The Covid-19 pandemic broke on a world whose grip on epistemic trust was already in disarray. The first months of the pandemic saw many governments publicly performing reliance on epidemiological and modelling expertise in order to signal that data would be the basis for justifying whatever population-level measures of control were judged necessary. But comprehensive data has not become available, and instead scientists, policymakers and the public find themselves in a situation where policy inputs determine the data available and vice (...) versa. This essay asks how we can live with what Amoore has termed ‘post-Cartesian doubt’ in situations of existential risk, and what kind of approach to science and data can answer the moral and human demands of a situation such as the Covid-19 pandemic. I suggest that science and policy could be able to control the pandemic better by addressing the sources of uncertainty and missing data not as gaps in the information landscape, but as individuals who are likely to be members of less-visible and less powerful groups including low-wage workers, the elderly, migrants, prisoners and others. This would shift both data use and policy toward an ethics of care, an embodied approach which asks what people need and how they behave in relation to each other, rather than how to manage population-level behaviour. This approach, I argue, is more appropriate for pandemic response than a utilitarian calculation of how many people each country should expect to lose as a result of the disease. (shrink)

The increasing availability of digital data reflecting economic and human development, and in particular the availability of data emitted as a by-product of people’s use of technological devices and services, has both political and practical implications for the way people are seen and treated by the state and by the private sector. Yet the data revolution is so far primarily a technical one: the power of data to sort, categorise and intervene has not yet been explicitly connected to a social (...) justice agenda by the agencies and authorities involved. Meanwhile, although data-driven discrimination is advancing at a similar pace to data processing technologies, awareness and mechanisms for combating it are not. This paper posits that just as an idea of justice is needed in order to establish the rule of law, an idea of data justice – fairness in the way people are made visible, represented and treated as a result of their production of digital data – is necessary to determine ethical paths through a datafying world. Bringing together the emerging scholarly perspectives on this topic, I propose three pillars as the basis of a notion of international data justice: visibility, engagement with technology and antidiscrimination. These pillars integrate positive with negative rights and freedoms, and by doing so challenge both the basis of current data protection regulations and the growing assumption that being visible through the data we emit is part of the contemporary social contract. (shrink)

The scale and asymmetry of commercial technology firms’ power over people through data, combined with the increasing involvement of the private sector in public governance, means that increasingly, people do not have the ability to opt out of engaging with technology firms. At the same time, those firms are increasingly intervening on the population level in ways that have implications for social and political life. This creates the potential for power relations of domination, and demands that we decide what constitutes (...) the legitimacy to act on the public. Business ethics and private law are not designed to answer these questions, which are primarily political. If people have lost the right to disengage with commercial technologies, we may need to hold the companies that offer them to the same standards to which we hold the public sector. This paper first defines the problem and demonstrates that it is significant and widespread, and then argues for the development of an overarching normative framework for what constitutes non-domination with regard to digital technologies. Such a framework must involve a nuanced idea of political power and accountability that can respond not only to the legality of corporate behaviour, but to its legitimacy. (shrink)

The goal of the book is to present the latest research on the new challenges of data technologies. It will offer an overview of the social, ethical and legal problems posed by group profiling, big data and predictive analysis and of the different approaches and methods that can be used to address them. In doing so, it will help the reader to gain a better grasp of the ethical and legal conundrums posed by group profiling. The volume first maps the (...) current and emerging uses of new data technologies and clarifies the promises and dangers of group profiling in real life situations. It then balances this with an analysis of how far the current legal paradigm grants group rights to privacy and data protection, and discusses possible routes to addressing these problems. Finally, an afterword gathers the conclusions reached by the different authors and discuss future perspectives on regulating new data technologies. (shrink)

