Issues of reliability are claiming center-stage in the epistemology of machine learning. This paper unifies different branches in the literature and points to promising research directions, whilst also providing an accessible introduction to key concepts in statistics and machine learning – as far as they are concerned with reliability.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Louise Pascale, “Dispelling the Myth of the Non-Singer: Embracing Two Aesthetics for Singing”Maya HooverLouise Pascale encourages a redefinition of the word "singer" and suggests ways to make it apply to a broader spectrum of people. The problem with the current definition, she believes, is that it is outdated and needs to be changed in order to better embrace the ideals of current society. In order to (...) fully understand the problem and incorporate her suggestions, it is helpful to look at the issue as a symptom of a larger philosophical problem and to examine her proposed aesthetics from a non-philosophical perspective. [End Page 202]A Philosophical Approach to an Ethnographic StudyPascale specifies the current definition of singer as one understood in terms of values set by a white, middle class, American society. She argues that this definition is a direct result of the actions of the church in the 1600s, which has influenced and effected how North Americans (specifically people from the United States) perceive and experience singing. She refers to the manner in which this definition is significantly rooted in history and has only strengthened with time as a "taproot" in music education.Pascale's main argument revolves around the fact that we in the United States have adopted and ascribe to the Western European value system of singing. She notes that in the quest to extract the highest form of singing, we tend to sort out the very best and tell everyone else not to bother. This elitist attitude is a serious problem and she is quite right to point it out. Although there is nothing wrong with classical studies revolving around a canon, we are often taught that anything else is not worthy of study or practice. As a result, we have a very narrow perception of singing due to the guidelines set by the "taproot philosophy," which greatly limits musical expression on many levels.The issue of Western European elitism in the United States is a big one that many scholars and educators like to avoid for fear of offending tradition. In Onika's case, she becomes completely redefined as a non-singer by these elitist constraints. Pascale hints at this concept at other points in her essay, but Onika's story stands out as a blatant example of subjugation.Pascale's story about her own trials in trying to learn about African dance and drumming reinforces the idea of Western elitism. She refers to Christopher Small's idea about the Western value of timing and rhythm, which is linked to "a more logical relationship between pitch and harmony."2 It is important to note that while Pascale was frustrated with her Western background, she was still encouraged by her Ghanaian instructor. She may have felt incompetent, but she was by no means subjugated, as Onika had become.Pascale relates both experiences to the link between culture, society, and the construction of belief systems. However, there is a deeper connection here that deals specifically with American society and its attitude toward those with a different belief system. Looking at other cultures shows how societies can encourage the exploration of their music by giving participants permission to be imperfect and accepting the interest in their culture with grace. This poses a question that is much larger than Pascale's original one, but one that is intricately linked to it: Why do we, as members of American society, continue to perpetuate the subjugation of anyone from outside of our established network of beliefs? [End Page 203] The problem of singers versus non-singers seems only to be a symptom of a much larger illness that is well deserving of a much deeper exploration.The Second Aesthetic from a Scientific Vantage PointPascale explores how the phenomenon of the "non-singer" translates into the music classroom. She argues that there must be a way to maintain the classical tradition while simultaneously allowing everyone to participate, trained or not. There must also be a way to allow every classroom teacher to feel comfortable singing with her/his students, and likewise to allow every student to feel comfortable enough to participate.She suggests incorporating... (shrink)

Looking back on it, it seems almost incredible that so many equally educated, equally sincere compatriots and contemporaries, all drawing from the same limited stock of evidence, should have reached so many totally different conclusions---and always with complete certainty.

