This book argues that misinformation poses a multi-faceted threat to knowledge, while arguing that some forms of content moderation risk exacerbating these threats. It proposes alternative forms of content moderation that aim to address this complexity while enhancing human epistemic agency. The proliferation of fake news, false conspiracy theories, and other forms of misinformation on the internet and especially social media is widely recognized as a threat to individual knowledge and, consequently, to collective deliberation and democracy (...) itself. This book argues that misinformation presents a three-pronged threat to knowledge. While researchers often focus on the role of misinformation in causing false beliefs, this deceptive potential of misinformation exists alongside the potential to suppress trust and to distort the perception of evidence. Recognizing the multi-faceted nature of this threat is essential to the development of effective measures to mitigate the harms associated with misinformation. The book weaves together work in analytic epistemology with emerging empirical work in other disciplines to offer novel insights into the threats posed by misinformation. Additionally, it breaks new ground by systematically assessing different forms of content moderation from the perspective of epistemology. Misinformation, Content Moderation, and Epistemology will appeal to philosophers working in applied and social epistemology, as well as scholars and advanced students in disciplines such as communication studies, political science, and social psychology who are researching misinformation. (shrink)

As government pressure on major technology companies builds, both firms and legislators are searching for technical solutions to difficult platform governance puzzles such as hate speech and misinformation. Automated hash-matching and predictive machine learning tools – what we define here as algorithmic moderation systems – are increasingly being deployed to conduct content moderation at scale by major platforms for user-generated content such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This article provides an accessible technical primer on how algorithmic (...) moderation works; examines some of the existing automated tools used by major platforms to handle copyright infringement, terrorism and toxic speech; and identifies key political and ethical issues for these systems as the reliance on them grows. Recent events suggest that algorithmic moderation has become necessary to manage growing public expectations for increased platform responsibility, safety and security on the global stage; however, as we demonstrate, these systems remain opaque, unaccountable and poorly understood. Despite the potential promise of algorithms or ‘AI’, we show that even ‘well optimized’ moderation systems could exacerbate, rather than relieve, many existing problems with content policy as enacted by platforms for three main reasons: automated moderation threatens to further increase opacity, making a famously non-transparent set of practices even more difficult to understand or audit, further complicate outstanding issues of fairness and justice in large-scale sociotechnical systems and re-obscure the fundamentally political nature of speech decisions being executed at scale. (shrink)

AI seems like the perfect response to the growing challenges of content moderation on social media platforms: the immense scale of the data, the relentlessness of the violations, and the need for human judgments without wanting humans to have to make them. The push toward automated content moderation is often justified as a necessary response to the scale: the enormity of social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube stands as the reason why AI approaches are desirable, (...) even inevitable. But even if we could effectively automate content moderation, it is not clear that we should. (shrink)

: The present work analyses Content Moderation, focusing on ethical concerns and cognitive effects. Starting from a general description and history of the moderation process, it stresses some ethical problems: quality of moderation, transparency, and the working conditions of human moderators. Using some of Facebook leaked slides offering examples of moderation, we define some controversial rules and principles for Commercial Content Moderation. These examples highlight a general lack of coherency and transparency, which has (...) the potential to affect users’ cognitive attitudes, their perception of reality, and their freedom of speech. Such effects are studied in comparison to other well-known online cognitive phenomena and in relation to the most recent dedicated legislation in EU countries. The current Content Moderation scheme leaves users at risk of specific cognitive distortions, highlighting the urgent need for greater transparency throughout the moderation process and better working conditions for moderators. Keywords: Content Moderation; Freedom of Speech; Epistemic Bubble; Technology Ethics Commercial Content Moderation: un oscuro labirinto per la libertà d’espressione e le opinioni degli utenti Riassunto: Il presente lavoro offre un’analisi approfondita della moderazione di contenuti, concentrandosi sulle problematiche etiche e sugli effetti cognitivi. A partire da una introduzione ai concetti chiave e alla storia della moderazione di contenuti online, si concentra su alcuni problemi etici primari: la qualità della moderazione, la sua trasparenza e le condizioni di lavoro dei lavoratori. Utilizzando dei documenti formativi interni di Facebook, pubblicati da un quotidiano e dagli esempi in essi contenuti, definiremo le controverse regole e i principi della Commercial Content Moderation. Ne emerge una generale mancanza di coerenza organizzativa e di trasparenza nel processo, che mostra potenziali effetti dannosi sulle attitudini degli utenti, sulla loro percezione della realtà e la loro libertà di parola. Tali effetti saranno studiati in confronto con i più conosciuti effetti cognitivi del mondo dei social ed in relazione alle più recenti disposizioni di leggi europee in merito. Gli schemi attualmente in uso producono degli specifici effetti di distorsione cognitiva e conseguentemente mostrano l’importanza di una maggiore attenzione alla trasparenza del processo e alle condizioni di lavoro dei moderatori. Parole chiave: Moderazione di contenuti; Libertà di parola; Bolla epistemica; Etica della tecnologia. (shrink)

This commentary examines the challenges faced by metaverse platforms in cross-border content moderation, focusing on the implications for freedom of expression and nondiscrimination. It highlights the difficulties in determining what to remove for which users as well as how to do so, which has serious implications for freedom of expression and our shared sense of reality. Proto-metaverse platforms such as Roblox and Minecraft face similar questions, but have not yet encountered major cross-jurisdictional issues because, as looking at traditional (...) social media platforms reveals, content moderation is not merely a question of law and policy, but also of geopolitics and government priorities. To avoid a “lowest common denominator effect” where freedom of expression is infringed upon worldwide and discrimination is entrenched, this commentary argues that metaverse platforms must clarify their moderation policies, assess their entry into specific markets based on local laws and their own values, and be prepared to exit overly restrictive markets. (shrink)

This paper has 3 main goals: (1) to clarify the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI)—along with algorithms more broadly—in online radicalization that results in ‘real world violence’; (2) to argue that technological solutions (like better AI) are inadequate proposals for this problem given both technical and social reasons; and (3) to demonstrate that platform companies’ (e.g., Meta, Google) statements of preference for technological solutions functions as a type of propaganda that serves to erase the work of the thousands of human (...) content moderators and conceal the harms they experience. I argue that the proper assessment of these important, related issues must be free of the obfuscation that the ‘better AI’ proposal generates. For this reason, I describe the AI-centric solutions favoured by major platform companies as a type of obfuscating and dehumanizing propaganda. (shrink)

Digitalisation and platformisation are continuously impacting and reshaping the societies we live in. In this context, we are witnessing the rise of phenomena such as fake news, hate speech, and the sharing of any other illegal content through social media. In this paper, I propose some ethical reflections on content moderation in the context of digital (social) media, as this topic seems – to me – to already incorporate other relevant digital issues in it, such as algorithms (...) bias, the spread of fake news, and the potential misuses of artificial intelligence. In the first section, I will provide a few hermeneutic reflections over a speech given by the Italian scholar Umberto Eco, which appears to underline the necessity of a content moderation in an era of digital (social) media. In the second section, I will analyse, through a consequentialist perspective, critical and ethical issues posed by content moderation. In particular, I suggest the idea of a ‘moderate’ (reasonable and limited) content moderation that can only be assured by humans, as they are able to contextualise the content, to take emotions and subjective elements into account, to apply critical thinking and adaptability in complex circumstances. (shrink)

