Traditional approaches to conflict are oriented towards establishing consensus, either in the form of a resolution of the conflict or in the form of an ‘agree-to-disagree’ standstill between the stakeholders. In this paper, we criticize these traditional approaches, each for specific reasons, and we propose and develop the agonistic approach to conflict. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, the agonistic approach to conflict is more welcoming of dissensus, replacing discussion stoppers with discussion starters and replacing standstills with contestation. We (...) illustrate such replacements and develop this approach, we analyse technological conflicts in a concrete R&D setting: the global hydrogen economy. From this context, we focus on the conflict between the proponents of blue hydrogen and those of green hydrogen. We conclude by highlighting the advantage of the agonistic approach but also drawing attention to its own specific risk, namely, antagonism. (shrink)

In this paper I develop and defend a form of argumentative normativity that is not based on fundamental principles. I first argue that research agendas that aim to discover fundamental principles of ‘good’ argumentative discourse share one crucial weak spot, viz. circularity. I then argue that this weak spot can be avoided in a pancritical view of normativity.

Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system. A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. The question thus arises which of these socio-ethical themes surface in the process and how they are perceived by (...) stakeholders in the field. In this report we present the results of a qualitative study into the socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks of using digital twins in healthcare. Employing insights from ethics of technology and the Quadruple Helix theory of innovation, we conducted desk research of white literature and 23 interviews with representatives from the four helixes: industry, research, policy and civil society. The ethical scan revealed several important areas where the digital twin can produce socio-ethical value but also several important areas of socio-ethical risks. We conclude with a reflection on the employed analytical tool and suggestions for further research. (shrink)

A convincing argument can change a discussant’s commitment regarding the acceptability of a claim, but the same effect can be achieved by examining evidence. Observing objects or events that count as evidence for or against the acceptability of a statement can change one’s commitment regarding that statement. If we speak of fallacies in the realm of convincing through argumentation, can we speak of fallacies in the realm of convincing through evidence? In this paper, we defend an affirmative answer. We introduce (...) and discuss the conceptual implications of evidentiary fallacies as fallacies committed when evidence is fabricated or suppressed during an attempt to resolve disagreement using proof. We then apply the notion of evidentiary fallacy to two real-life examples of mis-executed evidentiary procedures. We conclude that the notion of evidentiary fallacy can contribute to a more comprehensive fallacy theory and can foster new and broadly applicable critical skills. (shrink)

Disagreements come in all shapes and sizes, but epistemologists and argumentation theorists have singled out a special category referred to as deep disagreements. These deep disagreements are thought to pose philosophical and practical difficulties pertaining to their rational resolution. In this paper, I start with a critique of the widespread claim that deep disagreements are qualitatively different from normal disagreements because they arise from a difference in ‘fundamental principles’ or ‘hinge commitments.’ I then defend the following two claims: All disagreements (...) are deep to the extent that they are actual disagreements. This first claim implies, I will argue, that disagreements typically regarded as normal can be explained away as misunderstandings or communicative mishaps. The resolution of a disagreement can be rational either through a joint experience of mutually recognized facts or through an exchange of arguments that leads to a reformulation of the disagreement that, in this new form, lends itself to a resolution through a joint experience of mutually recognized facts. I conclude with a reflection on the consequences of these two theses for the idea of deep disagreement and that of rational resolution. (shrink)

What does it mean to be irresponsible in developing or using a technology? There are two fundamentally different answers to this question and they each generate research strands that differ in scope, style and applicability. To capture this difference, I make use of two mythical creatures of Jewish origin that have been employed in the past to represent relationships between man and man-made entities: the Golem (Collins and Pinch, 2002, 2005 ) and the Leviathan (Hobbes, 1994 ). The Golem is (...) the traditional image of technology as a creature that can be helpful but needs to be controlled. Irresponsibility in this perspective is the failure to exercise control. The Leviathan is the image of technology as a difficult compromise between fundamental values. Irresponsibility is in this perspective is allowing some values to systematically dominate others. Having worked out the basics of these images, I show that each comes with its specific methodological challenges: where the Golem gives rise to the Collingridge Dilemma of control, the Leviathan gives rise to Münchhausen’s trilemma of justification. Since the Golem image is predominant in scholarship on irresponsibility, I conclude with an appeal for a more equal distribution of efforts in conceptualizing technologies as Golems and as Leviathans. (shrink)

