We present a logic which we call Hybrid Duration Calculus. HDC is obtained by adding the following hybrid logical machinery to the Restricted Duration Calculus : nominals, satisfaction operators, down-arrow binder, and the global modality. RDC is known to be decidable, and in this paper we show that decidability is retained when adding the hybrid logical machinery. Decidability of HDC is shown by reducing the satisfiability problem to satisfiability of Monadic Second-Order Theory of Order. We illustrate the increased expressive power (...) obtained in hybridizing RDC by showing that HDC, in contrast to RDC, can express all of the 13 possible relations between intervals. (shrink)

Pluralistic ignorance is a socio-psychological phenomenon that involves a systematic discrepancy between people’s private beliefs and public behavior in certain social contexts. Recently, pluralistic ignorance has gained increased attention in formal and social epistemology. But to get clear on what precisely a formal and social epistemological account of pluralistic ignorance should look like, we need answers to at least the following two questions: What exactly is the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance? And can the phenomenon arise among perfectly rational agents? In (...) this paper, we propose answers to both these questions. First, we characterize different versions of pluralistic ignorance and define the version that we claim most adequately captures the examples cited as paradigmatic cases of pluralistic ignorance in the literature. In doing so, we will stress certain key epistemic and social interactive aspects of the phenomenon. Second, given our characterization of pluralistic ignorance, we argue that the phenomenon can indeed arise in groups of perfectly rational agents. This, in turn, ensures that the tools of formal epistemology can be fully utilized to reason about pluralistic ignorance. (shrink)

In many social contexts, social influence seems to be inescapable: the behavior of others influences us to modify ours, and vice-versa. However, social psychology is full of examples of phenomena where individuals experience a discrepancy between their public behavior and their private opinion. This raises two central questions. First, how does an individual reason about the behavior of others and their private opinions in situations of social influence? And second, what are the laws of the resulting information dynamics? In this (...) paper, we address these questions by introducing a formal framework for representing reasoning about an individual’s private opinions and public behavior under the dynamics of social influence in social networks. Moreover, we dig deeper into the involved information dynamics by modeling how individuals can learn about each other based on this reasoning. This compels us to introduce a new formal notion of reflective social influence. Finally, we initialize the work on proof theory and automated reasoning for our framework by introducing a sound and complete tableaux system for a fragment of our logic. Furthermore, this constitutes the first tableau system for the “Facebook logic” of J. Seligman, F. Liu, and P. Girard. (shrink)

Our beliefs and opinions are shaped by others, making our social networks crucial in determining what we believe to be true. Sometimes this is for the good because our peers help us form a more accurate opinion. Sometimes it is for the worse because we are led astray. In this context, we address via agent-based computer simulations the extent to which patterns of connectivity within our social networks affect the likelihood that initially undecided agents in a network converge on a (...) true opinion following group deliberation. The model incorporates a fine-grained and realistic representation of belief and trust, and it allows agents to consult outside information sources. We study a wide range of network structures and provide a detailed statistical analysis concerning the exact contribution of various network metrics to collective competence. Our results highlight and explain the collective risks involved in an overly networked or partitioned society. Specifically, we find that 96% of the variation in collective competence across networks can be attributed to differences in amount of connectivity and clustering, which are negatively correlated with collective competence. A study of bandwagon or “group think” effects indicates that both connectivity and clustering increase the probability that the network, wholly or partly, locks into a false opinion. Our work is interestingly related to Gerhard Schurz’s work on meta-induction and can be seen as broadly addressing a practical limitation of his approach. (shrink)

We propose a new dynamic hybrid logic to reason about social networks and their dynamics building on the work of “Logic in the Community” by Seligman, Liu and Girard. Our framework distinguishes between the purely private sphere of agents, namely their mental states, and the public sphere of their observable behavior, i.e., what they seem to believe. We then show how such a distinction allows our framework to model many social phenomena, by presenting the case of pluralistic ignorance as an (...) example and discussing some of its dynamic properties. (shrink)

This paper introduces a general logical framework for reasoning about diffusion processes within social networks. The new “Logic for Diffusion in Social Networks” is a dynamic extension of standard hybrid logic, allowing to model complex phenomena involving several properties of agents. We provide a complete axiomatization and a terminating and complete tableau system for this logic and show how to apply the framework to diffusion phenomena documented in social networks analysis.