This article examines algorithmic content moderation, using the moderation of violent extremist content as a specific case. In recent years, algorithms have increasingly been mobilized to perform essential moderation functions for online social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, including limiting the proliferation of extremist speech. Drawing on Katherine Hayles’ concept of “cognitive assemblages” and the Critical Security Studies literature, we show how algorithmic regulation operates within larger assemblages of humans and non-humans to (...) influence the surveillance and regulation of information flows. We argue that the dynamics of algorithmic regulation are more liquid, cobbled together and distributed than it appears. It is characterized by a set of shifting human and machine entities, which mix traditional surveillance methods with more sophisticated tools, and whose linkages and interactions are transient. The processes that enable the consolidation of knowledge about risky profiles and contents are, therefore, collective and distributed among humans and machines. This allows us to argue that the cognitive assemblages involved in content moderation become a cobbled space of preemptive calculation. (shrink)

The spread of fake news online has far reaching implications for the lives of people offline. There is increasing pressure for content sharing platforms to intervene and mitigate the spread of fake news, but intervention spawns accusations of biased censorship. The tension between fair moderation and censorship highlights two related problems that arise in flagging online content as fake or legitimate: firstly, what kind of content counts as a problem such that it should be flagged, and (...) secondly, is it practically and theoretically possible to gather and label instances of such content in an unbiased manner? In this paper, I argue that answering either question involves making value judgements that can generate user distrust toward fact checking efforts. (shrink)

Contemporary policy debates about managing the enormous volume of online content have taken a renewed focus on upload filtering, automated detection of potentially illegal content, and other “proactive measures”. Often, policymakers and tech industry players invoke artificial intelligence as the solution to complex challenges around online content, promising that AI is a scant few years away from resolving everything from hate speech to harassment to the spread of terrorist propaganda. Missing from these promises, however, is an acknowledgement (...) that proactive identification and automated removal of user-generated content raises problems beyond issues of “accuracy” and overbreadth--problems that will not be solved with more sophisticated AI. In this commentary, I discuss how the technical realities of content filtering stack up against the protections for freedom of expression in international human rights law. As policymakers and companies around the world turn to AI for communications governance, it is crucial that we recall why legal protections for speech have included presumptions against prior censorship, and consider carefully how proactive content moderation will fundamentally re-shape the relationship between rules, people, and their speech. (shrink)

What and how to teach religious moderation at the undergraduate level still concerns academics. This study aims to explore the perceptions of lecturers and students about the objectives, content, and strategies used in learning religious moderation. This study uses a multiple-case exploratory design with a qualitative approach. Data were collected through interviews with eight lecturers and 15 students from public and Islamic universities in Indonesia. Data analysis in this study used conventional content analysis methods with an (...) inductive coding process. The first two authors analysed data, and their agreement was calculated using Cohen’s kappa of 0.90. As a result, participants said that the ultimate goal of learning moderation in religion is to teach students about aligning views on religion and non-religion. The content that needs to be taught early and as a firm root of religious moderation is the internal harmony of religious communities. Finally, the development of campus culture can be an alternative model to internalise the values of religious moderation. Contribution: Overall, this research helps us to understand what kind of religious moderation learning we want to introduce in Indonesian universities. (shrink)

In communities of user-generated content, systems for the management of content and/or their contributors are usually accepted without much protest. Not so, however, in the case of Wikipedia, in which the proposal to introduce a system of review for new edits (in order to counter vandalism) led to heated discussions. This debate is analysed, and arguments of both supporters and opponents (of English, German and French tongue) are extracted from Wikipedian archives. In order to better understand this division (...) of the minds, an analogy is drawn with theories of bureaucracy as developed for real-life organizations. From these it transpires that bureaucratic rules may be perceived as springing from either a control logic or an enabling logic. In Wikipedia, then, both perceptions were at work, depending on the underlying views of participants. Wikipedians either rejected the proposed scheme (because it is antithetical to their conception of Wikipedia as a community) or endorsed it (because it is consonant with their conception of Wikipedia as an organization with clearly defined boundaries). Are other open-content communities susceptible to the same kind of ‘essential contestation’? (shrink)

Numerous studies have linked the consumption of violent audiovisual content to the increase of aggressive cognitions and behaviors. This research aims to clarify whether the possible harmful consequences of violent videogames might vary depending on an individual variable such as trait aggressiveness. A correlational study was carried out among 6,130 teenagers from two European countries, in which it became evident, by means of multiple regression analyses, that there was a positive correlation between the use of violent videogames and aggressive (...) behavioral intentions. More relevantly, these correlations were greater amongst those subjects with higher scores on the Aggression Scale. Finally, when analyzing the subjective experiences of users of violent videogames, the more aggressive individuals manifested a greater desire to imitate the characters of the interactive content, admitting that they ended up more agitated even when their initial objective was to relieve tension or relax. Practical and theoretical implications of those results are discussed. (shrink)

Drawing upon the General Learning Model, the present study developed a moderated mediation model to provide an in-depth understanding of whether and how adolescents’ reading prosocial content in books predicts their prosocial behavior. The target population in this study is Chinese adolescents, and we adopted a paper-based survey to collect data. The age range of the sample was from 12 to 19. Among all participants, 49.3% were female, and 50.7% were male. PROCESS SPSS Macro was used to analyze the (...) proposed moderated mediation model. The results showed that prosocial content reading was positively associated with adolescents’ prosocial behavior. The positive association included a direct relationship and an indirect relationship through the mediation of moral identity. Furthermore, this study revealed the moderation effect of age on the relationships among prosocial content reading, moral identity, and prosocial behavior. Specifically, as age increases, the effects of prosocial content reading on moral identity and prosocial behavior attenuate, and the mediation effect of moral identity also decreases. The study adds to the body of knowledge on the prosocial media effect by extending it to book reading. (shrink)

