Autonomous e-coaching systems offer their users suggestions for action, thereby affecting the user's decision-making process. More specifically, the suggestions that these systems make influence the options for action that people actually consider. Surprisingly though, options and the corresponding process of option generation --- a decision-making stage preceding intention formation and action selection --- has received very little attention in the various disciplines studying decision making. We argue that this neglect is unjustified and that it is important, particularly for designers of (...) autonomous e-coaching systems, to understand how human option generation works. The aims of this paper are threefold. The first aim is to generate awareness with designers of autonomous e-coaching systems that these systems do in fact influence their users' options. The second is to show that understanding the interplay between a person's options and the e-coaching system's suggestions is important for improving the effectiveness of the system. The third is that the very same interplay is also crucial for designing e-coaching systems that respect people's autonomy. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick has gone down in the history of philosophy as both the great, classical utilitarian moral theorist who authored The Methods of Ethics, and an outstanding exemplar of intellectual honesty and integrity, one whose personal virtues were inseparable from his philosophical strengths and method. Yet this construction of Sidgwick the philosopher has been based on a too limited understanding of Sidgwick's casuistry and leading practical ethical concerns. As his friendship with John Addington Symonds reveals, Sidgwick was deeply entangled in (...) an effort to negotiate the proper spheres of the public and private, not only in philosophical and religious matters, but also with respect to explosive questions of sexuality – particularly same sex actions and identities, as celebrated by Symonds and other champions of Oxford Hellenism and Whitmania. His willingness to mislead the public about such issues suggests that Sidgwick's utilitarian casuistry was rather more complex and esoteric than has been recognized. (shrink)

Positive economic models aim to provide truthful explanations of significant economic phenomena. While the notion of ‘preferences’ figures prominently in micro-economic models, it suffers from a remarkable lack of conceptual clarity and rigor. After distinguishing narrow homo economicus models from broader ones and rehearsing the criticisms both have met, I go into the most promising attempt to date at addressing them, developed by Hausman. However, his definition of preferences as ‘total comparative evaluations’, I argue, plays into the general disregard that (...) economists have for human psychology. My alternative definition of preferences as ‘overall comparative evaluations’ – and hence as one of the many factors that influence people’s behavior – allows for more adequate causal explanations of people’s dutiful, committed, and norm-guided actions. Against Hausman but in agreement with Sen, it also allows for counterpreferential choice. (shrink)

The epistemologists Biro and Siegel have raised two objections against the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation. According to the first objection the pragma-dialectical theory is not genuinely normative. According to the second objection the rejection of justificationism by pragma-dialecticians is unwarranted: they reject justificationism prematurely and they are not consistent in accepting some arguments (‘justifications’) as sound. The first objection is based on what we regard as the misconception that the goal of resolving differences of opinion cannot provide a normative approach. (...) In response to the second objection we argue that in pragma-dialectics, the notion of argument, and related notions, are defined in a non-justificatory manner. (shrink)

A relatively small but intellectually robust strand in the Christian religion is the Reformed tradition. Especially, its Calvinist sensibilities inform this Protestant stance towards human culture in general and vocations in particular. Correspondingly, there are some small but robust contributions to academic discourse in nursing ethics. So far there has been no attempt to bring those together as a distinct approach. This article suggests such a Reformed Christian, especially Calvinist, account of nursing ethics. Central to the Reformed perspective is the (...) notion that God is sovereign over all of creation and culture and hence that there can be no religiously or morally neutral area in human life. Consequently, nursing is not seen as professional to the extent it is based on research evidence or theoretical models, but to the extent it serves the ultimate purpose of the practice of care. In the Reformed view, this purpose is fostering the well-being of human beings in need as intrinsically valuable. Nurses are professionals who accept this responsibility, that is, the whole of expectations holding for personal qualities, conduct and outcomes, required to serve the purpose of care. As this is a moral purpose, succeeding or failing to live up to these expectations is the source of moral issues in nursing. (shrink)