Throughout the last decade, there has been an increased interest in various forms of dynamic epistemic logics to model the flow of information and the effect this flow has on knowledge in multi-agent systems. This enterprise, however, has mostly been applicationally and semantically driven. This results in a limited amount of proof theory for dynamic epistemic logics. In this paper, we try to compensate for a part of this by presenting terminating tableau systems for full dynamic epistemic logic with action (...) models and for a hybrid public announcement logic. The tableau systems are extensions of already existing tableau systems, in addition to which we have used the reduction axioms of dynamic epistemic logic to define rules for the dynamic part of the logics. Termination is shown using methods introduced by Braüner, Bolander, and Blackburn. (shrink)

According to popular belief, big data and machine learning provide a wholly novel approach to science that has the potential to revolutionise scientific progress and will ultimately lead to the ‘end of theory’. Proponents of this view argue that advanced algorithms are able to mine vast amounts of data relating to a given problem without any prior knowledge and that we do not need to concern ourselves with causality, as correlation is sufficient for handling complex issues. Consequently, the human contribution (...) to scientific progress is deemed to be non-essential and replaceable. We, however, following the position most commonly represented in the philosophy of science, argue that the need for human expertise remains. Based on an analysis of big data and machine learning methods in two case studies—skin cancer detection and protein folding—we show that expert knowledge is essential and inherent in the application of these methods. Drawing on this analysis, we establish a classification of the different kinds of expert knowledge that are involved in the application of big data and machine learning in scientific contexts. We address the ramifications of a human-driven expert knowledge approach to big data and machine learning for scientific practice and the discussion about the role of theory. Finally, we show that the ways in which big data and machine learning both influence and are influenced by scientific methodology involve continuous conceptual shifts rather than a rigid paradigm change. (shrink)

This paper introduces a logic to reason about a well-known model of opinion dynamics in socialnetworks initially developed by Morris DeGroot as well as Keith Lehrer and Carl Wagner. The proposed logic is an extension of Lukasiewicz' famous fuzzy logic with additional equational expressivity, modal operators, machinery from hybrid logic, and dynamic modalities. The model of opinion dynamics in social networks is simple enough to be easily grasped, but still complex enough to have interesting mathematical properties and applications. Thus, developing (...) a logic to reason about this particular model serves as a paradigmatic example of how logic can be useful in social network analysis. (shrink)

``Pluralistic ignorance'' is a phenomenon mainly studied in social psychology. Viewed as an epistemic phenomenon, one way to define it is as a situation where ``no one believes, but everyone believes that everyone else believes''. In this paper various versions of pluralistic ignorance are formalized using epistemic/doxastic logic. The motive is twofold. Firstly, the formalizations are used to show that the various versions of pluralistic ignorance are all consistent, thus there is nothing in the phenomenon that necessarily goes against logic. (...) Secondly, pluralistic ignorance, is on many occasions, assumed to be fragile. In this paper, however, it is shown that pluralistic ignorance need not be fragile to announcements of the agents' beliefs. Hence, to dissolve pluralistic ignorance in general, something more than announcements of the subjective views of the agents is needed. Finally, suggestions to further research are outlined. (shrink)

In this paper the machinery of Hybrid Logic and the logic of public announcements are merged. In order to bring the two logics together properly the underlying hybrid logic has been changed such that nominals only partially denote states. The hybrid logic contains nominals, satisfaction operators, the downarrow binder as well as the global modality. Following this, an axiom system for the Hybrid Public Announcement Logic is presented and using reduction axioms general completeness is proved. The general completeness allows for (...) an easy way of adding distributed knowledge. Furthermore, it turns out that distributed knowledge is definable using satisfaction operators and the downarrow binder. (shrink)

In this paper a first-order version of hybrid logic is presented. The language is obtained by adding nominals, satisfaction operators and the down-arrow binder to classical first-order modal logic. The satisfaction operators are applied to both formulas and terms. Moreover adding the universal modality is discussed. This first-order hybrid language is interpreted over varying domains and a sound and complete, fully internalized tableau system for this logic is given.

