ or make tasks easier. No negative effects that AI/ML/robotics could have or has had on the well-being of disabled people were mentioned. Disabled people were portrayed only within patient, client, or user roles but not in their roles as stakeholders in the governance of AI/ML/robotics discussions. This biased and limited coverage of the impact of AI/ML/robotics on the well-being of disabled people disempowers disabled people. (shrink)

AI/ML increasingly impacts the ability of humans to have a good life. Various sets of indicators exist to measure well-being/the ability to have a good life. Students play an important role in AI/ML discussions. The purpose of our study using an online survey was to learn about the perspectives of undergraduate STEM students on the impact of AI/ML on well-being/the ability to have a good life. Our study revealed that many of the abilities participants perceive to be needed for having (...) a good life were part of the well-being/ability to have a good life indicator lists we gave to participants. Participants perceived AI/ML to have and continue to have the most positive impact on the ability to have a good life for disabled people, elderly people, and individuals with a high income and the least positive impact for people of low income and countries from the global south. Regarding indicators of well-being and the ability to have a good life given to participants, we found a significant techno-positive sentiment. 30% of respondents selected the purely positive box for 28 of the indicators and none did so for the purely negative box. For 52 indicators, the purely negative was below 10% (not counting the 0%) and for 10 indicators, none selected purely negative. Our findings suggest that our questions might be valuable tools to develop an inventory of STEM and other students’ perspectives on the implications of AI/ML on the ability to have a good life. (shrink)

This paper presents a theoretical sketch for how the existence of civic associations in authoritarian regimes might be analysed. By relating the concepts of ‘civil society’ and ‘recognition’, I explore how associations are a potential locus of mutual recognition in any society, democratic or undemocratic. While there are many theorizations of both civil society and recognition in relation to democratic political contexts, normative theories seeking to explain the existence of associations in authoritarian societies are less robustly developed. Recognition, more specifically (...) mutual recognition, is theorized not only as one key ‘good’ sought through the act of forming the associations of civil society, but also as a human need which will prompt the act of association within dangerous contexts. This analysis informs thinking behind acts of civil disobedience springing from civil society, as well as rationalizations for dissident activities undertaken by associations within authoritarian regimes. (shrink)

There is robust evidence that women with eating disorders (EDs) display an attention bias (AB) for disorder-salient stimuli. Emerging data suggest that the presence of these biases may be due, in part, to neurological deficits, such as poor set shifting and weak central coherence. While some have argued that these biases function to predispose and/or act to maintain disordered eating behaviours, evidence supporting this view has rarely been examined. This report summarises and integrates the existing literature on AB in EDs (...) and other related psychiatric disorders to better understand its potential role in the development and maintenance of an ED. The domains reviewed include experimental data using the dot-probe and modified Stroop task and neurobiological findings on AB in women with EDs as well as the role of AB in current theoretical models. We conclude by proposing an integrated model on the role of AB in EDs and discuss treatment approaches aimed at modifying these biases. (shrink)

Deconstruction and duration are arguably the two most important theories of time to emerge from French philosophy in the twentieth century. Yet, despite the resurgence of interest in Bergson, scholars have ignored Derrida’s own discussions of Bergson, both positive and negative, throughout his career. This lack of attention obscures an important influence on Derrida’s early thought, and hampers our ability to understand the nature of Derrida’s relationship to fields such as new materialism, posthumanism, and affect studies, that frequently turn to (...) Bergson for inspiration. This paper addresses this gap by tracking Derrida’s readings of Bergson and comparing two related pairs of their concepts: duration and différance, and intuition and spacing. The paper concludes by arguing that Derrida’s critical engagement with Bergson leads to an anti-presentist model of life, which gains new relevance in the Anthropocene. (shrink)

The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by US consumers has grown in recent years. CAM therapies often utilize medicinal herbs as part of the treatment process; however, research on US practitioner preferences for medicinal herbs is limited, despite growing concern surrounding the sustainability of wild-harvested medicinal herbs. In order better to understand consumer preferences for this emerging market, a mail survey of US practitioners (licensed acupuncturists) was conducted to examine the importance of five herb attributes in practitioners’ herb (...) selection decisions: (1) country of origin, (2) freshness, (3) production method (organic versus conventional), (4) price, and (5) traceability. The significance of these five traits is investigated using discrete choice analysis, and the implications for US medicinal herb growers are discussed. (shrink)

