Guided by the concept of bullshit, broadly defined as a deceptive form of rhetoric intended to distract and/or persuade, we examine how fabrications and false statements— when crafted and distributed by the president of the United States—impact not only foreign policy making and implementation but also erode democratic norms. Unconstrained by reality, and seemingly driven more by celebrity and showmanship than a genuine desire to govern, we argue that President Trump’s penchant for bullshit is part of a concerted strategy to (...) sideline critics while simultaneously undermining the ongoing investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with the Russian government. (shrink)

This paper serves three specific goals. First, it reports the development of an Indian Asian face set, to serve as a free resource for psychological research. Second, it examines whether the use of pre-tested U.S.-specific norms for stimulus selection or weighting may introduce experimental confounds in studies involving non-U.S. face stimuli and/or non-U.S. participants. Specifically, it examines whether subjective impressions of the face stimuli are culturally dependent, and the extent to which these impressions reflect social stereotypes and ingroup favoritism. Third, (...) the paper investigates whether differences in face familiarity impact accuracy in identifying face ethnicity. To this end, face images drawn from volunteers in India as well as a subset of Caucasian face images from the Chicago Face Database were presented to Indian and U.S. participants, and rated on a range of measures, such as perceived attractiveness, warmth, and social status. Results show significant differences in the overall valence of ratings of ingroup and outgroup faces. In addition, the impression ratings show minor differentiation along two basic stereotype dimensions, competence and trustworthiness, but not warmth. We also find participants to show significantly greater accuracy in correctly identifying the ethnicity of ingroup faces, relative to outgroup faces. This effect is found to be mediated by ingroup-outgroup differences in perceived group typicality of the target faces. Implications for research on intergroup relations in a cross-cultural context are discussed. (shrink)

In this interdisciplinary anthology, essays study the relationship between the imagination and images both material and mental.

Posner & Raichle's (1994) book is a fascinating and readable account of the studies the authors have conducted on the localization of cognitive functions in the brain mainly using PET and EEC evoked potential methods. Our criticism concerns the underrepresentation of some imaging techniques (magnetoencephalography) and some forms of brain activity (spontaneous activity). Furthermore, the book leaves the reader with the impression that the brain only responds to external events.

Bemerkenswert an der Gerechtigkeitstheorie der amerikanischen Philosophin Martha Nussbaum ist ihre Entscheidung für einen emanzipatorischen Essentialismus, der für Differenzen und Unterschiede sensibel ist. Die von ihr vorgenommene Synthese zwischen einer material orientierten Gerechtigkeitstheorie und Elementen liberal orientierter Ethikkonzeptionen versucht, das Verhältnis zwischen Universalismus und Partikularismus in der Moralphilosophie neu auszubalancieren. Der Anspruch, die Frage nach einem guten Leben vor dem Horizont dieser Spannungsfelder zu bearbeiten, macht Nussbaums Ansatz für die Christliche Sozialethik, die essentialistischem Denken traditionell sehr nahe steht, zu einem (...) interessanten Gesprächspartner. Für ein solches Gespräch nimmt der Band wichtige Vorklärungen vor. (shrink)

Die sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Erforschung auditiver Phänomene ist stets mit spezifischen Wissensformen konfrontiert. Die Rolle, die Musik und andere Klänge in verschiedenen sozialen und kulturellen Kontexten spielen, hängt mit dem Wissen zusammen, welches in bestimmter Weise (re)produziert und vermittelt wird. Wir können etwas über Klänge wissen, oder etwas durch Klänge wissen. Wir können Wissen über die spezifische Erzeugung von Klängen erwerben und weitergeben, oder aber Nachrichten – etwa eine Warnung – klanglich übermitteln. Diese vielfältigen Formen von Klangwissen können auf sehr (...) unterschiedliche Weisen zum Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen gemacht werden. Der vorliegende Band zu auditiven Wissenskulturen ist ein Versuch, jene üblicherweise in verschiedenen Disziplinen wie Soziologie und Anthropologie, in Geschichte, Psychologie, Ethnologie und Philosophie der Musik oder in Medienwissenschaften verorteten Zugänge zu auditivem Wissen in ein produktives interdisziplinäres Gespräch zu bringen. (shrink)