The subject matter of this thesis is analytic ontology. Chapters II and III deal with two versions of trope theory, or moderate nominalism; these are defined as ontologies which recognise properties and relations but no (real) universals. The key notion of both theories, trope, is characterised as an abstract particular. What the abstractness amounts to differs between the two. Yet another difference is that simplicity is an essential trait of a trope according to one theory, but not according to the (...) other. Though exact similarity is said to play an important role in both theories, as it turns out, this does not seem to be the case. The ontology dealt with in chapter IV is a mixture of moderate nominalism concerning qualities and realism concerning relations. In it, quality instances (moments) and universal relations are the ultimate constituents of the universe. While relations and moments are considered to be constituents of states of affairs, which are characterised as objects of higher orders, complexes that are objects of the first order are made up of moments on their own. Among these complexes one finds the ordinary objects. Paradoxically, although relations are necessary for the existence of complex first order objects, relations are not thought to be among the contents of these objects. The main subject of chapter V is a particular version of moderate realism; it is an ontology which is realistic in its recognition of universals and moderate in its recognition of instances of these universals. Instances combine to form complex networks. A theoretically motivated claim is that although each instance has a predicational aspect as well as a universal one, it is simple in the sense of lacking internal predicative structure; though, this claim can be called into question. Keywords: analytic ontology, moderate nominalism, moderate realism, particular, universal, abstract, concrete, abstract particular, abstract universal, concrete particular, concrete universal, trope, moment, complex unity, collection, instance, unit attribute, intensional aspect, predicational aspect, continuous composite, articulated composite. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate the concept of religious moderation in the form of values contained in Islamic religious education textbooks at the junior high school level and to analyse how these values are implemented in Bandung, West Java schools. This article employs qualitative data collection techniques, including a literature review, observation, and interviews. The study finds that the content of moderation values, such as non-violence, egalitarianism and fairness, and tolerance, aligns with the Indonesian government’s religious (...) class='Hi'>moderation pillars. The study also reveals that the implementation of moderation values has been carried out, especially by Islamic religious education teachers, resulting in a safe and respectful school environment for Muslim and non-Muslim students alike. The implementation of non-violence values aims to prevent students from being exposed to extremist Islamic groups. Meanwhile, egalitarianism and fairness values emphasise the equality of every human being and place every religious community in a middle position between two opposite poles. Lastly, tolerance values emphasise the importance of religious freedom and the principle of national commitment, requiring every person and religious community to maintain their national commitment without feeling that their group has the highest rank. Furthermore, the study discovered that the implementation of moderation values based on textbooks had been carried out, particularly in two schools in Bandung City that involved the collaborative participation of students and teachers. Contribution: This finding contributes to the study of religious moderation in the general school at the primary education level. Until now, the study of religious moderation has mostly focused on the discourse of social movements and the atmosphere of Islamic education, namely Islamic boarding schools. (shrink)

The negative impacts of social media have given rise to philosophical questions around whether social media companies have the authority to regulate user-generated content on their platforms. The most popular justification for that authority is to appeal to private ownership rights. Social media companies own their platforms, and their ownership comes with various rights that ground their authority to moderate user-generated content on their platforms. However, we argue that ownership rights can be limited when their exercise results in (...) significant harms to others or the perpetration of injustices. We outline some of the substantive harms that social media platforms inflict through their practices of content moderation and some of the procedural injustices that arise through their arbitrary application of community guidelines. This provides a normative basis for calls to better regulate user-generated content on social media platforms. We conclude by considering some of the political and legal implications of our argument. (shrink)

This research explains the comparison of regulations on mosque loudspeakers between Indonesia and Muslim countries in the world. Guidelines for the use of mosque loudspeakers in Indonesia are regulated in the Instruction of the Director-General of Islamic Community Guidance at the Ministry of Religious Affairs Number 101 of 1978 concerning Guidance on the Use of Loudspeakers in Mosques and Musala and the Circular Letter of the Minister of Religion Number 5 of 2022 concerning Guidelines for the Use of Loudspeakers in (...) Mosques and Musala. Primary data of this study includes the 1978 Instructions and the 2022 Circular Letters. Secondary data is obtained from relevant literature sources and regulations on the use of mosque loudspeakers in several Muslim countries in the world, namely Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Malaysia. This research finds the concept of moderation of regulations on mosque loudspeakers in Indonesia. The findings of this research can be used as a guide model for drafting the contents of mosque loudspeaker regulations in several Muslim countries around the world by relying on three moderate aspects regarding the rules of time (public morals), volume (public health), and sound quality of mosque loudspeakers (public convenience). (shrink)

There are powerful reasons to think of perceptual content as determined at least in part by the environment of the perceiving subject. Externalist views such as this are often rejected on grounds that they do not give a good account of hallucinations. The chapter shows that this reason for rejecting content externalism is not well founded if we embrace a moderate externalism about content, that is, an externalist view on which content is only in part dependent (...) on the experiencing subject“s environment. The chapter starts by motivating content externalism. It then argues that hallucinations are best understood in terms of a deficiency of veridical perceptual experiences. The chapter discusses the consequences of this thesis by developing a view of hallucinations that is committed to externalism about content. (shrink)

Thought experiments have played a pivotal role in many debates within ethics—and in particular within applied ethics—over the past 30 years. Nonetheless, despite their having become a commonly used philosophical tool, there is something odd about the extensive reliance upon thought experiments in areas of philosophy, such as applied ethics, that are so obviously oriented towards practical life. Herein I provide a moderate defence of their use in applied philosophy against those three objections. I do not defend all possible uses (...) of thought experiments but suggest that we should distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses. Their legitimate uses are determined not so much by the modal content of any actual thought experiment itself, but by the extent to which the argument in which it is nested follows basic tenets of informal logic and respects the fundamental contingency of applied ethical problems. In pursuing these ideas, I do not so much provide a set of criteria for their legitimate use, but more modestly present two significant ways in which their use can go awry. (shrink)

This study examines how visibility of a content moderator and ambiguity of moderated content influence perception of the moderation system in a social media environment. In the course of a two-day pre-registered experiment conducted in a realistic social media simulation, participants encountered moderated comments that were either unequivocally harsh or ambiguously worded, and the source of moderation was either unidentified, or attributed to other users or an automated system (AI). The results show that when comments were (...) moderated by an AI versus other users, users perceived less accountability in the moderation system and had less trust in the moderation decision, especially for ambiguously worded harassments, as opposed to clear harassment cases. However, no differences emerged in the perceived moderation fairness, objectivity, and participants confidence in their understanding of the moderation process. Overall, our study demonstrates that users tend to question the moderation decision and system more when an AI moderator is visible, which highlights the complexity of effectively managing the visibility of automatic content moderation in the social media environment. (shrink)

