The Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) literature tends to focus on bias as a problem that requires ex post solutions (e.g. fairness metrics), rather than addressing the underlying social and technical conditions that (re)produce it. In this article, we propose a complementary strategy that uses genealogy as a constructive, epistemic critique to explain algorithmic bias in terms of the conditions that enable it. We focus on XAI feature attributions (Shapley values) and counterfactual approaches as potential tools to gauge these conditions (...) and offer two main contributions. One is constructive: we develop a theoretical framework to classify these approaches according to their relevance for bias as evidence of social disparities. We draw on Pearl’s ladder of causation (Causality: models, reasoning, and inference. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, Causality, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511803161) to order these XAI approaches concerning their ability to answer fairness-relevant questions and identify fairness-relevant solutions. The other contribution is critical: we evaluate these approaches in terms of their assumptions about the role of protected characteristics in discriminatory outcomes. We achieve this by building on Kohler-Hausmann’s (Northwest Univ Law Rev 113(5):1163–1227, 2019) constructivist theory of discrimination. We derive three recommendations for XAI practitioners to develop and AI policymakers to regulate tools that address algorithmic bias in its conditions and hence mitigate its future occurrence. (shrink)

In Greek Late Antiquity philosophy defined itself above all through the interpretation of authoritative texts such as Plato's dialogues or the treatises of Aristotle. This work looks at the last Late Antique commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, the pagan Simplicius and the Christian Philoponus. Golitsis demonstrates how differently the two contemporaries interpreted the philosophical tradition and how this led them to deducedifferent routes to finding the truth.

Whether an individual doctoral study or a large-scale multidisciplinary project, researchers working across cultures face particular challenges around power, identity, and voice, as they encounter ethical dilemmas which extend beyond the micro-level of the researcher-researched relationship. In using a cross-cultural perspective on how to conceptualise research problems, collect data, and disseminate findings in an ethical manner, they also engage with the geopolitics of academic writing, language inequalities, and knowledge construction within a globalised economy. It is increasingly recognised that existing ethical (...) codes and paradigms either do not sufficiently address such issues or tend to be rather restrictive and insensitive to multiple and complex cultural and contextual differences. This book extends our understanding of the ethical issues and dilemmas faced by researchers in comparative and international education. It asks what the relevance of postcolonial theory is for understanding research ethics in comparative and international education; whether Western ethical practices in qualitative social research are incompatible with cultures outside the West; how a ‘situated’ approach can be developed for exploring research ethics across cultures and institutions; and how ‘informed consent’ can be negotiated when the process appears to contradict community values and practices. In sharing experiences from a wide range of cultural and institutional contexts, the authors offer both theoretical resources and practical guidance for conducting research ethically across cultures. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. _. (shrink)

The central idea behind this paper is that presuppositions of soft triggers arise from the way our attention structures the informational content of a sentence. Some aspects of the information conveyed are such that we pay attention to them by default, even in the absence of contextual information. On the other hand, contextual cues or conversational goals can divert attention to types of information that we would not pay attention to by default. Either way, whatever we do not pay attention (...) to, be it by default, or in context, is what ends up presupposed by soft triggers. This paper attempts to predict what information in the sentence is likely to end up being the main point (i.e. what we pay attention to) and what information is independent from this, and therefore likely presupposed. It is proposed that this can be calculated by making reference to event times. The notion of aboutness used to calculate independence is based on that of Demolombe and Fariñas del Cerro (In: Holdobler S (ed) Intellectics and computational logic: papers in honor of Wolfgang Bibel, 2000). (shrink)

McTaggart’s thesis about the unreality of time has puzzled and still puzzles philosophers of the metaphysics of time, who defend the existence of either McTaggart’s A series or McTaggart’s B series. McTaggart himself, however, was led through his analysis to view as real what he called the “C series,” which, unlike the temporal A and B series, is atemporal. The author argues that the ancient conception of time, especially of the Neoplatonist Damascius, reveals an important gap in McTaggart’s thought, namely, (...) his overlooking the idea of an integral present (that is, a present that does not form a series), which allows to account for the B series as being generated from the C series without the involvement of the A series, which has been shown by McTaggart to have a contradictory nature. This comparative account enables us to see not only that Damascius was the first presentist in the history of the metaphysics of time, but also that McTaggart’s analysis rests upon the unreflected assumption that time, if it is real, progresses linearly. (shrink)