The inclusion of stakeholders in science is one of the core ideas in the field of responsible innovation. Conspiracists, however, are not your garden-variety stakeholders. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, the conflict between conspiracists and science is deep and intractable. In this paper, we ask how the game of responsible innovation can be played with those who believe that the game is rigged. Understanding the relationship between conspiracism and responsible innovation is necessary in order to understand the unvisited corners (...) of the science-society interface in the post-pandemic future. We claim that pluralism, already part of the philosophical background that spurred responsible innovation, can offer insights into how conspiracism can be approached. As a case in point, we develop these insights starting from the policy on conspiracism developed in 2021 by the European Commission. We show that the ideal of inclusion can only be extended to conspiracists by accepting a pluralist framework, and we explain this pluralist response. (shrink)

Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system (human or non-human). A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. The question thus arises which of these socio-ethical themes surface in the process and how they (...) are perceived by stakeholders in the field. In this report we present the results of a qualitative study into the socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks of using digital twins in healthcare. Employing insights from ethics of technology and the Quadruple Helix theory of innovation, we conducted desk research of white literature and 23 interviews with representatives from the four helixes: industry, research, policy and civil society. The ethical scan revealed several important areas where the digital twin can produce socio-ethical value (e.g., prevention and treatment of disease, cost reduction, patient autonomy and freedom, equal treatment) but also several important areas of socio-ethical risks (e.g., privacy and property of data, disruption of existing societal structures, inequality and injustice). We conclude with a reflection on the employed analytical tool and suggestions for further research. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Fallacies are traditionally defined as potentially deceptive failures of rationality or reasonableness. Fallacy theories seek to model this failure by formulating standards of rationality or reasonableness that arguers must observe when engaging in argumentative interaction. Yet it remains relatively easy to reject or avoid fallacy judgments even in the most clear-cut cases. In this article, I argue for a pluralist approach to criticism in which the fallacy accusation is only the starting point for a more complex form of criticism. (...) In a pluralist approach, the identification of fallacies works as a first step precisely because it can be so easily set aside. In doing so, the evaluator seeks other evaluative angles that depart from the original one. As a case in point, I exemplify the approach on a piece of argumentative discourse in the scientific context. I conclude by spelling out some of the methodological consequences of the present approach. (shrink)

Responsible innovation is centered around the ideal that societal stakeholders are entitled to participate in scientific and technological decision-making by voicing their needs and worries. Individuals who believe in science conspiracies (referred to here as ‘science conspiracists’) pose a challenge to implementing this ideal because it is not clear under what conditions their inclusion in responsible innovation exercises is possible and advisable. Yet precisely because of this uncertain status, science conspiracists constitute an instructive case in point to travel towards the (...) edges of inclusion and understand how we draw the line between ‘includables' and ‘unincludables’. In this paper, we seek to explore this relationship between responsible innovation and science conspiracism by using the method of thought experimentaiton. We test four possible exclusion criteria for science conspiracists. We conclude by revisiting the relationship between conspiracism and responsible innovation and sketching a novel perspective on the ideal of stakeholder inclusion. (shrink)