Cultural appropriation, also called cultural borrowing, has been the topic of much discussion in recent years. Roughly speaking, cultural appropriation happens when someone outside of a cultural or ethnic group takes or uses some object that is characteristic or in some way important to the group without the group’s permission. Individuals who find cultural appropriation unproblematic have often argued that if we express moral criticism of the use of traditional Sami outfits by non-Sami, then we are logically committed to criticize (...) all kinds of habits that are clearly acceptable –such as using jeans, eating pizza or drinking tea. However, we will argue that in many cases that objection is problematic. We point out that if one social habit or practice is prohibited by existing social conventions but another is not, then there is a convention difference between the cases. The convention difference is in turn a morally relevant difference, or so we aim to show. We refer to “moderate conventionalism,” according to which existing social conventions are morally relevant facts that should be taken into account when choosing how to act, whatever the content of the conventions happens to be. The claim is analogous with the traditional view that laws have some moral relevance and binding force independent of their content. _Keywords:_ cultural appropriation, conventionalism, moderate conventionalism, convention difference. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.3 (2004) 19-35 [Access article in PDF] Moderate Formalism As a Theory of the Aesthetic Glenn Parsons Art history and art criticism explore, classify, and critique artworks from a number of perspectives. Their cultural, political, and moral significance are all of interest in this regard. This variety of perspectives notwithstanding, one way of considering artworks retains a central position for these disciplines. Despite (...) perennial shifting in conceptions of the purpose and nature of art, the aesthetic appreciation of art remains at the center of our practices for classifying and evaluating it. Without claiming that the aesthetic dimension of art is the only proper focus of its appreciation or that the aesthetic is a very clearly understood notion, we may say that some degree of contact with the aesthetic is what makes our consideration of an artwork an appreciation of it as art, rather than as historical artifact, manifestation of cultural ideology, and so on.In light of the central position of aesthetic appreciation in art history and criticism, an important concern regarding aesthetic education is what sort of knowledge, if any, is required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation of an artwork. Is knowledge of the historical context of an artwork required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation of it, or is its historical dimension a separate matter, perhaps worthy of appreciation in its own right but not relevant to the appreciation of the artistic achievement of the work? Virtually all modern theories of the aesthetic agree that in order to appreciate an artwork aesthetically, we need to perceive attentively certain of its perceptual properties, such as its shape and color. They differ, however, on whether such attentive perception is sufficient for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand we have cognitivist views, which assert that, in addition to this sort of attentive perception, certain kinds of knowledge about the object of appreciation are required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. On the other hand we have non-cognitivist views, which deny that such knowledge is necessary for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. According to the latter, the aesthetic qualities of an artwork, such as its gracefulness, [End Page 19] are formal in the sense that they depend only upon those perceptual properties, such as color, shape, and size, that constitute the "sensory surface" of the work.1 These properties, apparent to the attentive observer, are the only properties of the object to which one need attend in order to appreciate its gracefulness. Other properties of the painting, such as its depicting German peasants or having been rendered by a communist, are irrelevant to its aesthetic qualities, and knowledge about them is not required for its appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Today this non-cognitivist position is generally called formalism.2In the twentieth century, philosophical aesthetics largely rejected such views in favor of models of aesthetic appreciation with a richer cognitive element. This movement away from formalism has a number of dimensions, including the efforts of feminists to establish the aesthetic value of activist art, the desire to make sense of well-established practices of art appreciation, a growing awareness of the role that beliefs play in our aesthetic responses, the effort to do justice to the aesthetic character of the natural environment, and conceptual difficulties internal to formalism itself.3 Recently, however, some philosophers have revived the spirit, if not the letter, of formalism. Acknowledging widespread criticism of early formalists, such as Clive Bell, they concede that these theorists overstated the case when they claimed that all aesthetic qualities depend on nothing beyond the sensory surface of the object.4 The new formalists, in contrast, claim only that some aesthetic qualities are of this character. They call this doctrine moderate formalism, in contrast to the extreme formalism defended by earlier formalists.5By adopting this more modest position, moderate formalists can accommodate many of the criticisms that led to the decline of extreme formalism. However, if it turns out that only a handful of relatively unimportant aesthetic qualities are formal in nature, then moderate formalism would hardly make an impressively "formalist" theory of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.3 (2004) 19-35 [Access article in PDF] Moderate Formalism As a Theory of the Aesthetic Glenn Parsons Art history and art criticism explore, classify, and critique artworks from a number of perspectives. Their cultural, political, and moral significance are all of interest in this regard. This variety of perspectives notwithstanding, one way of considering artworks retains a central position for these disciplines. Despite (...) perennial shifting in conceptions of the purpose and nature of art, the aesthetic appreciation of art remains at the center of our practices for classifying and evaluating it. Without claiming that the aesthetic dimension of art is the only proper focus of its appreciation or that the aesthetic is a very clearly understood notion, we may say that some degree of contact with the aesthetic is what makes our consideration of an artwork an appreciation of it as art, rather than as historical artifact, manifestation of cultural ideology, and so on.In light of the central position of aesthetic appreciation in art history and criticism, an important concern regarding aesthetic education is what sort of knowledge, if any, is required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation of an artwork. Is knowledge of the historical context of an artwork required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation of it, or is its historical dimension a separate matter, perhaps worthy of appreciation in its own right but not relevant to the appreciation of the artistic achievement of the work? Virtually all modern theories of the aesthetic agree that in order to appreciate an artwork aesthetically, we need to perceive attentively certain of its perceptual properties, such as its shape and color. They differ, however, on whether such attentive perception is sufficient for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand we have cognitivist views, which assert that, in addition to this sort of attentive perception, certain kinds of knowledge about the object of appreciation are required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. On the other hand we have non-cognitivist views, which deny that such knowledge is necessary for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. According to the latter, the aesthetic qualities of an artwork, such as its gracefulness, [End Page 19] are formal in the sense that they depend only upon those perceptual properties, such as color, shape, and size, that constitute the "sensory surface" of the work.1 These properties, apparent to the attentive observer, are the only properties of the object to which one need attend in order to appreciate its gracefulness. Other properties of the painting, such as its depicting German peasants or having been rendered by a communist, are irrelevant to its aesthetic qualities, and knowledge about them is not required for its appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Today this non-cognitivist position is generally called formalism.2In the twentieth century, philosophical aesthetics largely rejected such views in favor of models of aesthetic appreciation with a richer cognitive element. This movement away from formalism has a number of dimensions, including the efforts of feminists to establish the aesthetic value of activist art, the desire to make sense of well-established practices of art appreciation, a growing awareness of the role that beliefs play in our aesthetic responses, the effort to do justice to the aesthetic character of the natural environment, and conceptual difficulties internal to formalism itself.3 Recently, however, some philosophers have revived the spirit, if not the letter, of formalism. Acknowledging widespread criticism of early formalists, such as Clive Bell, they concede that these theorists overstated the case when they claimed that all aesthetic qualities depend on nothing beyond the sensory surface of the object.4 The new formalists, in contrast, claim only that some aesthetic qualities are of this character. They call this doctrine moderate formalism, in contrast to the extreme formalism defended by earlier formalists.5By adopting this more modest position, moderate formalists can accommodate many of the criticisms that led to the decline of extreme formalism. However, if it turns out that only a handful of relatively unimportant aesthetic qualities are formal in nature, then moderate formalism would hardly make an impressively "formalist" theory of the... (shrink)

If philosophers held popularity contests, David Hume would be a perennial winner. Witty, a bon vivant, and champion of reason over bigotry and superstition, it is not surprising that many contemporary thinkers want to recruit him as an ally or claim his views as precursors to their own. In the debate over the moral content of artworks and its possible relevance for artistic and aesthetic value, the group whose views are known variously as “ethicism,” “moralism,” or “moderate moralism” has (...) claimed Hume as one of its own.1 Very briefly, “moderate moralism” is the view that sometimes the moral content of artworks must be taken into account when assessing artistic or aesthetic value. The moralists’ presumed . (shrink)

