In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences (...) affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms. (shrink)

Recent work on interpretability in machine learning and AI has focused on the building of simplified models that approximate the true criteria used to make decisions. These models are a useful pedagogical device for teaching trained professionals how to predict what decisions will be made by the complex system, and most importantly how the system might break. However, when considering any such model it’s important to remember Box’s maxim that "All models are wrong but some are useful." We focus on (...) the distinction between these models and explanations in philosophy and sociology. These models can be understood as a "do it yourself kit" for explanations, allowing a practitioner to directly answer "what if questions" or generate contrastive explanations without external assistance. Although a valuable ability, giving these models as explanations appears more difficult than necessary, and other forms of explanation may not have the same trade-offs. We contrast the different schools of thought on what makes an explanation, and suggest that machine learning might benefit from viewing the problem more broadly. (shrink)

The capacity to collect and analyse data is growing exponentially. Referred to as ‘Big Data’, this scientific, social and technological trend has helped create destabilising amounts of information, which can challenge accepted social and ethical norms. Big Data remains a fuzzy idea, emerging across social, scientific, and business contexts sometimes seemingly related only by the gigantic size of the datasets being considered. As is often the case with the cutting edge of scientific and technological progress, understanding of the ethical implications (...) of Big Data lags behind. In order to bridge such a gap, this article systematically and comprehensively analyses academic literature concerning the ethical implications of Big Data, providing a watershed for future ethical investigations and regulations. Particular attention is paid to biomedical Big Data due to the inherent sensitivity of medical information. By means of a meta-analysis of the literature, a thematic narrative is provided to guide ethicists, data scientists, regulators and other stakeholders through what is already known or hypothesised about the ethical risks of this emerging and innovative phenomenon. Five key areas of concern are identified: informed consent, privacy, ownership, epistemology and objectivity, and ‘Big Data Divides’ created between those who have or lack the necessary resources to analyse increasingly large datasets. Critical gaps in the treatment of these themes are identified with suggestions for future research. Six additional areas of concern are then suggested which, although related have not yet attracted extensive debate in the existing literature. It is argued that they will require much closer scrutiny in the immediate future: the dangers of ignoring group-level ethical harms; the importance of epistemology in assessing the ethics of Big Data; the changing nature of fiduciary relationships that become increasingly data saturated; the need to distinguish between ‘academic’ and ‘commercial’ Big Data practices in terms of potential harm to data subjects; future problems with ownership of intellectual property generated from analysis of aggregated datasets; and the difficulty of providing meaningful access rights to individual data subjects that lack necessary resources. Considered together, these eleven themes provide a thorough critical framework to guide ethical assessment and governance of emerging Big Data practices. (shrink)

Since approval of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016, it has been widely and repeatedly claimed that the GDPR will legally mandate a ‘right to explanation’ of all decisions made by automated or artificially intelligent algorithmic systems. This right to explanation is viewed as an ideal mechanism to enhance the accountability and transparency of automated decision-making. However, there are several reasons to doubt both the legal existence and the feasibility of such a right. In contrast to the (...) right to explanation of specific automated decisions claimed elsewhere, the GDPR only mandates that data subjects receive meaningful, but properly limited, information (Articles 13-15) about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of automated decision-making systems, what we term a ‘right to be informed’. Further, the ambiguity and limited scope of the ‘right not to be subject to automated decision-making’ contained in Article 22 (from which the alleged ‘right to explanation’ stems) raises questions over the protection actually afforded to data subjects. These problems show that the GDPR lacks precise language as well as explicit and well-defined rights and safeguards against automated decision-making, and therefore runs the risk of being toothless. We propose a number of legislative and policy steps that, if taken, may improve the transparency and accountability of automated decision-making when the GDPR comes into force in 2018. (shrink)

To create fair and accountable AI and robotics, we need precise regulation and better methods to certify, explain, and audit inscrutable systems.