This essay considers the possibility that prominent theories of the posthuman may draw problematic forms of inspiration from ideas about the "primitive" human. This would complicate how the post in posthuman is defined by current scholarship. It would also suggest that there are potentially concerning racial politics, hitherto unnoticed, embedded within certain modes of posthuman theorizing. In assessing these concerns, the essay develops an analysis of the unexpected racializing and fetishistic dimensions commonly at work in the idea of networks, and (...) looks at the ways networks and new animistic ontologies may in certain ways perpetuate the same Eurocentric humanist biases that they aim to critique. (shrink)

Looking back in the late fifties on the rise of New York's postwar avant-garde, Clement Greenberg remarked that “some day it will have to be told how ‘anti-Stalinism,’ which started out more or less as ‘Trotskyism,’ turned into art for art's sake, and thereby cleared the way, heroically, for what was to come.” It was a good point, and one that Greenberg himself had largely neglected in his own accounts of American Modernism. The story of how New York Intellectuals and (...) Abstract Expressionists came to the defense of artistic vanguardism from a common past of Marxist commitments, and of how that defense ended in the fifties with a celebration of American cultural freedom, certainly had to be told. (shrink)

Prologue: Stormclouds : London, April 1900 -- Quantum of action: The most strenuous work of my life : Berlin, December 1900 ; Annus Mirabilis : Bern, March 1905 ; A little bit of reality : Manchester, April 1913 ; la Comédie Française : Paris, September 1923 ; A strangely beautiful interior : Helgoland, June 1925 ; The self-rotating electron : Leiden, November 1925 ; A late erotic outburst : Swiss Alps, Christmas 1925 -- Quantum interpretation: Ghost field : Oxford, August (...) 1926 ; All this damned quantum jumping : Copenhagen, October 1926 ; The uncertainty principle : Copenhagen, February 1927 ; The 'Kopenhagener geist' : Copenhagen, June 1927 ; There is no quantum world : Lake Como, September 1927 -- Quantum debate: The debate commences : Brussels, October 1927 ; An absolute wonder : Cambridge, Christmas 1927 ; The photon box : Brussels, October 1930 ; A bolt from the blue : Princeton, May 1935 ; The paradox of Schrödinger's cat : Oxford, August 1935 -- Interlude: The first war of physics : Christmas 1938-August 1945 -- Quantum fields: Shelter Island : Long Island, June 1947 ; Pictorial semi-vision thing : New York, January 1949 ; A beautiful idea : Princeton, February 1954 ; Some strangeness in the proportion : Rochester, August 1960 ; Three quarks for Muster Mark! : New York, March 1963 ; The 'God particle' : Cambridge, Massachusetts, Autumn 1967 -- Quantum particles: Deep inelastic scattering : Stanford, August 1968 ; Of charm and weak neutral currents : Harvard, February 1970 ; The magic of colour : Princeton/Harvard, April 1973 ; The November revolution : Long Island/Stanford, November 1974 ; Intermediate vector bosons : Geneva, January/June 1983 ; The standard model : Geneva, September 2003 -- Quantum reality: Hidden variable : Princeton, Spring 1951 ; Bertlmann's socks : Boston, September 1964 ; The Aspect experiments : Paris, September 1982 ; The quantum eraser : Baltimore, January 1999 ; Lab cats : Stony Brook/Delft, July 2000 ; The persistent illusion : Vienna, December 2006 -- Quantum cosmology: The wavefunction of the universe : Princeton, July 1966 ; Hawking radiation : Oxford, February 1974 ; The first superstring revolution : Aspen, August 1984 ; Quanta of space and time : Santa Barbara, February 1986 ; Crisis? What crisis? : Durham, Summer 1994 -- A quantum of solace? : Geneva, March 2010. (shrink)

Considerable effort has been devoted over the last fifteen years by faculty and administrators in numerous colleges and universities, and by organizations such as the Aspen Institute and Teagle Foundation, to enhancing business education through broad infusion of the perspectives and content of the liberal arts. The emphasis has been on integration of the social sciences and especially the humanities. The author—a natural scientist—recounts a seminal experience that motivated him to work more intensively on this initiative with his colleagues (...) across academic divisions at his home institution and beyond. He also argues for more engagement by natural science faculty in this process and examines the transdisciplinary re-visioning required to transform business teaching, learning, and practice into a new paradigm consistent with ecological reality. (shrink)