Over recent years, the stakes and complexity of online content moderation have been steadily raised, swelling from concerns about personal conflict in smaller communities to worries about effects on public life and democracy. Because of the massive growth in online expressions, automated tools based on machine learning are increasingly used to moderate speech. While ‘design-based governance’ through complex algorithmic techniques has come under intense scrutiny, critical research covering algorithmic content moderation is still rare. To add to (...) our understanding of concrete instances of machine moderation, this article examines Perspective API, a system for the automated detection of ‘toxicity’ developed and run by the Google unit Jigsaw that can be used by websites to help moderate their forums and comment sections. The article proceeds in four steps. First, we present our methodological strategy and the empirical materials we were able to draw on, including interviews, documentation, and GitHub repositories. We then summarize our findings along five axes to identify the various threads Perspective API brings together to deliver a working product. The third section discusses two conflicting organizational logics within the project, paying attention to both critique and what can be learned from the specific case at hand. We conclude by arguing that the opposition between ‘human’ and ‘machine’ in speech moderation obscures the many ways these two come together in concrete systems, and suggest that the way forward requires proactive engagement with the design of technologies as well as the institutions they are embedded in. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.3 (2004) 19-35 [Access article in PDF] Moderate Formalism As a Theory of the Aesthetic Glenn Parsons Art history and art criticism explore, classify, and critique artworks from a number of perspectives. Their cultural, political, and moral significance are all of interest in this regard. This variety of perspectives notwithstanding, one way of considering artworks retains a central position for these disciplines. Despite (...) perennial shifting in conceptions of the purpose and nature of art, the aesthetic appreciation of art remains at the center of our practices for classifying and evaluating it. Without claiming that the aesthetic dimension of art is the only proper focus of its appreciation or that the aesthetic is a very clearly understood notion, we may say that some degree of contact with the aesthetic is what makes our consideration of an artwork an appreciation of it as art, rather than as historical artifact, manifestation of cultural ideology, and so on.In light of the central position of aesthetic appreciation in art history and criticism, an important concern regarding aesthetic education is what sort of knowledge, if any, is required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation of an artwork. Is knowledge of the historical context of an artwork required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation of it, or is its historical dimension a separate matter, perhaps worthy of appreciation in its own right but not relevant to the appreciation of the artistic achievement of the work? Virtually all modern theories of the aesthetic agree that in order to appreciate an artwork aesthetically, we need to perceive attentively certain of its perceptual properties, such as its shape and color. They differ, however, on whether such attentive perception is sufficient for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand we have cognitivist views, which assert that, in addition to this sort of attentive perception, certain kinds of knowledge about the object of appreciation are required for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. On the other hand we have non-cognitivist views, which deny that such knowledge is necessary for appropriate aesthetic appreciation. According to the latter, the aesthetic qualities of an artwork, such as its gracefulness, [End Page 19] are formal in the sense that they depend only upon those perceptual properties, such as color, shape, and size, that constitute the "sensory surface" of the work.1 These properties, apparent to the attentive observer, are the only properties of the object to which one need attend in order to appreciate its gracefulness. Other properties of the painting, such as its depicting German peasants or having been rendered by a communist, are irrelevant to its aesthetic qualities, and knowledge about them is not required for its appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Today this non-cognitivist position is generally called formalism.2In the twentieth century, philosophical aesthetics largely rejected such views in favor of models of aesthetic appreciation with a richer cognitive element. This movement away from formalism has a number of dimensions, including the efforts of feminists to establish the aesthetic value of activist art, the desire to make sense of well-established practices of art appreciation, a growing awareness of the role that beliefs play in our aesthetic responses, the effort to do justice to the aesthetic character of the natural environment, and conceptual difficulties internal to formalism itself.3 Recently, however, some philosophers have revived the spirit, if not the letter, of formalism. Acknowledging widespread criticism of early formalists, such as Clive Bell, they concede that these theorists overstated the case when they claimed that all aesthetic qualities depend on nothing beyond the sensory surface of the object.4 The new formalists, in contrast, claim only that some aesthetic qualities are of this character. They call this doctrine moderate formalism, in contrast to the extreme formalism defended by earlier formalists.5By adopting this more modest position, moderate formalists can accommodate many of the criticisms that led to the decline of extreme formalism. However, if it turns out that only a handful of relatively unimportant aesthetic qualities are formal in nature, then moderate formalism would hardly make an impressively "formalist" theory of the... (shrink)