In October 2016, the White House, the European Parliament, and the UK House of Commons each issued a report outlining their visions on how to prepare society for the widespread use of artificial intelligence. In this article, we provide a comparative assessment of these three reports in order to facilitate the design of policies favourable to the development of a ‘good AI society’. To do so, we examine how each report addresses the following three topics: the development of a ‘good (...) AI society’; the role and responsibility of the government, the private sector, and the research community in pursuing such a development; and where the recommendations to support such a development may be in need of improvement. Our analysis concludes that the reports address adequately various ethical, social, and economic topics, but come short of providing an overarching political vision and long-term strategy for the development of a ‘good AI society’. In order to contribute to fill this gap, in the conclusion we suggest a two-pronged approach. (shrink)

Personal Health Monitoring (PHM) uses electronic devices which monitor and record health-related data outside a hospital, usually within the home. This paper examines the ethical issues raised by PHM. Eight themes describing the ethical implications of PHM are identified through a review of 68 academic articles concerning PHM. The identified themes include privacy, autonomy, obtrusiveness and visibility, stigma and identity, medicalisation, social isolation, delivery of care, and safety and technological need. The issues around each of these are discussed. The system (...) / lifeworld perspective of Habermas is applied to develop an understanding of the role of PHMs as mediators of communication between the institutional and the domestic environment. Furthermore, links are established between the ethical issues to demonstrate that the ethics of PHM involves a complex network of ethical interactions. The paper extends the discussion of the critical effect PHMs have on the patient’s identity and concludes that a holistic understanding of the ethical issues surrounding PHMs will help both researchers and practitioners in developing effective PHM implementations. (shrink)

The internet of things is increasingly spreading into the domain of medical and social care. Internet-enabled devices for monitoring and managing the health and well-being of users outside of traditional medical institutions have rapidly become common tools to support healthcare. Health-related internet of things (H-IoT) technologies increasingly play a key role in health management, for purposes including disease prevention, real-time tele-monitoring of patient’s functions, testing of treatments, fitness and well-being monitoring, medication dispensation, and health research data collection. H-IoT promises many (...) benefits for health and healthcare. However, it also raises a host of ethical problems stemming from the inherent risks of Internet enabled devices, the sensitivity of health-related data, and their impact on the delivery of healthcare. This paper maps the main ethical problems that have been identified by the relevant literature and identifies key themes in the on-going debate on ethical problems concerning H-IoT. (shrink)

Mature information societies are characterised by mass production of data that provide insight into human behaviour. Analytics has arisen as a practice to make sense of the data trails generated through interactions with networked devices, platforms and organisations. Persistent knowledge describing the behaviours and characteristics of people can be constructed over time, linking individuals into groups or classes of interest to the platform. Analytics allows for a new type of algorithmically assembled group to be formed that does not necessarily align (...) with classes or attributes already protected by privacy and anti-discrimination law or addressed in fairness- and discrimination-aware analytics. Individuals are linked according to offline identifiers and shared behavioural identity tokens, allowing for predictions and decisions to be taken at a group rather than individual level. This article examines the ethical significance of such ad hoc groups in analytics and argues that the privacy interests of algorithmically assembled groups in inviolate personality must be recognised alongside individual privacy rights. Algorithmically grouped individuals have a collective interest in the creation of information about the group, and actions taken on its behalf. Group privacy is proposed as a third interest to balance alongside individual privacy and social, commercial and epistemic benefits when assessing the ethical acceptability of analytics platforms. (shrink)

The conjunction of wireless computing, ubiquitous Internet access, and the miniaturisation of sensors have opened the door for technological applications that can monitor health and well-being outside of formal healthcare systems. The health-related Internet of Things (H-IoT) increasingly plays a key role in health management by providing real-time tele-monitoring of patients, testing of treatments, actuation of medical devices, and fitness and well-being monitoring. Given its numerous applications and proposed benefits, adoption by medical and social care institutions and consumers may be (...) rapid. However, a host of ethical concerns are also raised that must be addressed. The inherent sensitivity of health-related data being generated and latent risks of Internet-enabled devices pose serious challenges. Users, already in a vulnerable position as patients, face a seemingly impossible task to retain control over their data due to the scale, scope and complexity of systems that create, aggregate, and analyse personal health data. In response, the H-IoT must be designed to be technologically robust and scientifically reliable, while also remaining ethically responsible, trustworthy, and respectful of user rights and interests. To assist developers of the H-IoT, this paper describes nine principles and nine guidelines for ethical design of H-IoT devices and data protocols. (shrink)