The Problem of Biological Individuality is the problem of how to count organisms. Whilst counting organisms may seem easy, the biological world is full of difficult cases such as colonial siphonophores and aspen tree groves. One of the main solutions to the Problem of Biological Individuality is the Physiological Approach. Drawing on an argument made by Eric Olson in the personal identity debate, I argue that the Physiological Approach faces a metaphysical problem - the ‘Foetus Problem’. This paper illustrates (...) how metaphysics can contribute to debates about organisms in the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

Alan Bullock demonstrates the continuity of mankind's thought and concerns from the historical past, through the troubled and often confusing present into the almost invisible future. This continuum offers us a basis for achieving understanding and perspective, for relating past, present and future. Without seeing this relationship, the moment of our lifetime must seem isolated and meaningless. Co-pubished with the Aspen Institute.

In this paper for the Aspen Institute, the author illustrates again his own wisdom and lucidity as well as the enduring nature of many of Tocqueville's questions and judgments.

At the mid-point of the twentieth century, many philosophers in the English-speaking world regarded political and moral philosophy as all but moribund. Thinkers influenced by logical positivism believe that ethical statements are merely disguised expressions of individual emotion lacking propositional force, or that the conditions for the validation of ethical statements could not be specified, or that their content, however humanly meaningful, is inexpressible. Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy presents thirty-four articles written by research scholars numerous fields-philosophy, political theory, medicine, (...) law, biology, economics, ecology and sociology-treating a broad range of topics in practical philosophy. The Institute for Philosophy and Public Affairs has been home for these ideas, pioneering a distinctive method of conducting inquiry into the moral dimensions of public life, and contributing to public discussion and deliberation. Members of the Institute reject the idea that public philosophy means reaching into the philosopher's tool-kit and "applying" prefabricated theories to particular problems. They set in motion a dialogue between the distinctive moral features of practical problems and the more general moral theories or considerations that seem most likely to elucidate these problems. The volume is divided into five areas: "Politics, Civic Life, and Moral Education"; "Diversity, Identity, and Equal Opportunity"; "Human Rights, Development Ethics, and International Justice"; "Biotechnology, Genetic Research, and Health Policy"; and "Natural Environment, Human Communities." Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy presents empirical data and philosophical arguments with the intention of informing public policy and public deliberation. Scholars as well as graduate and undergraduate students are certain to find it useful to their research work. Verna V. Gehring is editor at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland. She serves as editor of Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly, reviewer of ethics manuscripts for Oxford University Press, and moderator for the Aspen Institute. William A. Galston is director at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland. He is a political theorist who both studies and participates in American politics and domestic policy. Galston is the author of nearly one hundred articles on moral and political theory, American politics, and public policy, and the author of five books, including Liberal Purposes. (shrink)

The power, wealth and impact of multinational corporations now exceed that of many national govern ments, and this fact has created an expectation that corporations have a responsibility to manage their impacts on the wider social context. Although these observations are increasingly cited as 'truisms' in the business press and in policy debates, few business schools have given attention to the management of social impacts into their core curriculum. In this article the author raises the question that, if business leaders, (...) pol icy makers, NGOs and even the media agree there is a need, why is there so little expressed demand from business who recruit at business schools? The work done at the Aspen Institute has been presented in this regard. The Aspen Institute's Initiative for Social Innovation through Business has taken a system atic look at both the 'demand' for and the 'supply' of business education that addresses the interdependence between business needs and wider societal concerns. By means of global dialogues among CEOs and lead ers of the public, NGOs and academic sectors, as well as through surveys, focus groups and traditional research, Aspen ISIB has gathered data that illuminates this question of supply and demand, and also sug gests powerful levers for influencing what business scholars research and what business educators teach about the management of social impacts. (shrink)