In the opening chapter of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke explains that the self-understanding or self-measure of the human mind includes an account of the mind’s limits, and so the mind’s self-understanding can provide adequate grounds for intellectual self-moderation or self-control: “If we can find out, how far the Understanding can extend its view; how far it has Faculties to attain Certainty; and in what Cases it can only judge and guess, we may learn to content (...) our selves with what is attainable by us in this State.” Furthermore: “If we can find out those Measures, whereby a rational Creature put in that State, which Man is in, in this World, may, and ought to govern his Opinions, and Actions depending thereon, we need not be troubled, that some other things escape our Knowledge.” Compared to Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre may appear to exemplify the very opposite of intellectual modesty and self-control. Unlike Locke, Fichte argues that a true system of knowledge should not seek to limit or moderate itself by reference to what is allegedly unknowable outside of it. A true system of knowledge, writes Fichte, “. . . only has to agree with itself. It can be explained only by itself, and it can be proven - or refuted - only on its own terms.” Furthermore, Fichte suggests that an appreciation of his system of knowledge requires not modesty in his readers, but rather an implicit sense of superiority: “I wish to have nothing to do with those who, as a result of protracted spiritual servitude, have lost their own selves and, along with this loss of themselves, have lost any feeling for their own conviction . . .” In this essay, I shall seek to show that, contrary to initial impressions, it is Fichtean idealism, and not Lockean (or any similar) realism, that is truly modest. According to my account, Locke’s explicit declarations concerning the modesty and limitedness of his own project exhibit a certain ignorance concerning the genuine problems at issue. In his claim to be modest, the realist Locke professes to know more than he actually does, and thus manifests his own immodesty. By contrast, the idealist Fichte must refrain from such direct claims to modesty and must appear to be immodest, precisely because he has a greater understanding of how radically limited human knowledge always is. Like Plato’s Charmides, Fichte realizes that any explicit claim to self-limitation and self-moderation would actually give lie to itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:33 HOW TO BECOME A MODERATE SKEPTIC: HUME'S WAY OUT OF PYRRHONISM The nature and extent of Hume's skepticism have been assessed in various ways. He was viewed as a radical skeptic until the end of the XIXth century. Many contemporary interpretations, which can be traced back to Kemp Smith's book, have claimed since that a reassessment was indispensable if we are to take seriously either the very (...) project of a science of human nature or Hume's naturalist conception of belief. The idea of a science of human nature presupposes that at least some sort of positive knowledge is possible. The naturalist conception of belief claims that some of our beliefs, though lacking rational justification, are nevertheless unavoidable and gain this way a certainty all their own. Both the Treatise of Human Nature in Book I and the Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding -1 conclude with a moderate or mitigated skepticism after making a strong case for radical pyrrhonism. In this paper I wish to carry out two connected tasks: first I want to consider whether Hume's skepticism in the Treatise is the same as that of the Enquiry or not; second, I want to determine which arguments he puts forward for his shift from pyrrhonism to modern skepticism. The most noticeable differences between the Treatise and the Enquiry occur immediately after the analysis of causation. In the Enquiry we find almost nothing concerning the reality of the external world and the nature of the self, but Hume emphasizes heavily the 34 anti-metaphysical and anti-theological outcomes of the science of human nature in his sections on Liberty and Necessity (VIII), on Miracles (X), on Providence and a possible future state (XI). He stresses the devastating agnostic consequences of his principles and his agnosticism culminates in the dreadful censorship of the final lines of the book. On the contrary, the fourth part of the Treatise, Book I, offers an intricate and sophisticated treatment of various subjects. The intricacy shows in the very title of this part: "Of the Sceptical and Other Systems of Philosophy." Hume actually intertwines the exposition of his skeptical system — an expression which sounds odd — with the critical examination of rival systems and an attempt at accounting for the nature of things. These intricate undertakings are the direct upshot of Hume's analysis of causation. He thinks he has established that our causal beliefs are the products of custom alone and that nevertheless they are our only reliable beliefs. Lacking any rational justification, they are simply natural — which means that we cannot hinder ourselves from making inferences and predictions. Accordingly, reason has been immersed in the wider concept of imagination and thus naturalized: it is "nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls" (T 179). Basically, some beliefs are unavoidable. Now, a crucial problem is to know how far we can go into the analysis of such natural beliefs. In the Treatise, Hume sets out to investigate some of them whereas in the Enquiry he is more prudent and merely talks of instincts without considering their mechanism. In the Treatise, the tentative analysis of these natural beliefs has important metaphysical outcomes. Using the concepts and principles of his new-born science of human nature, Hume provides us with 35 a new ontology which states the nature of things from the standpoint of our beliefs concerning it. Thus, we get a Humean version of the nature of the external world and of the nature of the self. Unfortunately, this assessment of what there is on the basis of what we believe there is has unwanted skeptical effects. Hume's "as if" ontology tends to appear definitely fictitious, all the more so because the analysis of our natural beliefs is not successful and even quite defective. So, the skeptical outcome pushes through the positive project itself as the failure to account for our natural beliefs shakes the very belief in their special reliability. Such is, for example, the blatant result of the study of our belief in the external world (T 217). Again, in the Treatise, Hume is eager to emphasize the devastating anti-metaphysical implications of his thought. Under the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:33 HOW TO BECOME A MODERATE SKEPTIC: HUME'S WAY OUT OF PYRRHONISM The nature and extent of Hume's skepticism have been assessed in various ways. He was viewed as a radical skeptic until the end of the XIXth century. Many contemporary interpretations, which can be traced back to Kemp Smith's book, have claimed since that a reassessment was indispensable if we are to take seriously either the very (...) project of a science of human nature or Hume's naturalist conception of belief. The idea of a science of human nature presupposes that at least some sort of positive knowledge is possible. The naturalist conception of belief claims that some of our beliefs, though lacking rational justification, are nevertheless unavoidable and gain this way a certainty all their own. Both the Treatise of Human Nature in Book I and the Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding -1 conclude with a moderate or mitigated skepticism after making a strong case for radical pyrrhonism. In this paper I wish to carry out two connected tasks: first I want to consider whether Hume's skepticism in the Treatise is the same as that of the Enquiry or not; second, I want to determine which arguments he puts forward for his shift from pyrrhonism to modern skepticism. The most noticeable differences between the Treatise and the Enquiry occur immediately after the analysis of causation. In the Enquiry we find almost nothing concerning the reality of the external world and the nature of the self, but Hume emphasizes heavily the 34 anti-metaphysical and anti-theological outcomes of the science of human nature in his sections on Liberty and Necessity (VIII), on Miracles (X), on Providence and a possible future state (XI). He stresses the devastating agnostic consequences of his principles and his agnosticism culminates in the dreadful censorship of the final lines of the book. On the contrary, the fourth part of the Treatise, Book I, offers an intricate and sophisticated treatment of various subjects. The intricacy shows in the very title of this part: "Of the Sceptical and Other Systems of Philosophy." Hume actually intertwines the exposition of his skeptical system — an expression which sounds odd — with the critical examination of rival systems and an attempt at accounting for the nature of things. These intricate undertakings are the direct upshot of Hume's analysis of causation. He thinks he has established that our causal beliefs are the products of custom alone and that nevertheless they are our only reliable beliefs. Lacking any rational justification, they are simply natural — which means that we cannot hinder ourselves from making inferences and predictions. Accordingly, reason has been immersed in the wider concept of imagination and thus naturalized: it is "nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls" (T 179). Basically, some beliefs are unavoidable. Now, a crucial problem is to know how far we can go into the analysis of such natural beliefs. In the Treatise, Hume sets out to investigate some of them whereas in the Enquiry he is more prudent and merely talks of instincts without considering their mechanism. In the Treatise, the tentative analysis of these natural beliefs has important metaphysical outcomes. Using the concepts and principles of his new-born science of human nature, Hume provides us with 35 a new ontology which states the nature of things from the standpoint of our beliefs concerning it. Thus, we get a Humean version of the nature of the external world and of the nature of the self. Unfortunately, this assessment of what there is on the basis of what we believe there is has unwanted skeptical effects. Hume's "as if" ontology tends to appear definitely fictitious, all the more so because the analysis of our natural beliefs is not successful and even quite defective. So, the skeptical outcome pushes through the positive project itself as the failure to account for our natural beliefs shakes the very belief in their special reliability. Such is, for example, the blatant result of the study of our belief in the external world (T 217). Again, in the Treatise, Hume is eager to emphasize the devastating anti-metaphysical implications of his thought. Under the... (shrink)

In the recent debate on the semantic/pragmatic divide, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore (2005) on the one hand, and Fran¸cois Recanati (2004) on the other, occupy almost diametrically opposed positions as regards the role of semantics for communication, while largely agreeing on important features of pragmatics. According to Cappelen and Lepore (CL), semantic context sensitivity of natural language sentences is restricted to what is determined by a particular minimal set of canonically context sensitive expressions. If you try to go beyond (...) that set, as has often been done in recent semantic theories, to reach a position of moderate contextualism, your reasons will force you to the much more extreme position of radical contextualism. That is CL’s instability thesis. They argue for it by means of a number of examples intended to illustrate how you are off on a slippery slope if you admit any context sensitivity beyond the basic one. If radical contextualism is true, systematic semantics is not possible, since, according to CL, there cannot be any systematic theory of speech act content. The one exception is that whatever is said by the utterance of a sentence, its minimally context dependent content is part of it. Precisely this is denied by Recanati. Not only is this “minimal proposition” not part of speech act content. The minimal proposition plays no.. (shrink)

Our thought and talk are situated. They do not take place in a vacuum but always in a context, and they always concern an external situation relative to which they are to be evaluated. Since that is so, François Recanati argues, our linguistic and mental representations alike must be assigned two layers of content: the explicit content, or lekton, is relative and perspectival, while the complete content, which is absolute, involves contextual factors in addition to what is (...) explicitly represented. Far from reducing to the context-independent meaning of the sentence-type or, in the psychological realm, to the 'narrow' content of mental representations, the lekton is a level intermediate between context-invariant meaning and full propositional content. Recognition of that intermediate level is the key to a proper understanding of context-dependence in language and thought. Going beyond the usual discussions of indexicality and unarticulated constituents in the philosophy of language, Recanati turns to the philosophy of mind for decisive arguments in favour of his approach. He shows, first, that the lekton is the notion of content we need if we are to properly understand the relations between perception, memory, and the imagination, and second, that the psychological 'mode' is what determines the situation the lekton is relative to. In this framework he provides a detailed account of de se thought and the first person point of view. In the last part of the book, Recanati discusses the special freedom we have, in discourse and thought, to shift the situation of evaluation. He traces that freedom to a special mode - the anaphoric mode - which enables us to go beyond the egocentric stage of pre-human thought. (shrink)