In this paper we define a family of many-valued semantics for hybrid logic, where each semantics is based on a finite Heyting algebra of truth-values. We provide sound and complete tableau systems for these semantics. Moreover, we show how the tableau systems can be made terminating and thereby give rise to decision procedures for the logics in question. Our many-valued hybrid logics turn out to be "intermediate" logics between intuitionistic hybrid logic and classical hybrid logic in a specific sense explained (...) in the paper. Our results show that many-valued hybrid logic is indeed a natural enterprise. (shrink)

In this paper we define a family of many-valued semantics for hybrid logic, where each semantics is based on a finite Heyting algebra of truth-values. We provide sound and complete tableau systems for these semantics. Moreover, we show how the tableau systems can be made terminating and thereby give rise to decision procedures for the logics in question. Our many-valued hybrid logics turn out to be "intermediate" logics between intuitionistic hybrid logic and classical hybrid logic in a specific sense explained (...) in the paper. Our results show that many-valued hybrid logic is indeed a natural enterprise. (shrink)

Dynamic Epistemic Logic is claimed to be a dynamic version of epistemic logic. While this being true, there are several dynamical aspects that cannot be reasoned about in Dynamic Epistemic Logic. When a scenario is fixed and a possible world model representing the scenario is constructed, the possible future ways the system can evolve are in some sense already determined. For instance no new agents can enter the scenario and no new propositional facts can become relevant. This modeling perspective is (...) the main motivation for the partial version of Dynamic Epistemic Logic introduced in this paper, which in particular, allows for the set of agents and the set of propositional variables to change. (shrink)

In this paper the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance is discussed and it is argued why it is of relevance for epistemic logic and social psychology. Roughly put, pluralistic ignorance is the case when a group of interacting agents all experience a discrepancy between their private opinions and the perceived opinions of the others. After introducing the phenomenon, numerous features of pluralistic ignorance that are of interest for epistemic logic and social epistemology, are discussed. This discussion serves two purposes: It recaps (...) the existing research on pluralistic ignorance within epistemic logic and social epistemology, while at the same time stating open problems for social epistemology and epistemic logic that pertains to the study of pluralistic ignorance. Finally, it is argued that the features of pluralistic ignorance of interest to epistemic logic and social epistemology relate to general features of information dynamics in situations of social interaction. (shrink)

Knowledge on regulatory relations, in for example regulatory pathways in biology, is used widely in experiment design by biomedical researchers and in systems biology. The knowledge has typically either been represented through simple graphs or through very expressive differential equation simulations of smaller sections of a pathway. As an alternative, in this work we suggest a knowledge representation of the most basic relations in regulatory processes regulates, positively regulates and negatively regulates in logics based on a semantic analysis. We discuss (...) the usage of these relations in biology and in artificial intelligence for hypothesis development in drug discovery. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the social herding phenomenon known as informational cascades, in which sequential inter-agent communication might lead to epistemic failures at group level, despite availability of information that should be sufficient to track the truth. We model an example of a cascade, and check the correctness of the individual reasoning of each agent involved, using two alternative logical settings: an existing probabilistic dynamic epistemic logic, and our own novel logic for counting evidence. Based on this analysis, we (...) conclude that cascades are not only likely to occur but are sometimes unavoidable by "rational" means: in some situations, the group’s inability to track the truth is the direct consequence of each agent’s rational attempt at individual truth-tracking. Moreover, our analysis shows that this is even so when rationality includes unbounded higher-order reasoning powers, as well as when it includes simpler, non-Bayesian forms of heuristic reasoning. (shrink)

An algebra is effective if its operations are computable under some numbering. When are two numberings of an effective partial algebra equivalent? For example, the computable real numbers form an effective field and two effective numberings of the field of computable reals are equivalent if the limit operator is assumed to be computable in the numberings . To answer the question for effective algebras in general, we give a general method based on an algebraic analysis of approximations by elements of (...) a finitely generated subalgebra. Commonly, the computable elements of a topological partial algebra are derived from such a finitely generated algebra and form a countable effective partial algebra. We apply the general results about partial algebras to the recursive reals, ultrametric algebras constructed by inverse limits, and to metric algebras in general. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim. (shrink)

During the past decades, research collaboration between researchers from different disciplines has become more frequent. However, there is a need to look into the generic modalities and challenges. The article explores a series of potential obstructions to cross-disciplinary collaboration of methodological and epistemological nature. Furthermore, a number of contextual, inhibiting factors are outlined. As means of overcoming the obstacles, the importance of mutual knowledge, allocation of adequate time and conducive research management is emphasised. New teams may benefit from tutoring by (...) facilitators, who can help to make problem areas explicit and negotiate solutions. Owing to the training background of the author, most of the examples are drawn from the interface between biomedicine/natural science and applied medical anthropology. However, the issues raised basically apply to all sorts of cross-disciplinary research collaboration in various combinations. (shrink)