The world famous Eltroxin saga of 2009–2011, which ignited heated public debates in Europe, Canada, and Australia, reveals the problematic nature of standalone autonomy protection cases. Eltroxin is a life-sustaining thyroid hormone replacement medicine used by millions worldwide; it was reformulated in 2008, and around 10% of patients were badly affected. Poor communication and lack of professional information triggered public hysteria as a global wave of complaints about harmful side effects, including hair loss, weight gain, extreme fatigue, headaches, diarrhoea, and (...) heightened heart rates, flooded the media. Israeli Eltroxin users (around 250 thousand people) were similarly unaware. Following many media reports and ministerial regulations, a high-profile consumer class action was launched against Perrigo, the distributor. Ten years of court proceedings culminated in a compensation settlement of approximately US$ 14 million. This relatively low sum covered the injuries of those patients who were physically affected; compensation for standalone autonomy injuries to all patients (who were denied information about changes to their life-sustaining medicine) was refused. The monetary settlement and court decision were hugely disappointing to the class plaintiffs, and a negative signal was sent to the proponents of consumers' and patients' personal autonomy. However, the class action still marked a positive change in pharmaceutical protocols for relations between health authorities, commercial pharmacy entities, and patients/consumers as seen by the proactive communication around a subsequent Eltroxin reformulation in 2020 in Israel, Europe, and South Africa (Aspen Pharmacare, 2020).1 This paper highlights the vast potential value of consumer class action proceedings, and pharmaceutical consumer (patient) class actions in particular, for public welfare and private autonomy. The paper will explain leading Israeli case law related to consumer autonomy protection in tort law and will argue that this law still holds the unique protection of autonomy as a basic human right and accordingly recognises harm to autonomy as a viable form of damage. Additionally, it illustrates why and how consumer protection class actions are an important tool for protection of human rights in general and of patients' rights in particular. (shrink)

The Oldest Living Things in the World is an epic journey through time and space. Over the past decade, artist Rachel Sussman has researched, worked with biologists, and traveled the world to photograph continuously living organisms that are 2,000 years old and older. Spanning from Antarctica to Greenland, the Mojave Desert to the Australian Outback, the result is a stunning and unique visual collection of ancient organisms unlike anything that has been created in the arts or sciences before, insightfully and (...) accessibly narrated by Sussman along the way. Her work is both timeless and timely, and spans disciplines, continents, and millennia. It is underscored by an innate environmentalism and driven by Sussman’s relentless curiosity. She begins at “year zero,” and looks back from there, photographing the past in the present. These ancient individuals live on every continent and range from Greenlandic lichens that grow only one centimeter a century, to unique desert shrubs in Africa and South America, a predatory fungus in Oregon, Caribbean brain coral, to an 80,000-year-old colony of aspen in Utah. Sussman journeyed to Antarctica to photograph 5,500-year-old moss; Australia for stromatolites, primeval organisms tied to the oxygenation of the planet and the beginnings of life on Earth; and to Tasmania to capture a 43,600-year-old self-propagating shrub that’s the last individual of its kind. Her portraits reveal the living history of our planet—and what we stand to lose in the future. These ancient survivors have weathered millennia in some of the world’s most extreme environments, yet climate change and human encroachment have put many of them in danger. Two of her subjects have already met with untimely deaths by human hands. Alongside the photographs, Sussman relays fascinating – and sometimes harrowing – tales of her global adventures tracking down her subjects and shares insights from the scientists who research them. The oldest living things in the world are a record and celebration of the past, a call to action in the present, and a barometer of our future. (shrink)

The Problem of Biological Individuality is the problem of how to count organisms. Whilst counting organisms may seem easy, the biological world is full of difficult cases such as colonial siphonophores and aspen tree groves. One of the main solutions to the Problem of Biological Individuality is the Physiological Approach. Drawing on an argument made by Eric Olson in the personal identity debate, I argue that the Physiological Approach faces a metaphysical problem - the ‘Foetus Problem’. This paper illustrates (...) how metaphysics can contribute to debates about organisms in the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

The Architecture Machine: Industrial Design and Theories of Racial Evolution -- The Bauhaus and the Aura of Authorship: Class and Race in the Age of Technological Reproducibility -- Post-War European Modernism: Or, What the Primitive Hut Really Said -- Bricolage, Megastructure, Interface: Yona Friedman and the Humanitarian Machine -- The Earth Unfolded: Aspen, Africa, and the Geopolitics of Environment -- Harlem Speaks to Aspen: Environmental Politics versus Environmental Design -- Pentecostal Technologies: The Architecture Machine (Again) -- Technological Sovereignty (...) and the Global South -- Conclusion: The Present and Future of Spiritual Ergonomics. (shrink)

Examines the role of moral reasoning in America foreign policy. Discusses first the key question of whether foreign policy is a fit domain for ethical reasoning. Examines the difficulty in judging moral arguments and argues for a three-dimensional approach which weighs motives, means and consequences, rather than judgments based on motives or consequences alone. Co-published with the Aspen Institute.