The Sublime in Schopenhauer's Philosophy transforms our understanding of Schopenhauer's aesthetics and anthropology. Bart Vandenabeele breaks new ground by providing what is probably the first monograph to be devoted exclusively to Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime. The book focuses on Schopenhauer's conception of the sublime and how it relates to the individual and its attitude towards life. The author explores in unusual depth Schopenhauer's relation to Kant, whose follower and critic he was, and shows how Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory moves (...) beyond Kant's in numerous meaningful ways. Drawing on recent insights in psychology and the philosophy of mind, Vandenabeele seeks ultimately to rework Schopenhauer's theory into a viable form so as to establish the sublime as a distinctive aesthetic category with a broader existential and metaphysical significance. (shrink)

Health-promoting nudges have been put into practice by different agents, in different contexts and with different aims. This article formulates a set of criteria that enables a thorough ethical evaluation of such nudges. As such, it bridges the gap between the abstract, theoretical debates among academics and the actual behavioral interventions being implemented in practice. The criteria are derived from arguments against nudges, which allegedly disrespect nudgees, as these would impose values on nudgees and/or violate their rationality and autonomy. Instead (...) of interpreting these objections as knock-down arguments, I take them as expressing legitimate worries that can often be addressed. I analyze six prototypical nudge cases, such as Google’s rearrangement of fridges and the use of defaults in organ donation registration. I show how the ethical criteria listed are satisfied by most—but not all—nudges in most—but not all—circumstances. (shrink)

It is a natural assumption in mainstream epistemological theory that ascriptions of knowledge of a proposition p track strength of epistemic position vis-à-vis p. It is equally natural to assume that the strength of one’s epistemic position is maximally high in cases where p concerns a simple analytic truth. For instance, it seems reasonable to suppose that one’s epistemic position vis-à-vis “a cat is a cat” is harder to improve than one’s position vis-à-vis “a cat is on the mat”, and (...) consequently, that the former is at least as unambiguous a case of knowledge as the latter. The current paper, however, presents empirical evidence which challenges this intuitive line of reasoning. Our study on the epistemic intuitions of hundreds of academic philosophers supports the idea that simple and uncontroversial analytic propositions are less likely to qualify as knowledge than empirical ones. We show that our results, though at odds with orthodox theories of knowledge in mainstream epistemology, can be explained in a way consistent with Wittgenstein’s remarks on ‘hinge propositions’ or with Stalnaker’s pragmatics of assertion. We then present and evaluate a number of lines of response mainstream theories of knowledge could appeal to in accommodating our results. Finally, we show how each line of response runs into some prima facie difficulties. Thus, our observed asymmetry between knowing “a cat is a cat” and knowing “a cat is on the mat” presents a puzzle which mainstream epistemology needs to resolve. (shrink)

We can understand and act upon the beliefs of other people, even when these conflict with our own beliefs. Children’s development of this ability, known as Theory of Mind, typically happens around age 4. Research using a looking-time paradigm, however, established that toddlers at the age of 15 months old pass a non-verbal false-belief task (Onishi and Baillargeon in Science 308:255–258, 2005). This is well before the age at which children pass any of the verbal false-belief tasks. In this study (...) we present a more complex case of false-belief reasoning with older children. We tested second-order reasoning, probing children’s ability to handle the belief of one person about the belief of another person. We find just the opposite: 7-year-olds pass a verbal false-belief reasoning task, but fail on an equally complex low-verbal task. This finding suggests that language supports explicit reasoning about beliefs, perhaps by facilitating the cognitive system to keep track of beliefs attributed by people to other people. (shrink)

We can understand and act upon the beliefs of other people, even when these conflict with our own beliefs. Children’s development of this ability, known as Theory of Mind, typically happens around age 4. Research using a looking-time paradigm, however, established that toddlers at the age of 15 months old pass a non-verbal false-belief task (Onishi and Baillargeon in Science 308:255–258, 2005). This is well before the age at which children pass any of the verbal false-belief tasks. In this study (...) we present a more complex case of false-belief reasoning with older children. We tested second-order reasoning, probing children’s ability to handle the belief of one person about the belief of another person. We find just the opposite: 7-year-olds pass a verbal false-belief reasoning task, but fail on an equally complex low-verbal task. This finding suggests that language supports explicit reasoning about beliefs, perhaps by facilitating the cognitive system to keep track of beliefs attributed by people to other people. (shrink)