Thomas Reid, the Scottish natural and moral philosopher, was one of the founding members of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and a significant figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. Reid believed that common sense should form the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He criticised the sceptical philosophy propagated by his fellow Scot David Hume and the Anglo-Irish bishop George Berkeley, who asserted that the external world did not exist outside the human mind. Reid was also critical of the theory of ideas (...) propagated by Locke and Descartes, arguing that it was incompatible with physical and experiential facts. For Reid, our senses demonstrate that the external world must exist, and this work is organised in chapters examining each of the senses in turn. The book, based on his lectures, was first published in 1764 when Reid was a regent professor at King's College, Aberdeen, and was reissued in 1818. (shrink)

The application of machine-learning technologies to medical practice promises to enhance the capabilities of healthcare professionals in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment, of medical conditions. However, there is growing concern that algorithmic bias may perpetuate or exacerbate existing health inequalities. Hence, it matters that we make precise the different respects in which algorithmic bias can arise in medicine, and also make clear the normative relevance of these different kinds of algorithmic bias for broader questions about justice and fairness in healthcare. (...) In this paper, we provide the building blocks for an account of algorithmic bias and its normative relevance in medicine. (shrink)

Cette étude essaye d’établir qu’il y a deux notions très différentes de « fondation » à l’œuvre dans les Recherches logiques de Husserl. Dans la IIIème Recherche, où le terme est formellement introduit, lorsqu’il se demande quels sont les contenus qui peuvent exister d’une manière autonome (indépendants) et lesquels peuvent exister uniquement en tant que moments d’autre chose (dépendants), Husserl suit ce que j’appelle un « modèle ontologique ». Selon ce modèle, le concret possède une priorité sur à l’abstrait qui (...) est fondé en lui. Dans la VIème Recherche, en revanche, Husserl s’oriente principalement sur un « modèle gnoséologique » qui voit le complexe comme fondé sur ce qui est relativement simple, étant donné que les expériences d’ordre supérieur (telles les perceptions de types d’objets plus complexes) sont « fondées sur » des expériences plus simples, bien qu’elles ne puissent pas y être réduites. L’exemple principal ici est celui des intuitions catégoriales : fondées sur les intuitions sensibles, elles n’y sont pas réductibles. Mais cette distinction entre deux sens différents du terme de « fondation » peut également nous aider à mieux comprendre de nombreuses thèses husserliennes plutôt controversées. Par exemple, elle peut nous permettre de mieux comprendre dans quelle mesure faire l’expérience d’un être humain comme un tout se fonde sur l’expérience d’un corps physique, et cela même si l’étant que nous rencontrons inclut à la fois des aspects corporels et des aspects spirituels – les deux étant vus, d’une manière essentielle, comme des moments de cette unique personne qui fait l’objet de notre expérience. (shrink)

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other.

Thomas Reid , the Scottish natural and moral philosopher, was one of the founding members of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and a significant figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. Reid believed that common sense should form the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He criticised the sceptical philosophy propagated by his fellow Scot David Hume and the Anglo-Irish bishop George Berkeley, who asserted that the external world did not exist outside the human mind. Reid was also critical of the theory of (...) ideas propagated by Locke and Descartes, arguing that it was incompatible with physical and experiential facts. For Reid, our senses demonstrate that the external world must exist, and this work is organised in chapters examining each of the senses in turn. The book, based on his lectures, was first published in 1764 when Reid was a regent professor at King's College, Aberdeen, and was reissued in 1818. (shrink)

Causality in Macroeconomics examines causality while taking macroeconomics seriously. A pragmatic and realistic philosophy is joined to a macroeconomic foundation that refines Herbert Simon's well-known work on causal order to make a case for a structural approach to causality. The structural approach is used to understand modern rational expectations models, regime switching models, Granger causality, vector autoregressions, the Lucas critique, and concept exogeneity. Techniques of causal inference based on patterns of stability and instability in the face of identified regime changes (...) are developed and illustrated in two empirical case studies. (shrink)

Clayton Chin provides a helpful reconstruction of Rorty’s philosophy that aims to show its usefulness for political thought, while also shedding light on its relationships with Continental philosophy and on Rorty’s reading strategy employed in relation to some Continental thinkers. In relation to the first aim, Chin argues convincingly that Rorty’s primary contribution to political thought is located at the meta-theoretical level, by which he means the level at which questions may be asked about the nature and purpose of political (...) theorizing. I agree with much of Chin’s account of the nature and value of Rorty’s meta-theoretical approach. I am less convinced by Chin’s account of Rorty’s relations with Continental philosophy and the reading strategies employed in his discussions of those with whom he engaged. There are a number of reasons for this. First, he confines his discussion to a handful of figures that he groups under the heading of ontological approaches to politics and political theory: primarily Martin Heidegger and William Connolly, but also Foucault and Jürgen Habermas. Second, This is the asymmetry in the way in which Rorty is treated compared to the discussion of these interlocutors. (shrink)

This paper is an exposition and evaluation of the Agustín Rayo's views about the epistemology and metaphysics of mathematics, as they are presented in his book The Construction of Logical Space.