Der Staat, wie wir ihn zu kennen glauben, ist geschichtlich und gegenwartig die Ausnahme und nicht die Regel. Doch auch in Raumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit wird regiert, haufig unter Beteiligung privater Akteure und internationaler Organisationen. Der Band untersucht, ob und wie unter diesen Bedingungen legitimes Regieren moglich ist und wem die Verantwortung zukommt, Menschenrechte und demokratische Teilhabe zu gewahrleisten. Der erste Teil des Bandes fragt begrifflich nach den normativen Implikationen von Staatlichkeit. Hieran anschlieaend untersucht der zweite Teil menschenrechts- und gerechtigkeitstheoretische Fragen, (...) die sich aus begrenzter Staatlichkeit und dem Wirken nicht-staatlicher Governance-Akteure ergeben. Die Beitrage des dritten Teils erkunden, welche Implikation begrenzte Staatlichkeit fur das Ideal kollektiver Selbstbestimmung hat. Der vierte Teil des Bandes fragt schliealich, wie das Volkerrecht auf Governance in Raumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit reagieren sollte. (shrink)

Womit beschäftigt sich die medizinische Wissenschaft? Ich verstehe ja natürlich nichts davon, aber sie beschäftigt sich doch mit dem Menschen. Und die Juristerei, die Gesetzgebung und Rechtsprechung? Auch mit dem Menschen.

Das Buch versammelt grundlegende Studien zu Edith Stein und ihren Lektüren von Homer, mittelalterlicher Literatur, Lessing, Schleiermacher, Hauptmann und dem Expressionismus. Es geht den Lektüreeinflüssen in Tradition, Spiritualität und Begegnungen nach und untersucht dazu aktuelle Fragen um Glaube, Wissen und eine neue Phänomenologie. Ein literarisch intensiver und aus der rekonstruierten Bibliothek quellenerschlossener Bildungsgang wirkte auf die Frömmigkeitsentwicklung der späteren Karmelitin und befruchtete massgeblich ihre Denkwelt und mystisch eigene Position.

Er arbeitete für eine Erneuerung des Judentums auf der Grundlage der deutschen Sprache. Doch das Land, das ihm Heimat war, verjagte ihn. Nach Auschwitz sah er die Beziehung des Judentums mit Deutschland zerstört, und ist doch offen für ein neues Gespräch. Was hat es mit Martin Buber und den Deutschen auf sich? War er der vom "geistigen Deutschland anerkannter deutsche Jude" oder nur der "Jude für die Deutschen nach Auschwitz"? Dieser Essay begibt sich auf eine spannende Spurensuche. Er bringt das (...) facettenreiche Bild einer ebenso spannungsvollen wie fruchtbaren Beziehung zu Tage. (shrink)

The ethics of artificial intelligence is a widely discussed topic. There are numerous initiatives that aim to develop the principles and guidance to ensure that the development, deployment and use of AI are ethically acceptable. What is generally unclear is how organisations that make use of AI understand and address these ethical issues in practice. While there is an abundance of conceptual work on AI ethics, empirical insights are rare and often anecdotal. This paper fills the gap in our current (...) understanding of how organisations deal with AI ethics by presenting empirical findings collected using a set of ten case studies and providing an account of the cross-case analysis. The paper reviews the discussion of ethical issues of AI as well as mitigation strategies that have been proposed in the literature. Using this background, the cross-case analysis categorises the organisational responses that were observed in practice. The discussion shows that organisations are highly aware of the AI ethics debate and keen to engage with ethical issues proactively. However, they make use of only a relatively small subsection of the mitigation strategies proposed in the literature. These insights are of importance to organisations deploying or using AI, to the academic AI ethics debate, but maybe most valuable to policymakers involved in the current debate about suitable policy developments to address the ethical issues raised by AI. (shrink)