In recent decades there has been increasing demand for and considerable efforts to conduct cross-disciplinary research. However, assessment of research quality in such endeavours still is often based on mono-disciplinary criteria and not seldom carried out by reviewers without strong cross-disciplinary experience. The authors suggest a two-pronged approach to cross-disciplinary research evaluation. One part should comprise an individual review of all the disciplines involved based on their mono-disciplinary sets of criteria. The other part should be a separate evaluation of the (...) cross-disciplinary aspects based on the review of “problem formulation”, “integration and scope of the disciplines”, “parts and the whole”, “practical managerial aspects” and “the applied aspects”. The pros and cons of implementing this approach in a stepwise manner or simultaneously is discussed. It is suggested that funding agencies develop more fair sets of review procedures for cross-disciplinary research and show willingness to allocate extra funds and time to such forms of research that sometimes are regarded as relatively more “risky” than conventional mono-disciplinary types. (shrink)

In recent decades there has been increasing demand for and considerable efforts to conduct cross-disciplinary research. However, assessment of research quality in such endeavours still is often based on mono-disciplinary criteria and not seldom carried out by reviewers without strong cross-disciplinary experience. The authors suggest a two-pronged approach to cross-disciplinary research evaluation. One part should comprise an individual review of all the disciplines involved based on their mono-disciplinary sets of criteria. The other part should be a separate evaluation of the (...) cross-disciplinary aspects based on the review of “problem formulation”, “integration and scope of the disciplines”, “parts and the whole”, “practical managerial aspects” and “the applied aspects”. The pros and cons of implementing this approach in a stepwise manner or simultaneously is discussed. It is suggested that funding agencies develop more fair sets of review procedures for cross-disciplinary research and show willingness to allocate extra funds and time to such forms of research that sometimes are regarded as relatively more “risky” than conventional mono-disciplinary types. (shrink)

The appeal to expert opinion is an argument form that uses the verdict of an expert to support a position or hypothesis. A previous scheme-based treatment of the argument form is formalized within a Bayesian network that is able to capture the critical aspects of the argument form, including the central considerations of the expert's expertise and trustworthiness. We propose this as an appropriate normative framework for the argument form, enabling the development and testing of quantitative predictions as to how (...) people evaluate this argument, suggesting that such an approach might be beneficial to argumentation research generally. We subsequently present two experiments as an example of the potential for future research in this vein, demonstrating that participants' quantitative ratings of the convincingness of a proposition that has been supported with an appeal to expert opinion were broadly consistent with the predictions of the Bayesian model. (shrink)

Growing evidence suggests that natural environments – whether in outdoor or indoor settings – foster psychological health and physiological relaxation, indicated by increased wellbeing, reduced stress levels, and increased parasympathetic activity. Greater insight into differential psychological aspects modulating psychophysiological responses to nature-based relaxation videos could help understand modes of action and develop personalized relaxation interventions. We investigated heart rate variability as an indicator of autonomic regulation, specifically parasympathetic activity, in response to a 10-min video intervention in two consecutive studies as (...) well as heart rate. We hypothesized that a nature-based relaxation video elicits HRV increase and HR decrease, with response magnitude being affected by aspects of early life adversity and trait mindfulness. In Study 1, N = 60 participants watched a relaxation video intervention depicting different natural scenery. We analyzed changes in HR and respiratory sinus arrhythmia as a standard HRV measure, both based on 3-min segments from the experimental session, in multiple growth curve models. We found a decrease in HR and increase of RSA during the video intervention. Higher paternal care and lower trait mindfulness observing skills were associated with higher RSA values before but not during video exposure. In Study 2, N = 90 participants were assigned to three video conditions: natural scenery from Study 1, meditation video, or short clip from “The Lord of the Rings.” Again, HR decreased, and RSA increased during video segments, yet without expected group differences across different video types. We found higher parental care and lower parental overprotection to predict higher RSA at different times during the experiment. Interestingly, lower paternal overprotection predicted overall higher RSA. These results suggest a generic relaxation effect of video interventions on autonomic regulation that we discuss in light of different theories mapping restorative effects of natural environments. Further, psychological characteristics like aspects of early life adversity and trait mindfulness could contribute to individual differences in autonomic regulation. This study contributes to a better understanding of autonomic and psychological responses to relaxation videos. (shrink)