I argue that Binkley et al. use causal process tracing in conjunction with a natural trajectory experiment and two natural snapshot experiments in their re-examination of the Kaibab. This shows that Aldo Leopold may have been right about trophic cascade in the Kaibab in the 1920s, i.e., that there are good reasons to think that a loss of predators led to a deer irruption which decreased aspen recruitment. Using the different cause-finding practices in combination can strengthen causal inferences and (...) mitigate the shortcomings that each practice has. (shrink)

Excerpt in lieu of an Abstract: The work of José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) is vast, varied, and now largely forgotten. The thinker who was identified by E. R. Curtius as one of "the dozen peers of the European intellect," who was invited to help launch the Aspen Institute in 1949, and who was once nominated for a Nobel prize, has been mainly overlooked by contemporary philosophers and theorists, who have nonetheless followed lines surprisingly close to those sketched out (...) by Ortega. Ortega's fall from fortune is not difficult to explain. Since his major works read more like essays on heterogeneous subjects than works of philosophy, he has been shunned by mainstream philosophers, especially those of the analytical persuasion. When treated historically, Ortega's thought has often been regarded as offering nothing more than an alternative (Spanish) version of Dilthey's historicism or Heidegger's existentialism. John Graham's work offers new reasons to attend to Ortega as a philosopher. First, Graham meticulously distinguishes the similarities and differences between various moments in Ortega's thought ("radicalism," "perspectivism," "vital reason," and "historical reason") and a series of tendencies dominant elsewhere in the early twentieth century, including phenomenology, existentialism, and historicism. Second, and potentially more important, Graham identifies the decisive influence of William James's pragmatism on Ortega. The claim that Ortega was fundamentally a pragmatist (albeit one who went significantly beyond James) is nuanced by a series of distinctions drawn between pragmatism and positivism, empiricism, and biologism. If there is unity in Ortega's vast and diverse work, it lies in what Graham identifies in his final chapter as Ortega's "general theory of life." This is a philosophy that embraces both the historicism of "historical reason" and the existentialism of la raz diverse. There are details in this study that will surprise the specialist and the nonspecialist alike. How many today recognize the importance of the philological historicism that Ortega learned from Julio Cejador, or remember that Ortega planned a final project oriented around the philosophy of language, parts of which are indicated in the chapter headings of the posthumously published Man and People ("What People Say"; "Language: Toward a New Linguistics"; "'Public Opinion,' 'Social Observances,' 'Public Power'")? At the same time, Graham devotes many pages to some of Ortega's least convincing ideas, such as the notion of the biographical ages of man (which attributes a special, but unexplained, significance to the twenty-sixth and fifty-first years of life). Methodologically, Graham fails to justify his historical approach to Ortega's thought by advancing the claim that it is called for by Ortega's own biographical method. Indeed, one wonders whether the generally positivist orientation of this book is what Ortega had in mind when stressing the relationship between biography and thought. Graham views his task in studying Ortega as both historical and analytical. But the author of this work is a historian whose philosophical instincts often lie submerged. His principal energies in the first half of this book are devoted to establishing the relationship between James and Ortega as one of influence and dependence rather than mere coincidence. Only much later does he attempt to show how Ortega might have gone beyond James in exploring the consequences of pragmatism. Since Graham's principal concern is with the various rubrics under which philosophy in the first half of this century was practiced, rather than with the philosophical issues themselves, numerous questions are left unanswered by this work: what is the relationship between Ortega's pragmatism and social and political theory (a dimension of Ortega's thought stressed by thinkers like Luciano Pellicani)? What is the relationship between pragmatism, the "general philosophy of life," and the theory of action? Throughout this study Graham gives evidence of vast reading in the primary and secondary sources in both history and philosophy. The ample bibliography and footnotes will provide future scholars with a valuable reference tool. But it will be up to others to... (shrink)