To stimulate research and innovation (R&I), to contribute to the solution of societal challenges and to align R&I with societal values, the European Commission has launched the governance framework of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). RRI figures in many high-level EU policies as a means to promote smart growth, and a growing community of R&I practitioners from both the public and private sectors appears committed to it. Although debates on what RRI precisely entails have not reached closure yet, RRI provides (...) an interesting avenue to explore ways of making R&I more societally germane. While recognizing the usefulness of keeping critical reflection on RRI’s meaning alive, we suggest that to make the step from theorizing to implementation, RRI could benefit from a clearer conceptualization. This chapter presents the iterative trajectory in conceptualizing RRI followed as part of RRI Tools, one of a number of EC-funded research projects and support acts aimed at fleshing out what RRI can and should be, and the conceptualization of RRI that this led to. It suggests that RRI is best captured if in R&I governance attention is paid to the five p’s of Purpose, Products, Processes, Preconditions and People, and that further elaborations on the meaning of RRI should happen in dialogue with attempts at practicing RRI. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of appearance in Husserl’s theory of knowledge, stressing its importance and its necessity. Far from being an accident that clarity, evidence or reality can evacuate, appearance is constitutive of our experience and of our approach of its grounding principles. In the light of this idea of appearance, the contingent aspects of our lived experience become an expression of the sense-formation process supporting and transforming it. This paper is a contribution to a larger discussion – including, (...) among others, Eugen Fink, Michel Henry and Jean-Paul Sartre – about the relationship between phenomenology and ontology, about the nature of our knowledge and our experience of freedom. (shrink)

Linguistics. Artificial intelligence. Related fields. Computation.

Recent research has investigated how the sense of relational entitlement diminishes couple satisfaction, but little is known about how SRE affects the daily quality of close, romantic relationships. Moreover, the evidence on how SRE interacts with other features of a satisfying relationship is scarce. Using an electronic daily diary, we examined 99 couples for 7 days, with two daily measurements for each partner. We used a dyadic double intercept multilevel model, which simultaneously computes effects for men and women. We tested (...) a model where one partner's daily couple satisfaction was predicted by their overall levels of SRE and by their daily and overall levels of self-disclosure, perceived partner self-disclosure, and perceived partner responsiveness. The model also included person-level interactions and cross-level interactions between the SRE types and variables of the interpersonal process model of relationships for each gender. The analysis indicated that person-level excessive SRE lowers couple satisfaction. Also, day and person-level perceived partner responsiveness and person-level self-disclosure are related to couple satisfaction, but the latter association is significant only for men. Finally, we found some significant person-level interactions that account for changes in couple satisfaction. For men, the links between couple satisfaction, excessive and restricted SRE were moderated by self-disclosure and perceived partner responsiveness, respectively, perceived partner self-disclosure and perceived partner responsiveness. For women, the associations between couple satisfaction, restricted and assertive SRE were moderated by self-disclosure, respectively, perceived partner self-disclosure. This study advances our understanding of the general implications of SRE in the dynamics of couple relationships. More specifically, it shows how SRE interacts with other couple-specific variables in shaping day-to-day couple satisfaction. The theoretical and clinical implications for couple therapy are discussed. (shrink)

Les lecons publiees par L. Robin dans le present ouvrage furent professees par O. Hamelin en 1904-1905 a l'Ecole normale superieure, et se presentent comme une synthese de ses travaux particuliers sur Aristote. Bien que ces etudes aient en vue la totalite du corpus - ainsi que l'indique le titre sous lequel elles sont regroupees - elles n'en traitent cependant pas toutes les parties avec une egale ampleur. C'est ainsi que la logique fait l'objet des recherches les plus approfondies: on (...) trouvera en effet dans ces pages une lecture detaillee de l'Organon suivant un parcours qui progresse depuis les categories et le concept jusqu'aux raisonnements et aux syllogisme modaux, en passant par la theorie du jugement, et qui fait egalement place a l'explicitation de concepts logiques fondamentaux comme la demonstration, la definition, l'induction, ou encore la dialectique et l'idee de science. Passant de la logique a la Physique, puis de l'etude de la nature (inerte ou vivante) et de ses concepts a celle de l'ame, l'ouvrage culmine avec la metaphysique dans l'etude de l'intellect, de l'acte libre et dans la theorie de l'etre. Si la triade Logique - Nature - Esprit qui semble gouverner la progression de ces cours ne permet pas d'aborder pour elles-memes la morale et la politique, il n'en reste pas moins que ces pages donnent l'acces a la doctrine aristotelicienne tout entiere, en eclairant les parties memes qu'elles ne parcourent pas explicitement. (shrink)