In the early months of 2020, the deadly Covid-19 disease spread rapidly around the world. In response, national and regional governments implemented a range of emergency lockdown measures, curtailing citizens’ movements and greatly limiting economic activity. More recently, as restrictions begin to be loosened or lifted entirely, the use of so-called contact tracing apps has figured prominently in many jurisdictions’ plans to reopen society. Critics have questioned the utility of such technologies on a number of fronts, both practical and ethical. (...) However, little has been said about the ways in which the normative design choices of app developers, and the products that result therefrom, might contribute to ethical reflection and wider political debate. Drawing from scholarship in critical design and human–computer interaction, this paper examines the development of a QR code-based tracking app called Zwaai (‘Wave’ in Dutch), where its designers explicitly positioned the app as an alternative to the predominant Bluetooth and GPS-based approaches. Through analyzing these designers’ choices, this paper argues that QR code infrastructures can work to surface a set ofethical–political seams, two of which are discussed here—responsibilizationandnetworked (im)permanence—that more ‘seamless’ protocols like Bluetooth actively aim to bypass, and which may go otherwise unnoticed by existing ethical frameworks. (shrink)

Irreplicability is framed as crisis, blamed on sloppy science motivated by perverse stimuli in research. Structural changes to the organization of science, targeting sloppy science (e.g., open data, pre‐registration), are proposed to prevent irreplicability. While there is an unquestionable link between sloppy science and failures to replicate/reproduce scientific studies, they are currently conflated. This position can be understood as a result of the erosion of the role of theory in science. The history, sociology, and philosophy of science reveal alternative explanations (...) for irreplicability to show it is part of proper, informative and valuable science. Irreplicability need not equate research waste. Sloppy science is the problem, also when results do replicate. Hence, the solution should focus on opposing sloppy research. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 9-12, December 2011.

Neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders, also sometimes referred to as psychosurgery, is rapidly evolving, with new techniques and indications being investigated actively. Many within the field have suggested that some form of guidelines or regulations are needed to help ensure that a promising field develops safely. Multiple countries have enacted specific laws regulating NPD. This article reviews NPD-specific laws drawn from North and South America, Asia and Europe, in order to identify the typical form and contents of these laws and to (...) set the groundwork for the design of an optimal regulation for the field. Key challenges for this design that are revealed by the review are how to define the scope of the law, what types of regulations are required, and how to approach international harmonization given the potential migration of researchers and patients. (shrink)

The recent chiming of Simone de Beauvoir's legacy by French feminists for a policy of assimilation of Muslim women to Western models of self and society reduces the complexity and richness of Beauvoir's views in inacceptable ways. This article explores to what extent a politics of difference that challenges the ideals and political strategies of abstract liberalism can be extracted from and legitimized by the philosophies of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Without assuming their thought is identical, we can (...) read them as elucidating each other and as implicitly exposing weak and strong points in their respective philosophies on ethnocultural rehtions and social identities. (shrink)

This article focuses on the difficult issue of what exactly goes on when an individual tolerates something. It focuses on the problem of why an individual would ever choose to allow for some practice that he deerns unacceptable while having the power to do something about it. After distinguishing between different attitudes , this article argues that individuals can have various reasons for deciding to tolerate what they deern wrong. As such, we defend a broad conception of tolerance, which goes (...) against the grain of recent literature in which tolerance is generally understood as a virtue. (shrink)

In this paper, we look at reasoning with evidence and facts in criminal cases. We show how this reasoning may be analysed in a dialectical way by means of critical questions that point to typical sources of doubt. We discuss critical questions about the evidential arguments adduced, about the narrative accounts of the facts considered, and about the way in which the arguments and narratives are connected in an analysis. Our treatment shows how two different types of knowledge, represented as (...) schemes, play a role in reasoning with evidence: argumentation schemes and story schemes. (shrink)