There has been much debate whether computers can be responsible. This question is usually discussed in terms of personhood and personal characteristics, which a computer may or may not possess. If a computer fulfils the conditions required for agency or personhood, then it can be responsible; otherwise not. This paper suggests a different approach. An analysis of the concept of responsibility shows that it is a social construct of ascription which is only viable in certain social contexts and which serves (...) particular social aims. If this is the main aspect of responsibility then the question whether computers can be responsible no longer hinges on the difficult problem of agency but on the possibly simpler question whether responsibility ascriptions to computers can fulfil social goals. The suggested solution to the question whether computers can be subjects of responsibility is the introduction of a new concept, called “quasi-responsibility” which will emphasise the social aim of responsibility ascription and which can be applied to computers. (shrink)

In this paper, we show that reproducibility is a severe problem that concerns simulation models. The reproducibility problem challenges the concept of numerical solution and hence the conception of what a simulation actually does. We provide an expanded picture of simulation that makes visible those steps of simulation modeling that are numerically relevant, but often escape notice in accounts of simulation. Examining these steps and analyzing a number of pertinent examples, we argue that numerical solutions are importantly different from usual (...) mathematical solutions. They are do not merely approximate the latter, but introduce new problems, including issues of artificiality, stability, and well-posedness. Consequently, simulation modelling can attain reproducibility only to a certain degree because it is working with numerical solutions. (shrink)

This study investigates the ethical use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies (BD + AI)—using an empirical approach. The paper categorises the current literature and presents a multi-case study of 'on-the-ground' ethical issues that uses qualitative tools to analyse findings from ten targeted case-studies from a range of domains. The analysis coalesces identified singular ethical issues, (from the literature), into clusters to offer a comparison with the proposed classification in the literature. The results show that despite the variety (...) of different social domains, fields, and applications of AI, there is overlap and correlation between the organisations’ ethical concerns. This more detailed understanding of ethics in AI + BD is required to ensure that the multitude of suggested ways of addressing them can be targeted and succeed in mitigating the pertinent ethical issues that are often discussed in the literature. (shrink)

The increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to help facilitate neuroscience adds a new level of complexity to the question of how ethical issues of such research can be identified and addressed. Current research ethics practice, based on ethics reviews by institutional review boards (IRB) and underpinned by ethical principalism, has been widely criticised and even called ‘imperialist’. In this paper, we develop an alternative way of approaching ethics in neuro-ICT research, based on discourse ethics, which implements responsible (...) research and innovation through dialogues. We draw on our work in Ethics Support, using the Human Brain Project as empirical evidence of the viability of this approach. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Delusions in schizophrenia are commonly approached as empirical false beliefs about everyday reality. Phenomenological accounts, by contrast, have suggested that delusions are more adequately understood as pertaining to a different kind of reality experience. How this alteration of reality experience should be characterised, which dimensions of experiential life are involved, and whether delusional reality might differ from standard reality in various ways is unclear and little is known about how patients with delusions value and relate to these experiential alterations. (...) This study aimed to investigate the nature of delusional reality experience, and its subjective apprehension, in individuals with lived experience of delusions and a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis. METHODS: In this qualitative phenomenological study, we recruited individuals with lived experience of delusions and a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis from two psychiatric-hospital services in Belgium using homogenous sampling. Criteria for participation were having undergone at least one psychotic episode with occurring delusional symptoms, present at least 1 year before participation, on the basis of clinical notes assessed by the attending psychiatrist; a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis, ascertained through clinical interview by the attending psychiatrist upon admission; being aged between 18 years and 65 years; and having the capacity to give informed consent. Exclusion criteria included worries concerning capacity to consent and risk of distress caused by participation. We did phenomenologically driven semi-structured interviews with the participants to explore the nature of delusional reality experience and their subjective valuation of these experiences. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis, a qualitative method tailored to the in-depth exploration of participants’ first-person perspective, to analyse their accounts. FINDINGS: Between March 2, 2020, and Sept 30, 2020, 18 adults participated in the interview study. The findings suggest that delusions are often embedded in wide-ranging alterations of basic reality experience, involving quasi-ineffable atmospheric and ontological qualities that undermine participants’ sense of the world as unambiguously real, fully present, and shared with others. We also found that delusional reality experience can differ from standard reality in various ways, across multiple dimensions, and that participants are often implicitly or explicitly aware of the distinction between delusional and standard reality. Delusional experience can have an enduring value and meaning that is not fully captured by a strictly medical perspective. INTERPRETATION: Increased awareness and recognition of the distinctive nature of delusional reality experience, in both clinical and research settings, can improve diagnostic accuracy, explanatory models, and therapeutic support for individuals with delusions whose lived realities are not always evident from an everyday perspective. FUNDING: FWO Flanders. TRANSLATION: For the Dutch translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section. (shrink)