This article discusses ethnoveterinary medical pluralism in Western Kenya. Qualitative methods of data collection such as key informant interviews, open-ended in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), narratives, and participant and direct observations were applied. The study shows that farmers in Nyang’oma seek both curative and preventive medical services for their animals from the broad range of health care providers available to them within a pluralistic medical system. Kleinman’s model of medical pluralism, which describes the professional, folk, and popular sectors, informs (...) this discussion because of its relevance and appropriateness to the study. It is, however, important to note the overlap in the three sectors and to point out that livestock farmers engage in multiple “consultations” based on a combination of their own characteristics and the cost, availability and specialization of health care providers. The study concludes by recognizing the complexity of ethnoveterinary medical pluralism and calls for the integration of a pluralistic perspective into the planning and implementation of animal health care interventions and services. (shrink)

It appears to be a feature of our ordinary understanding of morality that we ought not to act in certain ways at all. We ought not to kill, torture, deceive, break our promises (say)—exceptional circumstances apart. Many moral duties are thought of in this way. Killing another person would be wrong even if it achieved a great good, and even if it led to preventing the deaths of several others. This feature of moral thinking is at the core of deontological (...) ethics. But while it is also part and parcel of ordinary moral thought, it seems puzzling, because it requires an agent to act (or to abstain from acting) in certain ways, even if by violating the duty she could achieve a better outcome in terms of the very restriction that she is required to heed. If the explanation of the duty not to kill were that it preserves human life it would be hard to understand why killing is not morally permitted when it leads to preserving a greater number of lives. Moreover, why should we not violate a restriction if doing so leads to fewer violations of that very restriction? There are two questions here. (1) Why not violate a restriction whose point it is to preserve lives, if doing so leads to preserving a greater number of lives? (2) Why not violate a restriction if doing so minimizes the violation of that very restriction? The latter question concerns what is sometimes called ‘the paradox of deontology’ or the problem of ‘minimizing violations’. The former may concern the so-called trolley cases, for instance. After all, a trolley hurtling towards a number of innocent people is not about to violate the moral restriction on killing innocent people, as it is not the kind of thing that can be subject to such a restriction. In this paper I am concerned only with (2): the paradox of deontology. To put it in Nozick’s terms: ‘How can a concern for the nonviolation of C [i.e. some deontological constraint] lead to refusal to violate C even when this would prevent other more extensive violations of C? -/- Samuel Scheffler, puzzled by the same idea, put it in terms of ‘agent-centred restrictions’ (ACR), because the restriction requires an agent (not) to act in certain ways, contrasting thereby with a requirement that certain actions not be done. The restriction is thus an agent-relative rather than an agent-neutral one. Scheffler ended up rejecting the idea of agent-centred restrictions, as even on close investigation the puzzle would not dissolve. Scheffler maintains that ACRs have ‘an air of paradox’ to them, as they violate what he calls maximizing rationality. ACRs appear to clash with the idea of maximizing rationality, because they require an agent to choose the option that worse achieves her goal of not harming people. I call this, following common parlance, the paradox of deontology, even though it is not strictly speaking a paradox. Exploring whether there is really a problem here, and how it might be solved, is the main objective of this paper. I begin by explaining the puzzlement about agent-centred restrictions in more detail. I then discuss promising as an example of a kind of action which is thought to be subject to agent-centred restrictions. It turns out that they are surprisingly easy to explain. The difficult case is killing—and that should put us on guard. I argue that the problem is not with the very idea of deontological restrictions, but with puzzling aspects of the ethics of killing. (shrink)

If you injure me, it matters morally whether it was an accident or you did it intentionally, and whether you did it because you thought it would be fun. I take it that any ethical theory will have to include some explanation of why this is. There are two dominant views in the current debate about the moral significance of an agent’s intentions: The one is that the intention with which someone acts at least sometimes determines whether what she does (...) is right or wrong (permissible or impermissible). Proponents of the so-called doctrine of double-effect (DDE) hold that an action which has certain bad outcomes may be permissible if the bad consequences are only foreseen, even if the same action would be morally wrong if they were intended as a means. This is not the only way in which intentions could make a difference to an action’s permissibility, but it is the best-known defense that they do. According to the second view, intentions don’t matter in this way: they do not determine the permissibility of an action. They do matter, but in a different dimension of normative assessment: They determine whether the agent is a good or a bad person; or alternatively: they determine the “moral worth” of an action or its “meaning”, including its praiseworthiness or blameworthiness , or the severity of a wrong-doing. The main thesis is what Thomson called “The Irrelevance-of-Intentions-to-Permissibility Thesis” (for short: IIP) -/- [IIP] “It is irrelevant to the question whether X may do alpha what intention X would do alpha with if he or she did it.” -/- IIP is driven in part by skepticism about DDE: since – according to proponents of IIP - DDE is false, we must explain the relevance of intentions and reasons in a different way. Proponents of IIP tend not to consider the possibility that intentions might matter to permissibility in ways that are different from DDE. In this paper I do not focus on the arguments for or against DDE, but investigate IIP itself more closely, and look at some of the arguments for and against it. (shrink)