_A Companion to Schopenhauer_ provides a comprehensive guide to all the important facets of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The volume contains 26 newly commissioned essays by prominent Schopenhauer scholars working in the field today. A thoroughly comprehensive guide to the life, work, and thought of Arthur Schopenhauer Demonstrates the range of Schopenhauer’s work and illuminates the debates it has generated 26 newly commissioned essays by some of the most prominent Schopenhauer scholars working today reflect the very latest trends in Schopenhauer scholarship Covers (...) the full range of historical and philosophical perspectives on Schopenhauer’s work Discusses his seminal contributions to our understanding of knowledge, perception, morality, science, logic and mathematics, Platonic Ideas, the unconscious, aesthetic experience, art, colours, sexuality, will, compassion, pessimism, tragedy, pleasure, and happiness. (shrink)

In this article, we critically reflect on the concept of biomimicry. On the basis of an analysis of the concept of biomimicry in the literature and its philosophical origin, we distinguish between a strong and a weaker concept of biomimicry. The strength of the strong concept of biomimicry is that nature is seen as a measure by which to judge the ethical rightness of our technological innovations, but its weakness is found in questionable presuppositions. These presuppositions are addressed by the (...) weaker concept of biomimicry, but at the price that it is no longer possible to distinguish between exploitative and ecological types of technological innovations. We compare both concepts of biomimicry by critically reflecting on four dimensions of the concept of biomimicry: mimesis, technology, nature, and ethics. (shrink)

This article introduces a computational model which illustrates how a population of agents can coordinate a vocabulary for goal oriented behavior through repeated local interactions, called “Action Games”. Using principles of self organization and specific assumptions on their behavior, the agents learn the goals and a vocabulary for them. It is shown that the proposed model can be used to investigate the coordination of vocabularies for goal oriented behavior both in a vertical and in a horizontal transmission scheme. Furthermore, it (...) is shown that in this model shared vocabularies can only be learned from multiple demonstrations consisting of exactly these actions that are strictly required to reach the goal. Keywords: robot imitation; self organization; vocabularies. (shrink)

In this article, we critically reflect on the concept of biomimicry. On the basis of an analysis of the concept of biomimicry in the literature and its philosophical origin, we distinguish between a strong and a weaker concept of biomimicry. The strength of the strong concept of biomimicry is that nature is seen as a measure by which to judge the ethical rightness of our technological innovations, but its weakness is found in questionable presuppositions. These presuppositions are addressed by the (...) weaker concept of biomimicry, but at the price that it is no longer possible to distinguish between exploitative and ecological types of technological innovations. We compare both concepts of biomimicry by critically reflecting on four dimensions of the concept of biomimicry: mimesis, technology, nature, and ethics. (shrink)

This article introduces a computational model which illustrates how a population of agents can coordinate a vocabulary for goal oriented behavior through repeated local interactions, called “Action Games”. Using principles of self organization and specific assumptions on their behavior, the agents learn the goals and a vocabulary for them. It is shown that the proposed model can be used to investigate the coordination of vocabularies for goal oriented behavior both in a vertical and in a horizontal transmission scheme. Furthermore, it (...) is shown that in this model shared vocabularies can only be learned from multiple demonstrations consisting of exactly these actions that are strictly required to reach the goal. Keywords: robot imitation; self organization; vocabularies. (shrink)

Laboratory ethnographies have provided valuable insights in the workings of contemporary science and technology and about facts in the making. Nearly all these ethnographic studies have been conducted at nonprofit research institutes. In this article, the authors argue that it is time for science and technology studies ethnography to direct its gaze toward for-profit knowledge production sites. The authors do so, based on a long-standing recognition that nonprofit academic laboratories do not have a monopoly on knowledge construction. First, they historicize (...) STS’ focus on public knowledge production, distinguishing between two roles for STS. Second, they argue that relationships between industry and society have changed, resulting in increasing corporate transparency. Third, they argue that this change enables STS ethnography to enter corporations and corporate laboratories. The authors conclude by proposing a research agenda for the social study of corporate science. (shrink)

Quantitative genetic studies of human aggressive behavior only partly support the claim of social role theory that individual differences in aggressive behavior are learnt rather than innate. As to its heritable component, future studies on the genetic architecture of aggressive behavior across different contexts could shed more light on the evolutionary origins of male-female versus male-male aggression.