Information security can be of high moral value. It can equally be used for immoral purposes and have undesirable consequences. In this paper we suggest that critical theory can facilitate a better understanding of possible ethical issues and can provide support when finding ways of addressing them. The paper argues that critical theory has intrinsic links to ethics and that it is possible to identify concepts frequently used in critical theory to pinpoint ethical concerns. Using the example of UK electronic (...) medical records the paper demonstrates that a critical lens can highlight issues that traditional ethical theories tend to overlook. These are often linked to collective issues such as social and organisational structures, which philosophical ethics with its typical focus on the individual does not tend to emphasise. The paper suggests that this insight can help in developing ways of researching and innovating responsibly in the area of information security. (shrink)

Ethical issues of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important because they can have significant effects on human liberty, happiness, and people’s ability to lead a good life. They are also of functional interest because they can determine whether technologies are used and whether their positive potential can unfold. For these reasons, policy makers are interested in finding out what these issues are and how they can be addressed. The best way of creating ICT policy that is sensitive to ethical (...) issues pertain to being proactive in addressing such issues at an early stage of the technology life cycle. The present paper uses this position as a starting point and discusses how knowledge of ethical aspects of emerging ICTs can be gained. It develops a methodology that goes beyond established futures methodologies to cater for the difficult nature of ethical issues. The authors outline how the description of emerging ICTs can be used for an ethical analysis. (shrink)

This paper seeks to contextualize Lycurgus' use of the historical example of King Codrus' self-sacrifice within Athenian social memory and public discourse. In doing so, it offers a solution to the puzzle of Lycurgus' calling Codrus one of the ἐπώνυμοι τῆς χώρας . I make the case that Codrus was one of the forty-two eponymous age-set heroes who played an important role in the Athenian military and socio-political system. I contend that devotion to the city's gods and heroes and knowledge (...) of their mythology were essential parts of the religious and ideological instruction of Athenian ephebes. Consequently, Lycurgus' citation of the Ephebic Oath, the self-sacrifices of King Codrus and the daughters of Erechtheus, as well as his repeated invocation of the city's gods and shrines, must be seen as integral elements of his indictment of Leocrates for cowardice and treason, behavior that is diametrically opposed to the hoplite ethos and religious devotion that were instilled into young ephebes. Lycurgus thus brings the jurors' memories of their own ephebate into the courtroom and taps into emotions and values that lie at the heart of Athenian collective identity. (shrink)