This essay investigates the way in which Wolff takes an interest in the hypothesis of an emendatio of the prima philosophia from Leibniz’s incitement in De primae philosophiae emendatione, et de notione substantiae (1694) to re-found metaphysics. This makes it possible, secondly, to examine the way in which Wolff takes Johannes Clauberg’s ontology as a model, even though it represents in his view only a failed attempt at that same emendatio. Through the analysis of the texts, this article considers the (...) possibility of a new reading of the ‘failure’ attributed by Wolff to Clauberg, which would consist in his having ‘emended’ first philosophy by expelling it from the domain of ontology and finally identifying it with Cartesian prima philosophia. (shrink)

In the expansion of health ecosystems, issues of responsibility and sustainability of the data science involved are central. The idea that these values should be central to the practice of data science is increasingly gaining traction, yet there is no agreement on what exactly makes data science responsible or sustainable because these concepts prove slippery when applied to a global field involving commercial, academic and governmental actors. This lack of clarity is causing problems in setting goals and boundaries for data (...) scientific practice, and risks fundamental disagreement on governance principles for this emerging field. We will argue in this commentary for a commons analytical framework as one approach to this problem, since it offers useful signposts for how to establish governance principles for shared resources. (shrink)

In light of recent technological innovations and discourses around data and algorithmic analytics, scholars of many stripes are attempting to develop critical agendas and responses to these developments. In this mutual interview, three scholars discuss the stakes, ideas, responsibilities, and possibilities of critical data studies. The resulting dialog seeks to explore what kinds of critical approaches to these topics, in theory and practice, could open and make available such approaches to a broader audience.

The knowledge representation and reasoning of both humans and artificial systems often involves conditionals. A conditional connects a consequence which holds given a precondition. It can be easily recognized in natural languages with certain key words, like “if” in English. A vast amount of literature in both fields, both artificial intelligence and psychology, deals with the questions of how such conditionals can be best represented and how these conditionals can model human reasoning. On the other hand, findings in the psychology (...) of reasoning, such as those in the Suppression Task, have led to a paradigm shift from the monotonicity assumptions in human inferences towards nonmonotonic reasoning. Nonmonotonic reasoning is sensitive for information change, that is, inferences are drawn cautiously such that retraction of previous information is not required with the addition of new information. While many formalisms of nonmonotonic reasoning have been proposed in the field of Artificial Intelligence, their capability to model properties of human reasoning has not yet been extensively investigated. In this paper, we analyzed systematically from both a formal and an empirical perspective the power of formal nonmonotonic systems to model possible explicit defeaters, as in the Suppression Task, and more implicit conditional rules that trigger nonmonotonic reasoning by the keywords in such rules. The results indicated that the classical evaluation for the correctness of inferences has to be extended in the three major aspects regarding the inference system, the knowledge base, and possible assumed exceptions for the rule. (shrink)

We apply three state‐of‐the‐art models for syllogistic reasoning to data from experiments where participants received feedback for their conclusions in order to demonstrate the use of model parameters to derive new hypotheses and present possible explanations for the feedback effect.

Da uno dei padri fondatori dell’Italia come nazione, un veloce e agile compendio su filosofia, politica risorgimentale e musica, centrato sulle idee e i gusti artistici mazziniani e ambientato nel panorama melodrammatico della prima metà dell’Ottocento, governato dalla maestosa figura di Gioacchino Rossini. Il volume è arricchito anche da un altro breve estratto mazziniano riguardante la musica, proveniente da Dell’Arte in Italia – A proposito del “Marco Visconti” di Tommaso Grossi (1835).