The secret ballot is considered a central feature of free and fair elections all over the world. While the reasons to uphold it seem to be overwhelming, we argue that the secret ballot is only second-best at best and that a modified version of open voting might prove to be more democratic. Instead of denying the various problems and difficulties that an open system might encounter, we want to offer a genuine proposal that can avoid these numerous pitfalls. After rehearsing (...) the various arguments pro and contra open voting, we draw attention to the role of shame, which has been neglected by both sides in the debate. While shame plays a pivotal role in the democratic argument pro open voting, it also brings out new problems that tell against opening up the vote. This means that, if we want to draw on the democratic potential of open voting, we will have to find a system that minimizes the undesirable effects of shame. In the third and final section, we will formulate a concrete proposal of open voting that we believe is more democratic than the current secret ballot and is able to avoid potential worries. Even if this proves to be highly speculative, it serves as an invitation for further empirical research. (shrink)

ArgumentWe expand upon the notion of the “credibility cycle” through a study of credibility engineering by the food industry. Research and development as well as marketing contribute to the credibility of the food company Unilever and its claims. Innovation encompasses the development, marketing, and sales of products. These are directed towards three distinct audiences: scientific peers, regulators, and consumers. R&D uses scientific articles to create credit for itself amongst peers and regulators. These articles are used to support health claims on (...) products. However, R&D, regulation, and marketing are not separate realms. A single strategy of credibility engineering connects health claims to a specific public through linking that public to a health issue and a food product. (shrink)

This volume comprises a selection of contributions to the theorizing about argumentation that have been presented at the 9th conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, held in Amsterdam in July 2018. The chapters included provide a general theoretical perspective on central topics in argumentation theory, such as argument schemes and the fallacies. Some contributions concentrate on the treatment of the concept of conductive argument. Other contributions are dedicated to specific issues such as the justification of questions, (...) the occurrence of mining relations, the role of exclamatives, argumentative abduction, eudaimonistic argumentation and a typology of logical ways to counter an argument. In a number of cases the theoretical problems addressed are related to a specific type of context, such as the burden of proof in philosophical argumentation, the charge of committing a genetic fallacy in strategic manoeuvring in philosophy, the necessity of community argument, and connection adequacy for arguments with institutional warrants. The volume offers a great deal of diversity in its breadth of coverage of argumentation theory and wide geographic representation from North and South America to Europe and China. (shrink)

In this paper, we first enumerate the problems that humans might face with a new type of technology such as robots with artificial intelligence. Robotics entrepreneurs are calling for discussions about goals and values because AI robots, which are potentially more intelligent than humans, can no longer be fully understood and controlled by humans. AI robots could even develop into ethically “bad” agents and become very harmful. We consider these discussions as part of a process of developing responsible innovations in (...) AI robotics in order to prevent catastrophic risks on a global scale. To deal with these issues, we propose the capability-effectual approach, drawing on two bodies of research: the capability approach from ethics, and the effectual process model from entrepreneurship research. The capability approach provides central human capabilities, guiding the effectual process through individual goals and aspirations in the collaborative design process of stakeholders. More precisely, by assuming and understanding correspondences between goals, purposes, desires, and aspirations in the languages of different disciplines, the capability-effectual approach clarifies both how a capability list working globally could affect the aspirations and end-goals of individuals, and how local aspirations and end-goals could either energise or limit effectual processes. Theoretically, the capability-effectual approach links the collaboration of stakeholders and the design process in responsible innovation research. Practically, this approach could potentially contribute to the robust development of AI robots by providing robotics entrepreneurs with a tool for establishing a permissible action range within which to develop AI robotics. (shrink)

This paper develops the basics of the theory of involutive categories and shows that such categories provide the natural setting in which to describe involutive monoids. It is shown how categories of Eilenberg-Moore algebras of involutive monads are involutive, with conjugation for modules and vector spaces as special case. A part of the so-called Gelfand–Naimark–Segal (GNS) construction is identified as an isomorphism of categories, relating states on involutive monoids and inner products. This correspondence exists in arbritrary involutive symmetric monoidal categories.