This article analyzes the conditions under which any change in a multiplicative background risk induces a more cautious behavior. We give necessary and sufficient conditions under which any change in the multiplicative background risk with respect to the Nth-degree stochastic dominance raises local risk aversion. Surprisingly, decreasing relative risk aversion of any order up to N in the sense of Pratt coupled with decreasing relative risk aversion in the sense of Ross are sufficient to guarantee an increase in local risk (...) aversion after any deterioration of the multiplicative background risk thanks to the Nth-degree stochastic dominance. We link our results concerning second-order stochastic dominance with the concept of multiplicative risk vulnerability. (shrink)

Bringing together Deleuze, Blanchot, and Foucault, this book provides a detailed and original exploration of the ideas that influenced Deleuze's thought leading up to and throughout his cinema volumes and, as a result, proposes a new definition of art. Examining Blanchot's suggestion that art and dream are "outside" of power, as imagination has neither reality nor truth, and Foucault's theory that power forms knowledge by valuing life, Eugene Brent Young relates these to both Deleuze's philosophy of time and his work (...) with Guattari on art. In doing so, he uses case studies from literature and popular film, including Kafka's Castle, Villeneuve's Arrival, and Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Providing important new insights for those working in literary and cinematic studies, this book advances a new definition of art as that which reverses the realities and truths of power to express obscure ideas and values beyond both our exterior and interior worlds. (shrink)

Frege’s distinction between force and sense is a central pillar of modern thinking about meaning. This is the idea that a self-standing utterance of a sentence S can be divided into two components. One is the proposition P that S’s linguistic meaning and context associates with it. The other is S’s illocutionary force. The force/sense distinction is associated with another thesis, the embedding principle, that implies that the only content that embeds in compound sentences is propositional content. We argue that (...) both the Force/Sense distinction and the principle of embedding are seriously challenged by figurative language, and irony in particular. We conclude that theorists need to go back to the drawing board about the nature of illocutionary acts. (shrink)

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are arguably the most important period in philosophy’s history, given that they set a new and broad foundation for subsequent philosophical thought. Over the last decade, however, discontent among instructors has grown with coursebooks’ unwavering focus on the era’s seven most well-known philosophers—all of them white and male—and on their exclusively metaphysical and epistemological concerns. While few dispute the centrality of these figures and the questions they raised, the modern era also included essential contributions from (...) women—like Margaret Cavendish, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Émilie Du Châtelet—as well as important non-white thinkers, such as Anton Wilhelm Amo, Julien Raimond, and Ottobah Cugoano. At the same time, there has been increasing recognition that moral and political philosophy, philosophy of the natural world, and philosophy of race—also vibrant areas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—need to be better integrated with the standard coverage of metaphysics and epistemology. -/- A New Modern Philosophy: The Inclusive Anthology of Primary Sources addresses—in one volume—these valid criticisms. Weaving together multiple voices and all of the era’s vibrant areas of debate, this volume sets a new agenda for studying modern philosophy. It includes a wide range of readings from 34 thinkers, integrating essential works from all of the canonical writers along with the previously neglected philosophers. Arranged chronologically, editors Eugene Marshall and Susanne Sreedhar provide an introduction for each author that sets the thinker in his or her time period as well as in the longer debates to which the thinker contributed. Study questions and suggestions for further reading conclude each chapter. At the end of the volume, in addition to a comprehensive subject index, the book includes 13 Syllabus Modules, which will help instructors use the book to easily set up different topically structured courses, such as "The Citizen and the State," "Mind and Matter," "Education," "Theories of Perception," or "Metaphysics of Causation." -/- And an eresource offers a wide range of supplemental online resources, including essay assignments, exams, quizzes, student handouts, reading questions, and scholarly articles on teaching the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Slurring is a kind of hate speech that has various effects. Notable among these is variable offence. Slurs vary in offence across words, uses, and the reactions of audience members. Patterns of offence aren’t adequately explained by current theories. We propose an explanation based on the unjust power imbalance that a slur seeks to achieve. Our starting observation is that in discourse participants take on discourse roles. These are typically inherited from social roles, but only exist during a discourse. A (...) slurring act is a speech-act that alters the discourse roles of the target and speaker. By assigning discourse roles the speaker unjustly changes the power balance in the dialogue. This has a variety of effects on the target and audience. We show how these notions explain all three types of offence variation. We also briefly sketch how a role and power theory can help explain silencing and appropriation. Explanatory power lies in the fact that offence is correlated with the perceived unjustness of the power imbalance created. (shrink)