This dissertation is a defense of moderate invariantism, the traditional epistemological position combining the following three theses: invariantism, according to which the word ‘know’ expresses the same content in every context of use; intellectualism, according to which whether one knows a certain proposition does not depend on one’s practical interests; and antiskepticism, according to which we really do know much of what we ordinarily take ourselves to know. Moderate invariantism needs defending because of seemingly powerful arguments for contextualism, the (...) view that, like ‘I’ and ‘now’, ‘know’ expresses different contents in different contexts. It has been argued that only contextualism can properly reply to skeptical arguments, and that only contextualism can account for our tendency to go from judging that a knowledge claim is true to judging that it is false in response to shifts in the context of use. Moderate invariantist replies to these arguments have largely failed. I propose new replies on behalf of moderate invariantism, while critiquing earlier, less successful attempts. Chapter one is introductory. In chapters two and three, I examine contextualist replies to skeptical arguments arising from radical skeptical hypotheses (such as the possibility that one is a brain in a vat) and from considerations involving lotteries. I argue that if contextualism can adequately respond to these arguments, then there are equally effective replies available to the moderate invariantist. In the next two chapters, I examine Stewart Cohen’s “Airport Case,” which elicits intuitions about knowledge claims that supposedly only contextualism can accommodate. In chapter four, I argue that none of the invariantist replies to the case that depend on denying the intuitions succeed; in chapter five, I accept the intuitions, but argue that contextualism does not follow from them. Finally, in chapter six, I evaluate two interesting invariantist critiques of contextualism; according to the first, contextualism collapses into the radical position that every English expression is context-sensitive; according to the second, ‘know’ fails a test for context-sensitivity involving indirect speech reports. (shrink)

Gregor Moder’s Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity is a lively entry into current debates concerning Hegel, Spinoza, and their relation. Hegel and Spinoza are two of the most influential philosophers of the modern era, and the traditions of thought they inaugurated have been in continuous dialogue and conflict ever since Hegel first criticized Spinoza. Notably, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German Idealists aimed to overcome the determinism of Spinoza’s system by securing a place for the freedom of the subject within it, (...) and twentieth-century French materialists such as Althusser and Deleuze rallied behind Spinoza as the ultimate champion of anti-Hegelian materialism. This conflict, or mutual rejection, lives on today in recent discussions about materialism. Contemporary thinkers either make a Hegelian case for the productiveness of concepts of the negative, nothingness, and death, or in a way that is inspired by Spinoza they abolish the concepts of the subject and negation and argue for pure affirmation and the vitalistic production of differences. Hegel and Spinoza traces the historical roots of these alternatives and shows how contemporary discussions between Heideggerians and Althusserians, Lacanians and Deleuzians are a variation of the disagreement between Hegel and Spinoza. Throughout, Moder persuasively demonstrates that the best way to read Hegel and Spinoza is not in opposition or contrast but together: as Hegel and Spinoza. (shrink)

This article defends the content approach to aesthetic experience. It begins by sketching this approach to aesthetic experience. It then rehearses certain recent criticisms of the view by Alan Goldman and attempts to rebut them. One of those criticisms raises a long-standing concern about the author's account that has recently been called the “qua” problem. The article concludes by putting this issue to rest.

Most work in the epistemology of testimony is built upon a simple model of communication according to which, when the speaker asserts that p, the hearer must recover this very content, p. In this paper, I argue that this ‘Content Preservation Model’ of communication cannot bear the weight placed on it by contemporary work on testimony. It is popularly thought that testimonial exchanges are often successful such that we gain a great deal of knowledge through testimony. In addition, (...) the testimonial knowledge so gained is thought to be informative: it closes off epistemic possibilities for the agent. However, in the literature on truth-conditional content, there is no theory of content that can underpin both of these commitments simultaneously if the Content Preservation Model is true. There is a minimal notion of content, which is commonly preserved in communication, but which is typically uninformative; there is a maximal notion of content, which is often informative, but which is not often preserved in communication; and, although there are moderate positions between these two extremes, these views cannot strike the right balance between informativeness and shareability. Thus, an epistemology of testimony that endorses the Content Preservation Model faces a dilemma: on the first horn, testimonial exchanges are rarely successful; on the second horn, testimonial content is rarely informative. I suggest that this dilemma motivates further exploration of alternative communicative foundations for the epistemology of testimony. (shrink)

The consensus in contemporary philosophy of mind is that how a perceptual experience represents the world to be is built into its sensory phenomenology. I defend an opposing view which I call ‘moderate separatism’, that an experience's sensory phenomenology does not determine how it represents the world to be. I argue for moderate separatism by pointing to two ordinary experiences which instantiate the same sensory phenomenology but differ with regard to their intentional content. Two experiences of an object reflected (...) in a mirror can possess the same spatial phenomenology while representing that object to occupy different spatial locations. So, contrary to the current consensus, the representation of spatial location is not fixed by an experience's sensory phenomenology. (shrink)

I suggest that the main aim Recanati proposes to achieve in Perspectival Though—that a moderate relativist should adopt a Kaplanian framework with three levels of content, rather than a Lewisian framework with only two— seems insufficiently motivated, and the arguments offered do not settle the issue. I suggest furthermore that the claim that subjects’ mental states and cognitive situations can determine parameters or indices in circumstances of evaluation is an original and very interesting contribution. It is also an important (...) one, since it sets further apart the radical from the moderate relativist, and it is relevant in the current relativism debate, where truth is deemed to be relative to parameters other than worlds, times, places and individuals. I also offer a few objections to some of the reasons Recanati puts forward in support of this latter claim; I object in particular to those that depend on some considerations about psychological modes. (shrink)