Empirical research into the ethics of emerging technologies, often involving foresight studies, technology assessment or application of the precautionary principle, raises significant epistemological challenges by failing to explain the relative epistemic status of contentious normative claims about future states. This weakness means that it is unclear why the conclusions reached by these approaches should be considered valid, for example in anticipatory ethical assessment or governance of emerging technologies. This paper explains and responds to this problem by proposing an account of (...) how the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be established in ethical and political discourses based on Jürgen Habermas’ discourse ethics. To better understand the nature of the problem, the relationship between norms, facts and the future is explored in light of potential meta-ethical fallacies faced in the field of empirical ethics. Weaknesses of current approaches to anticipatory ethical assessment and governance are then explored, including the Precautionary Principle and Technology Assessment. We argue that the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be understood within Habermas’ approach to political discourse, which requires ‘translation’ of uncertain claims to be comprehensible to other stakeholders in discourse. Translation thus provides a way to allow for uncertain normative claims to be considered alongside other types of validity claims in discourse. The paper contributes a conceptual account of the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims in discourse and begins to develop a ‘methodology of translation’ which can be further developed for approaches to research and ethical assessment supporting anticipatory evidence-based policy, governance and system design. (shrink)

This paper poses the question of whether people have a duty to participate in digital epidemiology. While an implied duty to participate has been argued for in relation to biomedical research in general, digital epidemiology involves processing of non-medical, granular and proprietary data types that pose different risks to participants. We first describe traditional justifications for epidemiology that imply a duty to participate for the general public, which take account of the immediacy and plausibility of threats, and the identifiability of (...) data. We then consider how these justifications translate to digital epidemiology, understood as an evolution of traditional epidemiology that includes personal and proprietary digital data alongside formal medical datasets. We consider the risks imposed by re-purposing such data for digital epidemiology and propose eight justificatory conditions that should be met in justifying a duty to participate for specific digital epidemiological studies. The conditions are then applied to three hypothetical cases involving usage of social media data for epidemiological purposes. We conclude with a list of questions to be considered in public negotiations of digital epidemiology, including the application of a duty to participate to third-party data controllers, and the important distinction between moral and legal obligations to participate in research. (shrink)

In ‘Represent me: please! Towards an ethics of digital twins in medicine’,1 Braun analyses the potential for simulations of human organs and bodies, or ‘digital twins,’ to faithfully a person. Drawing from several French philosophers, he introduces ‘first conditions for digital twins to take on an ethically justifiable form of representation’.1 The analysis predominantly focuses on challenges that arise in terms of representation, embodiment, control by the patients after which the twin is modelled. Many challenges are posited on the existence (...) of digital twins as autonomous technologies capable of acting on behalf of the patient. One may be reasonably sceptical about the potential to achieve ‘digital twins’ in the near future; the author, to his credit, acknowledges this fact in the section ‘Simulating a precise efficacy’ while still providing a faithful overview of a nascent field of development. Given the state of development described in the paper, the risk of autonomous digital twins in the near future seems remote. There are two clear ethical risks of digital twin which, to my reading, deserve more attention than they receive in Braun’s analysis. Let us refer to these as the ‘near-term’ challenges of digital twins, in the sense that their significance does not turn on the degree of agency or embodiment of digital twins, but rather their mere existence and potential …. (shrink)

In the digital age individuals face key choices about whether and how to share intimate details of their lives, “images of the body, biological data in general and diagnostic information” (Pyrrho,...

Firms are increasingly personalising their offers and services, leading to an ever finer-grained segmentation of consumers online. Targeted online advertising and online price discrimination are salient examples of this development. While personalisation's overall effects on consumer welfare are expectably ambiguous, it can lead to concentration in the distribution of advertising and commercial offers. Constellations are possible in which a market is generally open to competition, but the targeted consumer is only made aware of one possible seller. For the consumer, such (...) a market could effectively resemble a monopoly. We call such extreme cases ‘targeting pockets’. Competition-law metrics such as the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index and traditional means of public oversight of adverts would not detect this concentration. We, therefore, suggest a novel metric, the Concentration-after-Personalisation Index (CAPI). The CAPI treats every consumer as a separate ‘market’, computes a measure of concentration for personalised adverts and offers for each individual consumer separately, and then averages the result to measure the exposure experienced by an average consumer. We demonstrate how the CAPI can serve as a monitoring tool for regulators and auditors and thus help to enforce existing consumer law as well as proposed new regulations such as the European Union's Digital Services Act and its Artificial Intelligence Act. We further show how adding noise via randomly distributed non-personalised adverts can dilute the potential harm of overly concentrated personalisation. We demonstrate how the CAPI can identify the optimal degree of added noise, balancing the protection of consumer choice with the economic interests of advertisers. (shrink)