The question whether AI systems have agency is gaining increasing importance in discussions of responsibility for AI behavior. This paper argues that an approach to artificial agency needs to be teleological, and consider the role of human goals in particular if it is to adequately address the issue of responsibility. I will defend the view that while AI systems can be viewed as autonomous in the sense of identifying or pursuing goals, they rely on human goals and other values incorporated (...) into their design, and are, as such, dependent on human agents. As a consequence, AI systems cannot be held morally responsible, and responsibility attributions should take into account normative and social aspects involved in the design and deployment of the said AI. My argument falls in line with approaches critical of attributing moral agency to artificial agents, but draws from the philosophy of action, highlighting further philosophical underpinnings of current debates on artificial agency. (shrink)

In this paper the authors discuss the continuing dilemma for doctors who have to tell a patient that he has cancer, particularly the moment when he should confirm a diagnosis that most patients have already sensed. For the writers it is most important that the doctor should be a bridge for the patient to return to his everyday world from the physical and spiritual isolation which his disease has created.

Phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve the lived experience of a human community alienated from its truthful condition and immersed in historical crises brought by processes of objectification and estrangement. This introductory article challenges two methodological assumptions that are largely shared in North American Critical Phenomenology: the definition of phenomenology as a first person approach of experience and the rejection of transcendental eidetics. While reflecting on the importance of otherness and community for phenomenology’s critical orientation, we reconsider the importance of eidetics (...) from the standpoint of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, highlighting its historical and contingent character. Contrary to the received view of Husserl’s classical phenomenology as an idealistic and rigid undertaking, we show that his genetic phenomenology is interested in the material formation of meaning (Sinnbildung), offering resources for a phenomenological approach to a materialist social theory. Keywords: critical phenomenology, critical theory, genetic phenomenology, community, normativity. (shrink)

Drawing on recent scholarship and delving systematically into Iamblichean texts, these ten papers establish Iamblichus as the great innovator of Neoplatonic philosophy who broadened its appeal for future generations of philosophers.

Traditional approaches to conflict are oriented towards establishing (or re-establishing) consensus, either in the form of a resolution of the conflict or in the form of an ‘agree-to-disagree’ standstill between the stakeholders. In this paper, we criticize these traditional approaches, each for specific reasons, and we propose and develop the agonistic approach to conflict. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, the agonistic approach to conflict is more welcoming of dissensus, replacing discussion stoppers with discussion starters and replacing standstills with (...) contestation. We illustrate such replacements and develop this approach, we analyse technological conflicts in a concrete R&D setting: the global hydrogen economy. From this context, we focus on the conflict between the proponents of blue hydrogen (drawn from fossil fuels) and those of green hydrogen (created through electrolysis). We conclude by highlighting the advantage of the agonistic approach but also drawing attention to its own specific risk, namely, antagonism. (shrink)

This paper argues that we need to re-think the semantics/pragmatics distinction in the light of new evidence from embedding of irony. This raises a new version of the old problem of ‘embedded implicatures’. I argue that embedded irony isn’t fully explained by solutions proposed for other embedded implicatures. I first consider two strategies: weak pragmatics and strong pragmatics. These explain embedded irony as truth-conditional content. However, by trying to shoehorn irony into said-content, they raise problems of their own. I conclude (...) by considering how a modified Gricean model can explain that irony embeds qua implicature. This leads us to prefer a local implicature model. This has important consequences for how we draw the semantics/pragmatics distinction. (shrink)