Trichoplax adhaerens is more simply organized than any other living metazoan. This tiny marine animal looks like a irregular “hairy plate” (“tricho plax”) with a simple upper and lower epithelium and some loose cells in between. After its original description by F.E. Schulze 1883, it attracted particular attention as a potential candidate representing the basic and ancestral state of metazoan organization. The lack of any kind of symmetry, organs, nerve cells, muscle cells, basal lamina and extracellular matrix originally left little (...) doubt about the basal position of T. adhaerens. Nevertheless, the interest of zoologists and evolutionary biologists suddenly vanished for more than half a century when Trichoplax was claimed to be an aberrant hydrozoan planula larva. Recently, Trichoplax has been rediscovered as a key species for unraveling early metazoan evolution. For example, research on regulatory genes and whole genome sequencing promise insights into the genetics underlying the origin and development of basal metazoan phyla. Trichoplax offers unique potential for understanding the minimal requirements of metazoan animal organization. BioEssays 27:1294–1302, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In modern technical societies computers interact with human beings in ways that can affect moral rights and obligations. This has given rise to the question whether computers can act as autonomous moral agents. The answer to this question depends on many explicit and implicit definitions that touch on different philosophical areas such as anthropology and metaphysics. The approach chosen in this paper centres on the concept of information. Information is a multi-facetted notion which is hard to define comprehensively. However, the (...) frequently used definition of information as data endowed with meaning can promote our understanding. It is argued that information in this sense is a necessary condition of cognitivist ethics. This is the basis for analysing computers and information processors regarding their status as possible moral agents. Computers have several characteristics that are desirable for moral agents. However, computers in their current form are unable to capture the meaning of information and therefore fail to reflect morality in anything but a most basic sense of the term. This shortcoming is discussed using the example of the Moral Turing Test. The paper ends with a consideration of which conditions computers would have to fulfil in order to be able to use information in such a way as to render them capable of acting morally and reflecting ethically. (shrink)

This paper investigates the effects of relative position and proxemics in the engagement process involved in Human-Robot collaboration. We evaluate the differences between two experimental placement conditions for an autonomous robot in a collaborative task with a user across two different types of robot behaviours. The study evaluated placement and behaviour types around a touch table with 80 participants by measuring gaze, smiling behaviour, distance from the task, and finally electrodermal activity. Results suggest an overall user preference and higher engagement (...) rates with the helpful robot in the frontal position. We discuss how behaviours and position of the robot relative to a user may affect user engagement and collaboration, in particular when the robot aims to provide help via socio-emotional bonding. (shrink)

Taking account of Kant's unpublished mss., the author presents a close textual interpretation of Kant's logic of concepts.

The two main challenges of the theory of conceptual content presented by Robert Brandom in Making It Explicit are to account for a referential dimension of conceptual content and to account for the objectivity of conceptual norms. Brandom tries to meet both these challenges in chapter 8 of his book. I argue that the accounts presented there can only be understood if seen against the background of Brandom's theory of communication developed in chapter 7. This theory is motivated by the (...) well-known problem that semantic holism threatens the possibility of communication because it has the consequence that words mean different things in different mouths. Brandom offers a solution to this problem in terms of what he calls recurrence commitments. I show that chapter 8 of Making It Explicit should be understood as arguing that a practice that includes acknowledging interpersonal recurrence commitments institutes both conceptual contents with a referential dimension and objective conceptual norms. I close by raising the objection that Brandom's argument can only show that conceptual norms are communally shared and not that they are objective. I propose an emendation of this argument, having recourse to a practice Brandom refers to as rational rectification in his new book Between Saying and Doing. (shrink)

This paper investigates the effects of relative position and proxemics in the engagement process involved in Human-Robot collaboration. We evaluate the differences between two experimental placement conditions for an autonomous robot in a collaborative task with a user across two different types of robot behaviours. The study evaluated placement and behaviour types around a touch table with 80 participants by measuring gaze, smiling behaviour, distance from the task, and finally electrodermal activity. Results suggest an overall user preference and higher engagement (...) rates with the helpful robot in the frontal position. We discuss how behaviours and position of the robot relative to a user may affect user engagement and collaboration, in particular when the robot aims to provide help via socio-emotional bonding. (shrink)