Some presuppositions are easier to cancel than others in embedded contexts. This contrast has been used as evidence for distinguishing two fundamentally different kinds of presuppositions, ‘soft’ and ‘hard’. ‘Soft’ presuppositions are usually assumed to arise in a pragmatic way, while ‘hard’ presuppositions are thought to be genuine semantic presuppositions. This paper argues against such a distinction and proposes to derive the difference in cancellation from inherent differences in how presupposition triggers interact with the context: their focus sensitivity, anaphoricity, and (...) question–answer congruence properties. The paper also aims to derive the presuppositions of additive particles such as too, also, again, and of it-clefts. (shrink)

This paper examines a little studied type of perspective shift that I call protagonist projection, following Holton :625–628, 1997). PP is a way of describing the mental state of a protagonist that conveys, to some extent, her perspective. Similarly to its better known cousin free indirect discourse, the shift in perspective is achieved without an overt operator. Unlike FID, PP is not based on a presumed speech-act of a protagonist. Rather, it gives a linguistic form to pre-verbal perceptual content, sensations, (...) feelings or implicit beliefs. I propose to analyse PP in a bi-contextual framework, extending Eckardt’s approach to FID. Under the resulting analysis, FID and PP are two instances of a more general category of perspective shift. (shrink)

Humans regularly pursue activities characterized by dramatic success or failure outcomes where, critically, the chances of success depend on the time invested working toward it. How should people allocate time between such make‐or‐break challenges and safe alternatives, where rewards are more predictable (e.g., linear) functions of performance? We present a formal framework for studying time allocation between these two types of activities, and we explore optimal behavior in both one‐shot and dynamic versions of the problem. In the one‐shot version, we (...) illustrate striking discontinuities in the optimal time allocation policy as we gradually change the parameters of the decision‐making problem. In the dynamic version, we formulate the optimal strategy—defined by a giving‐up threshold—which adaptively dictates when people should stop pursuing the make‐or‐break goal. We then show that this strategy is computationally inaccessible for humans, and we explore boundedly rational alternatives. We compare the performance of the optimal model against (a) a myopic giving‐up threshold that is easier to compute, and even simpler heuristic strategies that either (b) only decide whether or not to start pursuing the goal and never give up or (c) consider giving up at a fixed number of control points. Comparing strategies across environments, we investigate the cost and behavioral implications of sidestepping the computational burden of full rationality. (shrink)

This is the first of a two-volume edition of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The new edition, which includes a philosophical and philological introduction, as well as notes to textcritical issues, is based on a critical evaluation of the entire manuscript tradition of the commentary. It also takes into account its indirect tradition and the Latin translation of Juan Ginès Sepúlveda.

A complete, illustrated survey of Etienne-Jules Marey's work that investigates the far reaching effects of her inventions on stream-of-consciousness literature, psychoanalysis, Bergsonian philosophy, and the art of cubists and futurists.

Sometimes subjects have sufficient internal and external resources to retrieve information stored in memory, in particular information that carries socially charged content. Yet, they fail to do so: they forget it. These cases pose an explanatory challenge to common explanations of forgetting in cognitive science. In this paper, I take this challenge and develop a new explanation of these cases. According to this explanation, these cases are best explained as cases of norm-induced forgetting: cases in which forgetting is caused by (...) social norms in a relevant sense. These cases draw attention to the normative aspects of the mechanisms of forgetting. This is an important but neglected aspect of cases of everyday forgetting, in particular of those characterized by a social dimension. By investigating some ways in which the psychology of social norms is causally relevant in the mechanisms of retrieval failure, I begin to fill this gap. (shrink)

We prove that in an arbitrary o-minimal structure, every interpretable group is definably isomorphic to a definable one. We also prove that every definable group lives in a cartesian product of one-dimensional definable group-intervals. We discuss the general open question of elimination of imaginaries in an o-minimal structure.