The buck-passing account of value (BPA) is very fertile ground that has given rise to a number of interpretations and controversies. It has originally been proposed by T.M. Scanlon as an analysis of value: according to it, being good ‘is not a property that itself provides a reason to respond to a thing in certain ways. Rather, to be good or valuable is to have other properties that constitute such reasons’. Buck-passing stands in a complicated relation to the fitting-attitude analysis (...) of normativity that reaches back to the work of Brentano and Ewing. Proponents of FA-analysis hold that, as a matter of the conceptual analysis of ‘good’, something is good if it is fitting to have pro-attitudes of a certain kind towards it. The ambition of FA-analysis is to explain all practical normativity in terms of the fittingness of attitudes, which – while being itself a normative concept – is the only normative concept which grounds all others. Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen welcomed BPA as a contemporary version of FA-analysis, and others have followed this suggestion. But whether BPA should be regarded as a version of FA-analysis is a moot point. In section I, I show that BPA is not as obviously a successor of the fitting-attitude analysis of value as some have thought. The much discussed wrong-kind-of-reasons (for short: WKR) problem afflicts buck-passing only in so far as it incorporates a version of FA analysis, or at any rate is expressed in terms of reasons for attitudes. There can be a buck-passing account of value which is not affected by the problem: one that limits the account to reasons for actions (rather than attitudes). However, insofar as BPA does inherit elements of FA analysis, it also has a WKR problem. In section II, I discuss this problem and its solution. I show that it has been misidentified in the current literature, and that – once we understand the problem correctly – its solution is likely to be unavailable to the buck-passer. Hence we should reject any account of BPA that incorporates FA analysis. That leaves us with versions which do not: versions that formulate BPA in terms of reasons for actions only, rather than reasons for attitudes. Finally, in section III, I discuss why buck-passing seemed to be appealing to begin with, and whether a version of BPA that does not incorporate FA analysis is a viable contender of the account – beyond the WKR problem. (shrink)

Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood neuropsychiatric disorder characterised by the presence of motor and vocal tics. Patients with malignant TS experience severe disease sequelae; risking morbidity and mortality due to tics, self-harm, psychiatric comorbidities and suicide. By definition, those cases termed ‘malignant’ are refractory to all conventional psychiatric and pharmacological regimens. In these instances, deep brain stimulation (DBS) may be efficacious. Current 2015 guidelines recommend a 6-month period absent of suicidal ideation before DBS is offered to (...) patients with TS. We therefore wondered whether it may be ethically justifiable to offer DBS to a minor with malignant TS. We begin with a discussion of non-maleficence and beneficence. New evidence suggests that suicide risk in young patients with TS has been underestimated. In turn, DBS may represent an invaluable opportunity for children with malignant TS to secure future safety, independence and fulfilment. Postponing treatment is associated with additional risks. Ultimately, we assert this unique risk-benefit calculus justifies offering DBS to paediatric patients with malignant TS. A multidisciplinary team of clinicians must determine whether DBS is in the best interest of their individual patients. We conclude with a suggestion for future TS-DBS guidelines regarding suicidal ideation. The importance of informed consent and assent is underscored. (shrink)

The main questions in philosophical research on attention concern its nature and impact. Regarding its nature, one might ask what sort of thing attention is; regarding its impact, one might ask what sort of thing attention does. While these questions have been asked by philosophers for thousands of years, they have had a resurgence in recent years due to advancements in the cognitive and neural sciences. This chapter will cover some historical context as prelude to a discussion of the contemporary (...) debates, ending with issues that are as of yet still on the horizon. Topics covered include the divide between voluntary/involuntary, endogenous/exogenous, and top-down/bottom-up attention; the Posner cueing task; Treisman and the binding problem; Mack and Rock on inattentional blindness; Grassia, Campbell, and Dickie on attention, perception, and knowledge; the debate between Block, Dehaene, and others on consciousness and attention; Wu on attention and action; and future directions for attention research in predictive processing models, neuroethics, technology, and addiction. (shrink)