La présentation de ce dossier l’inscrit dans les recherches récentes sur l’origine moderne du mot ontologia, sur son historiographie, sur les apories de la métaphysique scolastique dont l’ontologie hérite, sur son contexte initialement calviniste, sur les moments principaux de son développement et sur la thèse fondamentale qui, réduisant l’étant à un pur concept, l’identifie au pensable – jusqu’à la fascination ambivalente de Kant, qui, avant que la Critique de la raison pure n’entende substituer au nom orgueilleux d’ontologie le nom modeste (...) d’une analytique de l’entendement pur, avait envisagé, dans les années 1770, son remplacement par une anthropologie transcendantale. (shrink)

scholarly interest in johannes clauberg's philosophy increased significantly in the twentieth century, and the renaissance continued in the first decade of the twenty-first century. This is mainly due to the 1968 reprint of his Opera Omnia Philosophica,1 and to such events as the colloquium entirely devoted to Clauberg held in Groningen on 15 and 16 December 1995. The ground-breaking papers presented on that occasion, collected by Theo Verbeek in Johannes Clauberg and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century,2 offer a comprehensive (...) overview of Clauberg's thought and supersede the outdated works by Müller,3 Brosch,4 and Weier,5 who tended to interpret Clauberg's philosophy as an... (shrink)

L’histoire de la métaphysique à Genève pendant l’époque moderne est liée à la figure de David Derodon (c. 1600-1664), philosophe et théologien calviniste français. Il soutient que la métaphysique est la science de l’étant commun aux corps et aux esprits et que, pour cette raison, elle doit être distinguée de la pneumatique et de la somatique. Il s’agit, en d’autres termes, d’une métaphysique fortement « ontologisée » qui traite des choses neutres. Le but de cet article est de montrer la (...) diffusion de cette définition de la France à la Suisse jusqu’à son emploi par le cartésien Jean-Robert Chouet (1642-1731), professeur à la célèbre Académie de Genève fondée par Calvin en 1559. Chouet va encore plus loin en donnant une dénomination nouvelle à cette version de la métaphysique, qui est celle d’ontologie (ou ontosophia ), et en y introduisant le cogito cartésien. (shrink)

A recent study by P.R. Blum suggests the hypothesis of an ideal line from Scotus to Mastri, passing through Perera, which would tend towards a new concept of metaphysics attainable through the use of abstraction by indifference. This essay intends to test this hypothesis starting from the way in which Perera questions the unity of metaphysical abstraction through a series of innovative interpretations that are widely received in both Catholic and Reformed and Protestant domains. A first interpretation, less radical, advances (...) a model of metaphysical abstraction, taken up by Mastri and Micraelius, which maintains the unity of metaphysics; a second interpretation, more radical, breaks the methodological unity of metaphysics through a clear distinction between ‘real’ abstraction from matter (secundum rem et rationem) and ‘mental’ abstraction by indifference (secundum rationem tantum) and, consequently, between metaphysics and ontology. (shrink)

Syllogisms (e.g. “All A are B; All B are C; What is true about A and C?”) are a long‐studied area of human reasoning. Riesterer, Brand, and Ragni compare a variety of models to human performance and show that not only do current models have a lot of room for improvement, but more importantly a large part of this improvement must come from examining individual differences in performance.

The goal of the book is to present the latest research on the new challenges of data technologies. It will offer an overview of the social, ethical and legal problems posed by group profiling, big data and predictive analysis and of the different approaches and methods that can be used to address them. In doing so, it will help the reader to gain a better grasp of the ethical and legal conundrums posed by group profiling. The volume first maps the (...) current and emerging uses of new data technologies and clarifies the promises and dangers of group profiling in real life situations. It then balances this with an analysis of how far the current legal paradigm grants group rights to privacy and data protection, and discusses possible routes to addressing these problems. Finally, an afterword gathers the conclusions reached by the different authors and discuss future perspectives on regulating new data technologies. (shrink)

How individuals reason deductively has concerned researchers for many years. Yet, it is still unclear whether, and if so how, participants’ reasoning performance changes over time. In two test sessions one week apart, we examined how the syllogistic reasoning performance of 100 participants changed within and between sessions. Participants’ reasoning performance increased during the first session. A week later, they started off at the same level of reasoning performance but did not further improve. The reported performance gains were only found (...) for logically valid, but not for invalid syllogisms indicating a bias against responding that ‘no valid conclusion’ follows from the premises. Importantly, we demonstrate that participants substantially varied in the strength of the temporal performance changes and explored how individual characteristics, such as participants’ personality and cognitive ability, relate to these interindividual differences. Together, our findings contradict common assumptions that reasoning performance only reflects a stable inherent ability. (shrink)