In recent years an increasing number of psychologists have begun to explore the prevalence, causes and effects of ordinary people’s intuitions about moral realism. Many of these studies have lacked in construct validity, i.e., they have failed to measure moral realism. My aim in this paper accordingly is to motivate and guide methodological improvements. In analysis of prominent existing measures, I develop general recommendations for overcoming ten prima facie serious worries about research on folk moral realism. G1 and G2 require (...) studies’ answer choices to be as metaethically comprehensive as methodologically feasible. G3 and G4 prevent fallacious inferences from intuitions about related debates. G5 and G6 limit first-order moral and epistemic influences. G7 address studies’ instructions. And G8 and G9 suggest tests of important psychological presuppositions. (shrink)

This paper examines Honig’s use of Rancière in her book ‘Democracy and the Foreigner’. In seeking to clarify the benefits of ‘foreignness’ for democratic politics it raises the concern that Honig does not acknowledge the ways in which her own democratic cosmopolitanism may be more akin to Rancière’s police than politics. By challenging Honig’s assertion that democracy is usually read as a romance with the suggestion that it is more commonly read as a horror, I unpick the interstices of Honig’s (...) and Rancière’s work to separate foreignness from democratic cosmopolitanism. Instead, although I posit democratic cosmopolitanism’s potential as a police more conducive to politics I also suggest that the particular salience of Honig’s ‘foreigner’ figure is that it supplements Rancièrian politics, demonstrating a praxis of ‘looking anew’ at our ordinary social practices. By making these seem strange to us, we can discover a new critical perspective from which to question and subvert, thereby furthering the potential of Rancièrian democratic politics. (shrink)

This volume is a study of the influence of Timaeus on the development of Western cosmology in three axial periods of European culture: Late Antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance.

In recent years, a plethora of high-profile scientific publications has been reporting about machine learning algorithms outperforming clinicians in medical diagnosis or treatment recommendations. This has spiked interest in deploying relevant algorithms with the aim of enhancing decision-making in healthcare. In this paper, we argue that instead of straightforwardly enhancing the decision-making capabilities of clinicians and healthcare institutions, deploying machines learning algorithms entails trade-offs at the epistemic and the normative level. Whereas involving machine learning might improve the accuracy of medical (...) diagnosis, it comes at the expense of opacity when trying to assess the reliability of given diagnosis. Drawing on literature in social epistemology and moral responsibility, we argue that the uncertainty in question potentially undermines the epistemic authority of clinicians. Furthermore, we elucidate potential pitfalls of involving machine learning in healthcare with respect to paternalism, moral responsibility and fairness. At last, we discuss how the deployment of machine learning algorithms might shift the evidentiary norms of medical diagnosis. In this regard, we hope to lay the grounds for further ethical reflection of the opportunities and pitfalls of machine learning for enhancing decision-making in healthcare. (shrink)

The Summa Theologiae ranks among the greatest documents of the Christian Church, and is a landmark of medieval western thought. It is regularly consulted by scholars of theology, philosophy and a range of related academic disciplines. This paperback reissue of the classic Latin/English edition first published by the English Dominicans in the 1960s and 1970s has been undertaken in response to regular requests from around the world. The original text is unchanged, except for the correction of a small number of (...) typographical errors. The parallel English and Latin texts can be used successfully by anybody with a basic knowledge of Latin, while the presence of the Latin text allowed the translators a degree of freedom in adapting their English version for modern readers. Each volume contains a glossary of technical terms and is designed to be complete in itself to serve for private study or as a course text. (shrink)