Introducing a largely neglected area of existing interactions between Greco-Roman antiquity and media theory, this volume brings together a range of interdisciplinary studies to address the question of why interactions in this area matter and how they might be developed further.

There is currently a consensus among comparative psychologists that nonhuman animals are capable of some forms of mindreading. Several philosophers and psychologists have criticized this consensus, however, arguing that there is a “logical problem” with the experimental approach used to test for mindreading in nonhuman animals. I argue that the logical problem is no more than a version of the general skeptical problem known as the theoretician’s dilemma. As such, it is not a problem that comparative psychologists must solve before (...) providing evidence for mindreading. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 4 Seiten: 458-473.

Damascius of Damascus, last ‘Platonic successor’ in Athens, is rarely compared to one of his masters, namely Ammonius, the philosopher of Alexandria. When scholars do compare the two Neoplatonist philosophers, they usually focus on the negative picture of Ammonius, which is drawn by Damascius in his Philosophical History. In this paper, I argue that Damascius admired Ammonius’ intellectual endeavours and espoused a basic feature of the philosophical exegesis of his master, namely his concordism regarding the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, (...) as is evident in Damascius’ surviving work on Plato and his (fragmentarily preserved) treatise On Time. Damascius’ downgrading of Ammonius came about rather as a disappointment, which is however by no means fully justified. (shrink)

Let M = 〈M, +, <, 0, {λ}λ∈D〉 be an ordered vector space over an ordered division ring D, and G = 〈G, ⊕, eG〉 an n-dimensional group definable in M. We show that if G is definably compact and definably connected with respect to the t-topology, then it is definably isomorphic to a 'definable quotient group' U/L, for some convex V-definable subgroup U of 〈Mⁿ, +〉 and a lattice L of rank n. As two consequences, we derive Pillay's conjecture (...) for a saturated M as above and we show that the o-minimal fundamental group of G is isomorphic to L. (shrink)

This paper considers a host of definitions and labels attached to the concept of smart cities to identify four dimensions that ground a review of ethical concerns emerging from the current debate. These are: (1) network infrastructure, with the corresponding concerns of control, surveillance, and data privacy and ownership; (2) post-political governance, embodied in the tensions between public and private decision-making and cities as post-political entities; (3) social inclusion, expressed in the aspects of citizen participation and inclusion, and inequality and (...) discrimination; and (4) sustainability, with a specific focus on the environment as an element to protect but also as a strategic element for the future. Given the persisting disagreements around the definition of a smart city, the article identifies in these four dimensions a more stable reference framework within which ethical concerns can be clustered and discussed. Identifying these dimensions makes possible a review of the ethical implications of smart cities that is transversal to their different types and resilient towards the unsettled debate over their definition. (shrink)

Zwischen 1258 und 1264 verfaßte Nikephoros Blemmydes eine Einführung in die Philosophie. Diese εἰσαγωγιϰὴ ἐπιτομὴ ist eine als Doppelhandbuch verfaßte Abhandlung, bestehend aus der ἐπιτομὴ λογιϰης und ἐπιτομὴ фυσιϰης. Während ersteres Werk mit einem Prooimion beginnt, verfügt der zweite Teil über keines. Dies bestätigt, in Verbindung mit weiteren Argumenten, die anderswo dargelegt werden, die These vom Doppelhandbuch, denn das Physiklehrbuch sollte gar nicht als selbständig gelten, sondern eine Fortsetzung der Logik sein. In historischen oder rhetorischen Werken sollte das Prooimion über (...) die Ziele des Werkes belehren, Spannung erzeugen, das Wohlwollen für den Verfasser erwecken (captatio benevolentiae) sowie als Ort für eine direkte oder indirekte Widmung dienen. (shrink)

This book presents a novel interpretation of Aristotle's account of how shame instils virtue, and defends its philosophical import. Shame is shown to provide motivational continuity between the actions of the learners and the virtuous dispositions that they will eventually acquire.