Advanced AI systems are rapidly making their way into medical research and practice, and, arguably, it is only a matter of time before they will surpass human practitioners in terms of accuracy, reliability, and knowledge. If this is true, practitioners will have a prima facie epistemic and professional obligation to align their medical verdicts with those of advanced AI systems. However, in light of their complexity, these AI systems will often function as black boxes: the details of their contents, calculations, (...) and procedures cannot be meaningfully understood by human practitioners. When AI systems reach this level of complexity, we can also speak of black-box medicine. In this paper, we want to argue that black-box medicine conflicts with core ideals of patient-centered medicine. In particular, we claim, black-box medicine is not conducive for supporting informed decision-making based on shared information, shared deliberation, and shared mind between practitioner and patient. (shrink)

In his seminal paper, “Moral Luck,” Bernard Williams begins to develop an account of responsibility for unintentional aspects of our agency. It rests on a crucial distinction of success and failure, internal or external to an agent’s project. I argue that a success which results from conditions that are internal to a project is not a lucky success, nor is a failure which results from something that is internal to the project just unlucky. There is no internal luck. Responsibility-defying luck (...) is always external. An important result of this exploration is that Williams’s view opens a path for understanding responsibility neither as being concerned with reactive attitudes such as indignation or blame, nor in a common rationalist way as being based on an agent’s reason-responsiveness. Instead, responsibility depends on how a person’s actions relate to the exercise of her abilities in the pursuit of her projects and how they are integrated into her life. (shrink)

In this paper, I comment on Waismann’s view of ‘motivational explanations’ as he develops it in his unfinished, posthumously published essay ‘Will and Motive’. According to a traditional view, when we act, the motive is an internal psychological state of which we can know through introspection, and it triggers or causes the action. Thus the motive causally explains an independent event which is the action. As Waismann sees it, everything here is false. The motive is (1) not an internal psychological (...) state. (2) We do not know it through introspection. (3) It does not trigger an action, and (4) there is no causal explanation in which the motive is the cause and the action the effect. I analyze Waismann’s arguments for these claims and work out his positive view. Waismann draws our attention to two features: the uncertainty and instability of motives, and the fact that they are often ascribed on the basis of the action even when the agent wasn’t aware of them prior to acting. Might this hold only for certain motives: viz. ‘Triebfedern’ (drives), in particular those that are unconscious, but not for motives in the sense of ‘Beweggrund’ (reason, purpose)? If action explanations in the light of an agent’s purposes or reasons are unaffected by Waismann’s arguments for the instability and uncertainty of motives, then perhaps the traditional view would not be false for this kind of explanation: it is not uncertain, or unstable. However, I understand Waismann as trying to show (in particular through his interpretation of Dostojevki’s Raskolnikov) that even if a reason for which a person acts or a purpose is something that the agent is aware of prior to action, we get the same kind of instability and uncertainty that occurs with unconscious motives. Here is why: agents are normally aware of quite a number of reasons for and against acting in a certain way. But for any one of those reasons, they may deny – as Raskolnikov does – that that is the reason for which they did it. It was a reason, all right, and even one that they considered, but not the one for which they acted. Thus the problems of instability and uncertainty that Waismann points out affects motives not only insofar as they are unconscious and mere drives. They affect motives in the sense of ‘Beweggrund’ as well. (shrink)

The growing field of evo-devo is increasingly demonstrating the complexity of steps involved in genetic, intracellular regulatory, and extracellular environmental control of the development of phenotypes. A key result of such work is an account for the remarkable plasticity of organismal form in many species based on relatively minor changes in regulation of highly conserved genes and genetic processes. Accounting for behavioral plasticity is of similar potential interest but has received far less attention. Of particular interest is plasticity in communication (...) systems, where human language represents an ultimate target for research. The present paper considers plasticity of language capabilities in a comparative framework, focusing attention on examples of a remarkable fact: Whereas there exist design features of mature human language that have never been observed to occur in non-humans in the wild, many of these features can be developed to notable extents when non-humans are enculturated through human training. These examples of enculturated developmental plasticity across extremely diverse taxa suggest, consistent with the evo-devo theme of highly conserved processes in evolution, that human language is founded in part on cognitive capabilities that are indeed ancient and that even modern humans show self-organized emergence of many language capabilities in the context of rich enculturation, built on the special social/ecological history of the hominin line. Human culture can thus be seen as a regulatory system encouraging language development in the context of a cognitive background with many highly conserved features. (shrink)