This book presents cutting edge research on the new ethical challenges posed by biomedical Big Data technologies and practices. 'Biomedical Big Data' refers to the analysis of aggregated, very large datasets to improve medical knowledge and clinical care. The book describes the ethical problems posed by aggregation of biomedical datasets and re-use/re-purposing of data, in areas such as privacy, consent, professionalism, power relationships, and ethical governance of Big Data platforms. Approaches and methods are discussed that can be used to address (...) these problems to achieve the appropriate balance between the social goods of biomedical Big Data research and the safety and privacy of individuals. Seventeen original contributions analyse the ethical, social and related policy implications of the analysis and curation of biomedical Big Data, written by leading experts in the areas of biomedical research, medical and technology ethics, privacy, governance and data protection. The book advances our understanding of the ethical conundrums posed by biomedical Big Data, and shows how practitioners and policy-makers can address these issues going forward. (shrink)

Progress in machine learning and artificial intelligence has spurred the widespread adoption of automated decision systems (ADS). An extensive literature explores what conditions must be met for these systems' decisions to be fair. However, questions of legitimacy -- why those in control of ADS are entitled to make such decisions -- have received comparatively little attention. This paper shows that when such questions are raised theorists often incorrectly conflate legitimacy with either public acceptance or other substantive values such as fairness, (...) accuracy, expertise or efficiency. In search of better theories, we conduct a critical analysis of the philosophical literature on the legitimacy of the state, focusing on consent, public reason, and democratic authorisation. This analysis reveals that the prevailing understanding of legitimacy in analytical political philosophy is also ill-suited to the task of establishing whether and when ADS are legitimate. The paper thus clarifies expectations for theories of ADS legitimacy and charts a path for a future research programme on the topic. (shrink)

Online targeting isolates individual consumers, causing what we call epistemic fragmentation. This phenomenon amplifies the harms of advertising and inflicts structural damage to the public forum. The two natural strategies to tackle the problem of regulating online targeted advertising, increasing consumer awareness and extending proactive monitoring, fail because even sophisticated individual consumers are vulnerable in isolation, and the contextual knowledge needed for effective proactive monitoring remains largely inaccessible to platforms and external regulators. The limitations of both consumer awareness and of (...) proactive monitoring strategies can be attributed to their failure to address epistemic fragmentation. We call attention to a third possibility that we call a civic model of governance for online targeted advertising, which overcomes this problem, and describe four possible pathways to implement this model. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly relied upon by clinicians for making diagnostic and treatment decisions, playing an important role in imaging, diagnosis, risk analysis, lifestyle monitoring, and health information management. While research has identified biases in healthcare AI systems and proposed technical solutions to address these, we argue that effective solutions require human engagement. Furthermore, there is a lack of research on how to motivate the adoption of these solutions and promote investment in designing AI systems that align with values (...) such as transparency and fairness from the outset. Drawing on insights from psychological theories, we assert the need to understand the values that underlie decisions made by individuals involved in creating and deploying AI systems. We describe how this understanding can be leveraged to increase engagement with de-biasing and fairness-enhancing practices within the AI healthcare industry, ultimately leading to sustained behavioral change via autonomy-supportive communication strategies rooted in motivational and social psychology theories. In developing these pathways to engagement, we consider the norms and needs that govern the AI healthcare domain, and we evaluate incentives for maintaining the status quo against economic, legal, and social incentives for behavior change in line with transparency and fairness values. (shrink)

The availability of diverse sources of data related to health and illness from various types of modern communication technology presents the possibility of augmenting medical knowledge, clinical care, and the patient experience. New forms of data collection and analysis will undoubtedly transform epidemiology, public health, and clinical practice, but what ethical considerations come in to play? With a view to analysing the ethical and regulatory dimensions of burgeoning forms of biomedical big data, Brent Daniel Mittelstadt and Luciano Floridi (...) have brought together thirty scholars in an edited volume that forms part of Springer’s Law, Governance and Technology book series in a collection titled The Ethics of Biomedical Big Data. With eighteen chapters partitioned into six carefully devised sections, this volume engages with core theoretical, ethical, and regulatory challenges posed by biomedical big data. (shrink)