Michael Frede’s The Historiography of Philosophy, published posthumously thanks to Katerina Ierodiakonou’s diligence, is in a certain way a difficult book. It is a theoretical, non-historically ori...

ABSTRACTFinance may suffer from institutional deformations that subordinate its distinctive goods to the pursuit of external goods, but this should encourage attempts to reform the institutionalization of finance rather than to reject its potential for virtuous business activity. This article argues that finance should be regarded as a domain-relative practice. Alongside management, its moral status thereby varies with the purposes it serves. Hence, when practitioners working in finance facilitate projects that create common goods, it allows them to develop virtues. This (...) argument applies MacIntyre’s widely acknowledged account of the relationship between practices and the development of virtues while questioning some of his claims about finance. It also takes issue with extant accounts of particular financial functions that have failed to identify the distinctive goods of financial practice. (shrink)

We prove the Compact Domination Conjecture for groups definable in linear o-minimal structures. Namely, we show that every definably compact group G definable in a saturated linear o-minimal expansion of an ordered group is compactly dominated by (G/G 00, m, π), where m is the Haar measure on G/G 00 and π : G → G/G 00 is the canonical group homomorphism.

Although Aristotle’sMetaphysicsreceived much attention in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, scholars and historians of science were not particularly interested in clarifying the aim of Aristotle’s appeal to astronomy in Λ 8. Read with monotheistic prejudices, this chapter was quickly abandoned by Aristotelian scholars as a gratuitous insertion, which downgrades Aristotle’s God for the sake of some supplementary principles, whose existence was dictated by celestial mechanics. On the other hand, historians of astronomy read the astronomical excursus as providing a picture (...) of Aristotle as an able astronomer, who made an important contribution to the theory of concentric celestial spheres of Eudoxus and Callippus by adding the counteracting spheres. The present article argues (a) that Aristotle purposefully turned to astronomy as the only mathematical science whose objects were correlative to the immaterial first substances or gods, the number of which had to be precisely determined by his own project of first philosophy; and (b) that he had no aspiration of improving the astronomical theory of his peers, contrary to an interpretation that first emerged with the Peripatetic exegete Sosigenes in the second century A.D. (shrink)

Aristotle ’s claim that we become virtuous by doing virtuous actions raises a familiar problem: How can we perform virtuous actions unless we are already virtuous? I reject deflationary accounts of the answer given in _Nicomachean Ethics_ 2.4 and argue instead that proper habituation involves doing virtuous actions with the right motive, i.e. for the sake of the noble, even though learners do not yet have virtuous dispositions. My interpretation confers continuity to habituation and explains in a non-mysterious way how (...) we become virtuous by doing virtuous actions in the right way. (shrink)

This paper considers a host of definitions and labels attached to the concept of smart cities to identify four dimensions that ground a review of ethical concerns emerging from the current debate. These are: network infrastructure, with the corresponding concerns of control, surveillance, and data privacy and ownership; post-political governance, embodied in the tensions between public and private decision-making and cities as post-political entities; social inclusion, expressed in the aspects of citizen participation and inclusion, and inequality and discrimination; and sustainability, (...) with a specific focus on the environment as an element to protect but also as a strategic element for the future. Given the persisting disagreements around the definition of a smart city, the article identifies in these four dimensions a more stable reference framework within which ethical concerns can be clustered and discussed. Identifying these dimensions makes possible a review of the ethical implications of smart cities that is transversal to their different types and resilient towards the unsettled debate over their definition. (shrink)

In this short note we provide an example of a semi-linear group G which does not admit a semi-linear affine embedding; in other words, there is no semi-linear isomorphism between topological groups f:G→G′Mm, such that the group topology on G′ coincides with the subspace topology induced by Mm.