Although the terminology of Big Data has so far gained little traction in economics, the availability of unprecedentedly rich datasets and the need for new approaches – both epistemological and computational – to deal with them is an emerging issue for the discipline. Using interviews conducted with a cross-section of economists, this paper examines perspectives on Big Data across the discipline, the new types of data being used by researchers on economic issues, and the range of responses to this opportunity (...) amongst economists. First, we outline the areas in which it is being used, including the prediction and ‘nowcasting’ of economic trends; mapping and predicting influence in the context of marketing; and acting as a cheaper or more accurate substitute for existing types of data such as censuses or labour market data. We then analyse the broader current and potential contributions of Big Data to economics, such as the ways in which econometric methodology is being used to shed light on questions beyond economics, how Big Data is improving or changing economic models, and the kinds of collaborations arising around Big Data between economists and other disciplines. (shrink)

Person‐specific evidence was developed as a grounded theory by analyzing 20 selected case descriptions from interventions using the guided self‐determination method with people with various long‐term health conditions. It explains the mechanisms of mobilizing relational capacity by including person‐specific evidence in shared decision‐making. Person‐specific self‐insight was the first step, achieved as individuals completed reflection sheets enabling them to clarify their personal values and identify actions or omissions related to self‐management challenges. This step paved the way for sharing these insights and (...) challenges in a relationship with a supportive health professional, who could then rely on person‐specific evidence instead of assumptions or a narrow disease perspective for shared decision‐making. Trust in the evidence encouraged the supportive health professional to transfer it to the interdisciplinary team. Person‐specific evidence then enhanced the ability of team members to apply general evidence in a meaningful way. The increased openness achieved by individuals through these steps enabled them to eventually share their new self‐insights in daily life with other people, decreasing loneliness they experienced in self‐management. Relational capacity, the core of the theory, is mobilized in both people with long‐term health conditions and healthcare professionals. Further research on person‐specific evidence and relational capacity in healthcare is recommended. (shrink)

ABSTRACT An adequate response to the environmental and sustainability issues we now face cannot be limited to single perspectives, disciplines, or ways of knowing, and instead requires an interdisciplinary approach. Despite the connections between the fields of citizenship-, character- and sustainability education, they have thus far run parallel to each other, without any substantial convergence. This paper focuses on the conceptual and historical reasons for this lack of integration, exploring the tensions among them perceived by many scholars and practitioners, such (...) as an individual vs. a social vs. a global focus, a deliberative vs. fact based pedagogic approach, and an individual vs. socio-political educational context. The paper ends by exploring different ways in which these three fields of education might be integrated. (shrink)

After 100+ years of studying syllogistic reasoning, what have we learned? Well, Riesterer and colleagues suggest that we have learned to throw away most of the data! If that seems like a bad idea to you then, be assured, that the authors agree with you. The sad fact is that the conclusion of “No Valid Conclusion” (NVC) is one of the most frequently selected responses in syllogistic reasoning but these “majority data” have been ignored by most researchers. Riesterer and colleagues (...) introduce heuristic rules for predicting NVC and provide directions to modelers on how to up their game. (shrink)

with the publication in this issue of Alice Ragni's "Bibliographia Claubergiana : Tracking a Crossroads in the History of Philosophy," we inaugurate a new series in the JHP, Research Tools for Historians of Philosophy. This series will publish occasional article-length studies that serve as resources for philosophers who do primary text scholarship: bibliographies, catalogs of manuscripts and correspondence, information about libraries and research collections, editions of previously unpublished sources, translations of sources previously unavailable in major European languages, and so (...) on. In the queue for volume 58 next year is an inventory of the correspondence of Elisabeth of... (shrink)