The availability of diverse sources of data related to health and illness from various types of modern communication technology presents the possibility of augmenting medical knowledge, clinical care, and the patient experience. New forms of data collection and analysis will undoubtedly transform epidemiology, public health, and clinical practice, but what ethical considerations come in to play? With a view to analysing the ethical and regulatory dimensions of burgeoning forms of biomedical big data, Brent Daniel Mittelstadt and Luciano Floridi (...) have brought together thirty scholars in an edited volume that forms part of Springer’s Law, Governance and Technology book series in a collection titled The Ethics of Biomedical Big Data. With eighteen chapters partitioned into six carefully devised sections, this volume engages with core theoretical, ethical, and regulatory challenges posed by biomedical big data. (shrink)

The work reported in this monograph was begun in the winter of 1967 in a graduate seminar at Berkeley. Many of the basic data were gathered by members of the seminar and the theoretical framework presented here was initially developed in the context of the seminar discussions. Much has been discovered since1969, the date of original publication, regarding the psychophysical and neurophysical determinants of universal, cross-linguistic constraints on the shape of basic color lexicons, and something, albeit less, can now also (...) be said with some confidence regarding the constraining effects of these language-independent processes of color perception and conceptualization on the direction of evolution of basic color term lexicons. (shrink)

We all experience loneliness at some time in our lives and it often motivates people, consciously or otherwise, to enter treatment. Yet it is rarely explicitly addressed in psychoanalytic literature. Loneliness and Longing rectifies this oversight by thoroughly exploring this painful psychological state. In this book contributors address the inner sense of loneliness âe" that is feeling alone even in the company of others âe" by drawing on different aspects of loneliness and longing. Topics covered include: loneliness in the consulting (...) room the relationship between loneliness and love the effects of social networking and the internet how loneliness changes throughout the life-cycle healing the analystâe(tm)s loneliness. Loneliness and Longing draws on both theory and practice to discuss ways to help people to understand and cope with this important emotional state, encouraging them to make loneliness and longing less pervasive in their lives. This will be ideal reading for analysts, psychotherapists, and related practitioners facing the challenges of loneliness in their consulting rooms. (shrink)

For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geographically, but there is an element, religion, that is to be found in all cultures during all time periods. Taking apart this assumption, Brent Nongbri shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from politics, economics, or (...) science is a recent development in European history—a development that has been projected outward in space and backward in time with the result that religion now appears to be a natural and necessary part of our world. Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion. (shrink)

For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geographically, but there is an element, religion, that is to be found in all cultures during all time periods. Taking apart this assumption, Brent Nongbri shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from politics, economics, or (...) science is a recent development in European history—a development that has been projected outward in space and backward in time with the result that religion now appears to be a natural and necessary part of our world. Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion. (shrink)

Income inequality in the US has now reached levels not seen since the 1920s. Management, as a field of scholarly inquiry, has the potential to contribute in significant ways to our understanding of recent inequality trends. We review and assess recent research, both in the management literature and in other fields. We then delineate a conceptual framework that highlights the mechanisms through which business practice may be linked to income inequality. We then outline four general areas in which management scholars (...) are uniquely positioned to contribute to ongoing research: data and description, organizational dynamics, collective action, and value flows and tradeoffs. To stimulate future research, we highlight a number of relevant research questions and link these questions to existing management research streams that could be leveraged to address them. (shrink)

Ethicists are typically willing to grant that thick terms (e.g. ‘courageous’ and ‘murder’) are somehow associated with evaluations. But they tend to disagree about what exactly this relationship is. Does a thick term’s evaluation come by way of its semantic content? Or is the evaluation pragmatically associated with the thick term (e.g. via conversational implicature)? In this paper, I argue that thick terms are semantically associated with evaluations. In particular, I argue that many thick concepts (if not all) conceptually entail (...) evaluative contents. The Semantic View has a number of outspoken critics, but I shall limit discussion to the most recent--Pekka Väyrynen--who believes that objectionable thick concepts present a problem for the Semantic View. After advancing my positive argument in favor of the Semantic View (section II), I argue that Väyrynen’s attack is unsuccessful (section III). One reason ethicists cite for not focusing on thick concepts is that such concepts are supposedly not semantically evaluative whereas traditional thin concepts (e.g. good and wrong) are. But if my view is correct, then this reason must be rejected. (shrink)

Using clear language and numerous examples, each chapter of this guide analyses an individual plateau from Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, interpreting the work for students and scholars.