Wang (_Philosophy & Technology_ 35, 2022) introduces a Foucauldian power account of algorithmic transparency. This short commentary explores when this power account is appropriate. It is first observed that the power account is a constructionist one, and that such accounts often come with both factual and evaluative claims. In an instance of Hume’s law, the evaluative claims do not follow from the factual claims, leaving open the question of how much constructionist commitment (Hacking, 1999) one should have. The concept of (...) acts in equilibrium (Nozick, 1981) is then used to explain how different individuals reading Wang can end up with different evaluative attitudes towards algorithmic transparency, despite factual agreement. The commentary concludes by situating constructionist commitment inside a larger question of how much to think of our actions, identifying conflicting arguments. (shrink)

Packed with real-life examples of business decisions gone awry, the 8th Edition of BUSINESS ETHICS: CASE STUDIES AND SELECTED READINGS explores the complex issues of business ethics from the leaders' perspectives. This best-selling text offers a rare collection of readings which examines the business decision-making processes of many types of leaders, while revealing some of the common factors that push them over ethical lines they might not otherwise cross. A combination of short and long cases, readings, hypothetical situations, and current (...) ethical dilemmas, BUSINESS ETHICS: CASE STUDIES AND SELECTED READINGS provides a stimulating and thorough basis for evaluating business ethics, and encourages stronger values in future business leaders. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

Rooted in Assyriology with a strong interdisciplinary outlook, this book offers the first comprehensive study of ancient Mesopotamian notions of the human person, including semantic analyses of Akkadian terms for body parts and multiple ...

The essays in this volume, by international Kant scholars and moral philosophers, discuss Kant's philosophical development and his rejection of earlier moral theories, the role of happiness and inclination in the Groundwork, Kant's moral ...

The traditional Lewis–Stalnaker semantics treats all counterfactuals with an impossible antecedent as trivially or vacuously true. Many have regarded this as a serious defect of the semantics. For intuitively, it seems, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents—counterpossibles—can be non-trivially true and non-trivially false. Whereas the counterpossible "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then the mathematical community at the time would have been surprised" seems true, "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would (...) have been thrilled" seems false. Many have proposed to extend the Lewis–Stalnaker semantics with impossible worlds to make room for a non-trivial or non-vacuous treatment of counterpossibles. Roughly, on the extended Lewis–Stalnaker semantics, we evaluate a counterfactual of the form "If A had been true, then C would have been true" by going to closest world—whether possible or impossible—in which A is true and check whether C is also true in that world. If the answer is "yes", the counterfactual is true; otherwise it is false. Since there are impossible worlds in which the mathematically impossible happens, there are impossible worlds in which Hobbes manages to square the circle. And intuitively, in the closest such impossible worlds, sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan are not thrilled—they remain sick and unmoved by the mathematical developments in Europe. If so, the counterpossible "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would have been thrilled" comes out false, as desired. In this paper, I will critically investigate the extended Lewis–Stalnaker semantics for counterpossibles. I will argue that the standard version of the extended semantics, in which impossible worlds correspond to maximal, logically inconsistent entities, fails to give the correct semantic verdicts for many counterpossibles. In light of the negative arguments, I will then outline a new version of the extended Lewis–Stalnaker semantics that can avoid these problems. (shrink)

Possible-worlds accounts of mental or linguistic content are often criticized for being too coarse-grained. To make room for more fine-grained distinctions among contents, several authors have recently proposed extending the space of possible worlds by "impossible worlds". We argue that this strategy comes with serious costs: we would effectively have to abandon most of the features that make the possible-worlds framework attractive. More generally, we argue that while there are intuitive and theoretical considerations against overly coarse-grained notions of content, the (...) same kinds of considerations also prohibit an overly fine-grained individuation of content. An adequate notion of content, it seems, should have intermediate granularity. However, it is hard to construe a notion of content that meets these demands. Any notion of content, we suggest, must be either implausibly coarse-grained or implausibly fine-grained (or both). (shrink)