Psychotherapy with the use of psychedelic substances, including psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), ketamine, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), has demonstrated promise in treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, addiction, and treatment-resistant depression. Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PP) represents a unique psychopharmacological model that leverages the profound effects of the psychedelic experience. That experience is characterized by strong dependency on two key factors: participant mindset and the therapeutic environment. As such, therapeutic models that utilize psychedelics reflect the need for careful design that promotes (...) an open, flexible, trusting mindset and a supportive setting. To meet this need, the PP model is increasingly supplemented by auxiliary methods, including meditation, relaxation, visualization or spiritual practices. We suggest virtual reality (VR) as a full-spectrum tool able to capitalize on and catalyze the innately therapeutic aspects of the psychedelic experience, such as detachment from familiar reality, alteration of self-experience, augmentation of sensory perception and induction of mystical-type experiences. This is facilitated by VR’s evidenced capacity to: aid relaxation and reduce anxiety; buffer from external stimuli; promote a mindful presence; train the mind to achieve altered states of consciousness (ASC); evoke mystical states; enhance therapeutic alliance and encourage self-efficacy. While these unique VR features appear promising, VR’s potential role in PP remains speculative due to lack of empirical evidence on the combined use of VR and PP. Given the increased commercial interest in this synergy there is an urgent need to evaluate this approach. We suggest specific VR models and their role within PP protocols to inspire future direction in scientific research, and provide a list of potential disadvantages, side effects and limitations that need to be carefully considered. These include sensory overstimulation, cyber-sickness, triggering memories of past traumatic events as well as distracting from the inner experience or strongly influencing its contents. A balanced, evidence-based approach may provide continuity across all phases of treatment, support transition into and out of an ASC, deepen acute ASC experiences including mystical states and enrich the psychotherapeutic process of integration. We conclude that the potential application of VR in modulating psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy demands further exploration and an evidence-based approach to both design and implementation. (shrink)

We study the problem of the approach to equilibrium in a macroscopic quantum system in an abstract setting. We prove that, for a typical choice of “nonequilibrium subspace”, any initial state (from the energy shell) thermalizes, and in fact does so very quickly, on the order of the Boltzmann time τ B := h/(k B T ). This apparently unrealistic, but mathematically rigorous, conclusion has the important physical implication that the moderately slow decay observed in reality is not typical in (...) the present setting. (shrink)

Judgments based on episodic memory are often thought to be immune to errors of misidentification (IEM). Yet there is a certain category of episodic memories, viz. observer memories, that seems to threaten IEM. In the resulting debate, some say that observer memories are a threat to the IEM enjoyed by episodic memory (Michaelian, 2021); others say that they pose no such threat (Fernández, 2021; Lin, 2020). In this paper, we argue for a middle way. First, we frame the debate, claiming (...) that the existing literature lacks a satisfying definition both of observer memories and of the precise issue of errors of identification in such memories. Then, we contribute to the debate by challenging an anti-separatist view about the relation between phenomenal and intentional features of observer memories that looms behind this debate. On this view, if the rememberer's self is a phenomenal feature of the memory, by implication it is also built into the intentional content. We reject this view and offer a moderate separatist account. Distinguishing between empirically-grounded species of observer memories, we say that the phenomenal self sometimes is, and sometimes is not built into the intentional content of the memory, and this results in different implications for IEM. (shrink)

Student character survey in Indonesia in 2021, on average, produced lower index numbers compared to last year’s index results. This research aims to explore the policies and content of Character Building Training (CBT), and the impact of the programme on student character. This research was qualitative, involving informants: 60 students and 8 lecturers, who were selected using purposive and snowball techniques, so that if the data were saturated, collecting the data was considered sufficient. Data were collected through observation and (...) in-depth interviews carried out from June to September 2022. Data analysis was carried out manually using the Discovering Cultural Themes model by carrying out data reduction, data display, and drawing conclusions and verification. The research results show that CBT is implemented through a cycle of CBT campaign, capacity building, and institutionalisation with a nurturing, learning, mentoring, and consulting approach. The content includes attitudes and values, skills, knowledge and moderate integrative insight, as well as amplifying tolerant, open, critical, caring, and creative behaviour, respecting differences, and polite and commendable behaviour. The CBT programme has amplified some aspects: religious character, discipline, politeness, caring for the environment, and patriotism. The greatest and dominant strengthening was in religious character and love of the country. The implication and contribution of this research is the continuation of character education for young people as an instrument to substantiate religious moderation. Contribution: This research is important theoretically and practically to contribute to the formation of character building in young people in Islamic tertiary institutions. Currently, character education is the main vision of Islamic tertiary institutions in Indonesia, which is associated with religious moderation as one of the priorities in the national medium-term development plan. (shrink)

Furthermore, adults with decision-making capacity, including pregnant women, can currently accept interventions with moderate net risks for themselves in other settings (e.g., open f...

In recent years, artificial intelligence has been deployed by online platforms to prevent the upload of allegedly illegal content or to remove unwarranted expressions. These systems are trained to spot objectionable content and to remove it, block it, or filter it out before it is even uploaded. Artificial intelligence filters offer a robust approach to content moderation which is shaping the public sphere. This dramatic shift in norm setting and law enforcement is potentially game-changing for democracy. (...) Artificial intelligence filters carry censorial power, which could bypass traditional checks and balances secured by law. Their opaque and dynamic nature creates barriers to oversight, and conceals critical value choices and tradeoffs. Currently, we lack adequate tools to hold them accountable. This paper seeks to address this gap by introducing an adversarial procedure— – Contesting Algorithms. It proposes to deliberately introduce friction into the dominant removal systems governed by artificial intelligence. Algorithmic content moderation often seeks to optimize a single goal, such as removing copyright-infringing materials or blocking hate speech, while other values in the public interest, such as fair use or free speech, are often neglected. Contesting algorithms introduce an adversarial design which reflects conflicting values, and thereby may offer a check on dominant removal systems. Facilitating an adversarial intervention may promote democratic principles by keeping society in the loop. An adversarial public artificial intelligence system could enhance dynamic transparency, facilitate an alternative public articulation of social values using machine learning systems, and restore societal power to deliberate and determine social tradeoffs. (shrink)

Although the same environmental regulations apply to all regions in China, legal enforcement can be different due to local economic development priorities. There is still a lack of knowledge about how regional disparities affect the operating performance results of the implementation of corporate environmental management practices, thus providing little information for foreign companies when they invest and develop their production base in China. To fill this research gap, this paper collects data from the Fortune 500 Chinese firms to investigate the (...) moderating role of regional disparities in affecting the performance results of corporate environmental management efforts based on the institutional theory. The disclosed corporate environmental responsibility practices serve as proxy to represent corporate environmental management practices. Content analysis approach was applied to collect and analyze CER practices published in the corporate reports of Chinese manufacturers. The results show that CER has a positive impact on operating income, while regional disparities influence the relationship between CER and corporate operating income. Specifically, CER and operating income are positively related in Eastern China; on the contrary, they are negatively related in Western China. This paper adds to the body of knowledge about environmental discrepancies in the same emerging economy, and provides insights for systematic consideration in terms of the issues of government environmental regulations and corporate environmental strategies. (shrink)

Representationalists who hold that phenomenal character can be explained in terms of representational content currently cannot explain counter-examples that involve indeterminate perceptual content, such as in the case of objects seen blurrily by someone with poor eyesight, or objects seen vaguely in misty conditions. But this problem can be resolved via provision of a more sophisticated double content (DC) view, according to which the representational content of perception is structured in two nested levels. I start by (...) outlining the DC view via consideration of four closely related cases of perceptual imprecision. Then, after a demonstration that the DC view can also explain imprecise photographic content, inadequacies in the more standard single content (SC) view are demonstrated. The results are then generalized so as to apply to the content of any kinds of non-conventional representation. The paper continues with evidence that a DC account provides a moderate rather than extreme realist account of perception, and it concludes with an initial analysis of the failure of nomic covariance accounts of information in indeterminacy cases. (shrink)