Two studies tested the relationship between three facets of personality—conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience—as well as moral identity, on individuals’ ethical ideology. Study 1 showed that moral personality and the centralityof moral identity to the self were associated with a more principled (versus expedient) ethical ideology in a sample of female speech therapists. Study 2 replicated these findings in a sample of male and female college students, and showed that ideology mediated therelationship between personality, moral identity, and two organizationally (...) relevant outcomes: organizational citizenship behavior and the propensity to morally disengage. Implications for business ethics are discussed. (shrink)

Two studies tested the relationship between three facets of personality—conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience—as well as moral identity, on individuals’ ethical ideology. Study 1 showed that moral personality and the centralityof moral identity to the self were associated with a more principled (versus expedient) ethical ideology in a sample of female speech therapists. Study 2 replicated these findings in a sample of male and female college students, and showed that ideology mediated therelationship between personality, moral identity, and two organizationally (...) relevant outcomes: organizational citizenship behavior and the propensity to morally disengage. Implications for business ethics are discussed. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new Separabilist account of thick concepts, called the Expansion View (or EV). According to EV, thick concepts are expanded contents of thin terms. An expanded content is, roughly, the semantic content of a predicate along with modifiers. Although EV is a form of Separabilism, it is distinct from the only kind of Separabilism discussed in the literature, and it has many features that Inseparabilists want from an account of thick concepts. EV can also give non-cognitivists a (...) novel escape from the Anti-Disentangling Argument. §I explains the approach of all previous Separabilists, and argues that there’s no reason for Separabilists to take this approach. §II explains EV. §III fends off objections. And §IV explains how non-cognitivist proponents of EV can escape the Anti-Disentangling Argument. (shrink)

A formal theory of quantity T Q is presented which is realist, Platonist, and syntactically second-order (while logically elementary), in contrast with the existing formal theories of quantity developed within the theory of measurement, which are empiricist, nominalist, and syntactically first-order (while logically non-elementary). T Q is shown to be formally and empirically adequate as a theory of quantity, and is argued to be scientifically superior to the existing first-order theories of quantity in that it does not depend upon empirically (...) unsupported assumptions concerning existence of physical objects (e.g. that any two actual objects have an actual sum). The theory T Q supports and illustrates a form of naturalistic Platonism, for which claims concerning the existence and properties of universals form part of natural science, and the distinction between accidental generalizations and laws of nature has a basis in the second-order structure of the world. (shrink)

The discharge of older people from hospital at night is a topical and emotive issue that has recently gained media attention in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, including calls to prevent it occurring. With growing pressures on hospital capacity and ageing populations, normative aspects of hospital discharge are increasingly relevant. This paper therefore addresses the question: Should older people (say, over eighty years old) ever be discharged home from hospital during the night? Or given safety concerns, should regulation against (...) the night-time discharge of older people be put in place? Employing a principlist lens to bioethics, this paper considers key principles or values involved, including discharge safety concerns, personal preference and consent, the risk of remaining in hospital, and broader considerations around discharge policy. These points act as a possible framework for further research and discussion of normative aspects of hospital discharge. Overall, this paper argues that while discharge safety concerns must be properly acknowledged and addressed, it can still sometimes be appropriate for an older person to leave hospital at night. The option of night-time discharge should therefore remain open to people of all ages. (shrink)

The concept of individuality as applied to species, an important advance in the philosophy of evolutionary biology, is nevertheless in need of refinement. Four important subparts of this concept must be recognized: spatial boundaries, temporal boundaries, integration, and cohesion. Not all species necessarily meet all of these. Two very different types of pluralism have been advocated with respect to species, only one of which is satisfactory. An often unrecognized distinction between grouping and ranking components of any species concept is necessary. (...) A phylogenetic species concept is advocated that uses a grouping criterion of monophyly in a cladistic sense, and a ranking criterion based on those causal processes that are most important in producing and maintaining lineages in a particular case. Such causal processes can include actual interbreeding, selective constraints, and developmental canalization. The widespread use of the biological species concept is flawed for two reasons: because of a failure to distinguish grouping from ranking criteria and because of an unwarranted emphasis on the importance of interbreeding as a universal causal factor controlling evolutionary diversification. The potential to interbreed is not in itself a process; it is instead a result of a diversity of processes which result in shared selective environments and common developmental programs. These types of processes act in both sexual and asexual organisms, thus the phylogenetic species concept can reflect an underlying unity that the biological species concept can not. (shrink)

On the Use and Abuse of Foucault for Politics provides an accessible interpretation of Foucault's political philosophy, demonstrating how Foucault is relevant for contemporary democratic theory. Brent Pickett lays out an overview of Foucault's politics, including a comprehensive overview of the reasons for various conflicting interpretations, and then explores how well the different "Foucaults" can be used in progressive politics and democratic theory.

