This paper considers challenges resulting from the use of advanced artificial judicial intelligence (AAJI). We argue that these challenges should be considered through the lens of value alignment. Instead of discussing why specific goals and values, such as fairness and nondiscrimination, ought to be implemented, we consider the question of how AAJI can be aligned with goals and values more generally, in order to be reliably integrated into legal and judicial systems. This value alignment framing draws on AI safety and (...) alignment literature to introduce two otherwise neglected considerations for AAJI safety: specification and assurance. We outline diverse research directions and suggest the adoption of assurance and specification mechanisms as the use of AI in the judiciary progresses. While we focus on specification and assurance to illustrate the value of the AI safety and alignment literature, we encourage researchers in law and philosophy to consider what other lessons may be drawn. (shrink)

In this article I begin by discussing the persistent problem of relations between educational inequality and the attainment gap in schools. Because benefits accruing from an education are substantial, the ‘gap’ leads to large disparities in the quality of life many young people can expect to experience in the future. Curriculum knowledge has been a focus for debate in England in relation to educational equality for over 40 years. Given the contestation surrounding views about curriculum knowledge and equality I consider (...) the thinking of two philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, and their work on justice, to trouble the curriculum framework and discourse of knowledge promoted through the policy text of The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper (2010) and later associated policy reforms to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) curriculum in England. The Schools White Paper aims to make the curriculum more challenging to students by introducing tight controls in terms of the assessment framework and curriculum knowledge. I argue that, when considered through Derrida's perspective on language and meaning and Levinas' view on the ethical responsibility for the other, the reforms present obstacles to the search for a just curriculum. I look to the work of Sharon Todd and Paul Standish for a re-imagination of curriculum as or through relations in the light of Derrida's and Levinas' philosophies. (shrink)

The idea of dignity is often taken to be a foundation for principles of justice and democracy. In the West it has numerous formulations and conceptualisations. Within the capabilities approach to justice theorists have expanded the concept of dignity to encompass animals and ecological communities. In this article I rework the idea of dignity to include the Māori philosophical concepts of Mauri, tapu and mana – something I argue is necessary if the capabilities approach is to decolonise in the Aotearoa (...) context. Furthermore, the article links the nation’s recognition of three extensive geographical regions – Te Awa Tupua, Te Urewera and Mt Taranaki – as legal persons to Mātauranga Māori and nonhuman dignity. In doing so, I identify the potential that this understanding of dignity and these legal moves have to decolonise democracy within the settler state. (shrink)

In A Climate of History Dipesh Chakrabarty locates Kant’s speculative reading of Genesis as “the Enduring Fable” furnishing the background for human domination and earthly destruction. Writing from the fable’s “ruins,” Chakrabarty urges the elaboration of new fables that provide the background ethics and meanings required to recast relations between humans and the natural world. Responding to Chakrabarty’s challenge, we outline two “fables” based first in the oft ignored Genesis 2, and second, in Matauranga Māori. Although marginalised, these extant fables (...) provide the imaginary for radically other ways of being human in a more-than-human world in turmoil. (shrink)

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in their future contexts? How (...) will the consistent concerns of political theorists evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries. (shrink)

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) to judicial decision-making has already begun in many jurisdictions around the world. While AI seems to promise greater fairness, access to justice, and legal certainty, issues of discrimination and transparency have emerged and put liberal democratic principles under pressure, most notably in the context of bail decisions. Despite this, there has been no systematic analysis of the risks to liberal democratic values from implementing AI into judicial decision-making. This article sets out to fill this (...) void by identifying and engaging with challenges arising from artificial judicial decision-making, focusing on three pillars of liberal democracy, namely equal treatment of citizens, transparency, and judicial independence. Methodologically, the work takes a comparative perspective between human and artificial decision-making, using the former as a normative benchmark to evaluate the latter. -/- The chapter first argues that AI that would improve on equal treatment of citizens has already been developed, but not yet adopted. Second, while the lack of transparency in AI decision-making poses severe risks which ought to be addressed, AI can also increase the transparency of options and trade-offs that policy makers face when considering the consequences of artificial judicial decision-making. Such transparency of options offers tremendous benefits from a democratic perspective. Third, the overall shift of power from human intuition to advanced AI may threaten judicial independence, and with it the separation of powers. While improvements regarding discrimination and transparency are available or on the horizon, it remains unclear how judicial independence can be protected, especially with the potential development of advanced artificial judicial intelligence (AAJI). Working out the political and legal infrastructure to reap the fruits of artificial judicial intelligence in a safe and stable manner should become a priority of future research in this area. (shrink)

. Enframing geography: subject, curriculum, knowledge, responsibility. Ethics and Education: Vol. 7, Creating spaces, pp. 277-290. doi: 10.1080/17449642.2013.767004.