Thomas Reid is now recognized as one of the towering figures of the Enlightenment. Best known for his published writings on epistemology and moral theory, he was also an accomplished mathematician and natural philosopher, as an earlier volume of his manuscripts edited by Paul Wood for the Edinburgh Reid Edition, Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation, has shown. The Correspondence of Thomas Reid collects all of the known letters to and from Reid in a fully annotated form. (...) Letters already published by Sir William Hamilton and others have been reedited, and roughly half of the letters included appear in print for the first time. Writing in 1802, Reid's disciple and biographer Dugald Stewart doubted that Reid's correspondence &"would be generally interesting.&" This collection proves otherwise, for the letters illuminate virtually every aspect of Reid's life and career and, in some instances, provide us with invaluable evidence about activities otherwise undocumented in his manuscripts or published works. Through his correspondence we can trace Reid's relations with contemporaries such as David Hume and his colleagues at both King's College, Aberdeen, and the University of Glasgow, as well as his engagement with the most controversial philosophical, scientific, and political issues of his day. If anything, the letters assembled here serve as the starting point for understanding Reid and his place in the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things. Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine. Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a (...) social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us.". (shrink)

Certain basic concepts of geometrical stability theory are generalized to a class of closure operators containing algebraic closure. A specific case of a generalized closure operator is developed which is relevant to Vaught's conjecture. As an application of the methods, we prove THEOREM A. Let G be a superstable group of U-rank ω such that the generics of G are locally modular and Th(G) has few countable models. Let G - be the group of nongeneric elements of G, G + (...) = G o + G - . Let Π= {q ∈ S( $\emptyset$ ): U(q) $A \subset M$ such that M is almost atomic over A ∪ (G + ∩ M) $\cup \bigcup_{p\in \Pi}$ p(M). (shrink)

_“This translation offers a fresh and vital encounter with Thomas More’s _Utopia_ for a twenty-first century audience.”—Elizabeth McCutcheon, _Utopian Studies__ Saint Thomas More’s _Utopia_ is one of the most important works of European humanism and serves as a key text in survey courses on Western intellectual history, the Renaissance, political theory, and many other subjects. In _Utopia_, More introduces the mysterious traveler Raphael Hythloday, who tells of an island nation that he considers the most perfectly organized and harmonious (...) in the world. Preeminent More scholar Clarence H. Miller does justice to the full range of More’s rhetoric in this masterful translation. In an Afterword to this edition, Jerry Harp contextualizes More’s life and _Utopia_ within the wider frames of European humanism and the Renaissance. (shrink)

Conciliatory theories of disagreement require that one lower one’s confidence in a belief in the face of disagreement from an epistemic peer. One question about which people might disagree is who should qualify as an epistemic peer and who should not. But when putative epistemic peers disagree about epistemic peerhood itself, then Conciliationism makes contradictory demands and paradoxes arise.

Feeling good: four ways -- Finding that feeling -- The place of pleasure -- Knowing what's what -- Making things happen -- Being good -- Love and friendship -- Putting it together.

This book is a fiftieth anniversary republication of Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", a classic in the philosophy of mind. Through its argument for the irreducible subjectivity of consciousness, it played an essential role in making the study of consciousness a central part of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. It also spurred the now flourishing scientific attention to the consciousness of non-human creatures: mammals, birds, fish, mollusks, and insects. The book also includes a second essay (...) offering Nagel's more recent thoughts on the most promising positive response to the mind-body problem, as posed in the original essay. (shrink)

Existing research suggests that people's judgments of actual causation can be influenced by the degree to which they regard certain events as normal. We develop an explanation for this phenomenon that draws on standard tools from the literature on graphical causal models and, in particular, on the idea of probabilistic sampling. Using these tools, we propose a new measure of actual causal strength. This measure accurately captures three effects of normality on causal judgment that have been observed in existing studies. (...) More importantly, the measure predicts a new effect ("abnormal deflation"). Two studies show that people's judgments do, in fact, show this new effect. Taken together, the patterns of people's causal judgments thereby provide support for the proposed explanation. (shrink)

Jurisprudence -- Law -- Laws as rules of human action -- Positive law -- The sources of law -- The object of law -- Rights -- Analysis of a right -- The leading classifications of rights -- Rights at rest in motion --Private law : rights in rem -- Private law : rights in personam --Private law : remedial rights -- Private law : abnormal -- Private law : adjective -- Public law -- International law -- The application of law.