I argue that the Standard View of ignorance is at odds with the claim that knowledge entails truth. In particular, if knowledge entails truth then we cannot explain away some apparent absurdities that arise from the Standard View of ignorance. I then discuss a modified version of the Standard View, which simply adds a truth requirement to the original Standard View. I show that the two main arguments for the original Standard View fail to support this modified view.

We study large cardinal properties associated with Ramseyness in which homogeneous sets are demanded to satisfy various transfinite degrees of indescribability. Sharpe and Welch [25], and independently Bagaria [1], extended the notion of $\Pi ^1_n$ -indescribability where $n<\omega $ to that of $\Pi ^1_\xi $ -indescribability where $\xi \geq \omega $. By iterating Feng’s Ramsey operator [12] on the various $\Pi ^1_\xi $ -indescribability ideals, we obtain new large cardinal hierarchies and corresponding nonlinear increasing hierarchies of normal ideals. We provide (...) a complete account of the containment relationships between the resulting ideals and show that the corresponding large cardinal properties yield a strict linear refinement of Feng’s original Ramsey hierarchy. We isolate Ramsey properties which provide strictly increasing hierarchies between Feng’s $\Pi _\alpha $ -Ramsey and $\Pi _{\alpha +1}$ -Ramsey cardinals for all odd $\alpha <\omega $ and for all $\omega \leq \alpha <\kappa $. We also show that, given any ordinals $\beta _0,\beta _1<\kappa $ the increasing chains of ideals obtained by iterating the Ramsey operator on the $\Pi ^1_{\beta _0}$ -indescribability ideal and the $\Pi ^1_{\beta _1}$ -indescribability ideal respectively, are eventually equal; moreover, we identify the least degree of Ramseyness at which this equality occurs. As an application of our results we show that one can characterize our new large cardinal notions and the corresponding ideals in terms of generic elementary embeddings; as a special case this yields generic embedding characterizations of $\Pi ^1_\xi $ -indescribability and Ramseyness. (shrink)

The weakly compact reflection principle\\) states that \ is a weakly compact cardinal and every weakly compact subset of \ has a weakly compact proper initial segment. The weakly compact reflection principle at \ implies that \ is an \-weakly compact cardinal. In this article we show that the weakly compact reflection principle does not imply that \ is \\)-weakly compact. Moreover, we show that if the weakly compact reflection principle holds at \ then there is a forcing extension preserving (...) this in which \ is the least \-weakly compact cardinal. Along the way we generalize the well-known result which states that if \ is a regular cardinal then in any forcing extension by \-c.c. forcing the nonstationary ideal equals the ideal generated by the ground model nonstationary ideal; our generalization states that if \ is a weakly compact cardinal then after forcing with a ‘typical’ Easton-support iteration of length \ the weakly compact ideal equals the ideal generated by the ground model weakly compact ideal. (shrink)

The numerical representations of measurement, geometry and kinematics are here subsumed under a general theory of representation. The standard theories of meaningfulness of representational propositions in these three areas are shown to be special cases of two theories of meaningfulness for arbitrary representational propositions: the theories based on unstructured and on structured representation respectively. The foundations of the standard theories of meaningfulness are critically analyzed and two basic assumptions are isolated which do not seem to have received adequate justification: the (...) assumption that a proposition invariant under the appropriate group is therefore meaningful, and the assumption that representations should be unique up to a transformation of the appropriate group. A general theory of representational meaningfulness is offered, based on a semantic and syntactic analysis of representational propositions. Two neglected features of representational propositions are formalized and made use of: (a) that such propositions are induced by more general propositions defined for other structures than the one being represented, and (b) that the true purpose of representation is the application of the theory of the representing system to the represented system. On the basis of these developments, justifications are offered for the two problematic assumptions made by the existing theories. (shrink)

Despite recent controversies surrounding the principle that knowledge entails truth (KT), this paper aims to prove that the principle is true. It offers a proof of (KT) in the following sense. It advances a deductively valid argument for (KT), whose premises are, by most lights, obviously true. Moreover, each premise is buttressed by at least two supporting arguments. And finally, all premises and supporting arguments can be rationally accepted by people who don’t already accept (KT).