Re-Imagining Relationships in Education re-imagines relationships in contemporary education by bringing state-of-the-art theoretical and philosophical insights to bear on current teaching practices. Introduces theories based on various philosophical approaches into the realm of student teacher relationships Opens up innovative ways to think about teaching and new kinds of questions that can be raised Features a broad range of philosophical approaches that include Arendt, Beckett, Irigaray and Wollstonecraft to name but a few Includes contributors from Norway, England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, (...) and the U.S. (shrink)

With the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), global researchers were confronted with major challenges. The German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON) was launched in fall 2020 to effectively leverage resources and bundle research activities in the fight against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We analyzed the setup phase of NAPKON as an example for multicenter studies in Germany, highlighting challenges and optimization potential in connecting 59 university and nonuniversity study sites. We examined the ethics application (...) process of 121 ethics submissions considering durations, annotations, and outcomes. Study site activation and recruitment processes were investigated and related to the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections. For all initial ethics applications, the median time to a positive ethics vote was less than two weeks and 30 of these study sites (65%) joined NAPKON within less than three weeks each. Electronic instead of postal ethics submission (9.5 days (Q1: 5.75, Q3: 17) vs. 14 days (Q1: 11, Q3: 26), p value = 0.01) and adoption of the primary ethics vote significantly accelerated the ethics application process. Each study center enrolled a median of 37 patients during the 14-month observation period, with large differences depending on the health sector. We found a positive correlation between recruitment performance and COVID-19 incidence as well as hospitalization incidence. Our analysis highlighted the challenges and opportunities of the federated system in Germany. Digital ethics application tools, adoption of a primary ethics vote and standardized formal requirements lead to harmonized and thus faster study initiation processes during a pandemic. (shrink)

_Re-Imagining Relationships in Education_ re-imagines relationships in contemporary education by bringing state-of-the-art theoretical and philosophical insights to bear on current teaching practices. Introduces theories based on various philosophical approaches into the realm of student teacher relationships Opens up innovative ways to think about teaching and new kinds of questions that can be raised Features a broad range of philosophical approaches that include Arendt, Beckett, Irigaray and Wollstonecraft to name but a few Includes contributors from Norway, England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, (...) and the U.S. (shrink)

This chapter presents a brief background of curriculum knowledge in England. The idea of ‘relations’ being ‘between’ things pushes one into a ‘this’ and ‘that’ (and maybe ‘and the other’) thinking space. In Jacques Derrida's famous words: ‘Deconstruction is justice’. The responsibility of deconstruction is to disrupt those taken‐for‐granted meanings of curriculum discourses by opening them up and releasing them from their metaphysical assumptions to see what or who may have been overlooked, marginalised and omitted in the process of curriculum‐making. (...) The new model of knowledge formulated in The Schools White Paper for the General Certificate in Secondary Education examinations (GCSE6) is located within a challenging curriculum framework in which grade boundaries are raised, end‐of‐module examinations are replaced with end‐of‐course examinations and opportunities to re‐sit examinations through the course of the programme of study are removed. (shrink)

The subject of geography is declining in popularity at secondary school level and recent developments following the 'cultural turn' in Higher Education have had little impact in revitalising it. In this paper I explore the question: is there a problem with the school geography curriculum policy ? After briefly sketching the history of the Geography National Curriculum policy (GNC), I focus on Caputo's (1997) commentary on Derrida and the idea of deconstruction and invention to explore the contemporary GNC policy text (...) (1999) programme of study at Key Stage 3. (shrink)

This article enquires into the value of 'concepts' as a framework for the school curriculum by questioning their contribution towards our responsibilities for thinking about the earth. I take Derrida's deconstructive reading of Plato's Timaeus to show how spaces in meaning can be revealed, and more transgressive ways of knowing invited in. Derrida's Kh ra marks the opportunity for something new, productive and unforeseeable to arise as the play of traces unfurls. A deconstructive reading of the geography national curriculum policy (...) exposes the impracticality and impossibility of following the text as a definitive scheme and basis for curriculum planning. The paper ends with a spacing of a real place for the geography curriculum by appropriating four different ways of knowing Whitby, a harbour town in north-east England, outside the conceptual scheme. The paper contrasts an approach that is essentially general, conceptual and at the level of the plan, map or net, with a deconstructive approach that welcomes in other, more ethically responsible and imaginative meanings. (shrink)

As will be made clear below, the terms extremism, fundamentalism, Islamism and Jihadism are often used interchangeably by the public, something that has negative implications for both the integration of the Muslim community into Western society, and the efficacy of counter-extremism efforts. This paper aims to provide working for these terms by understanding them independent from their misinformed socio-political contexts, and by determining how they relate to one another in what will be identified as a series of conceptual subsets. In (...) doing so, this paper will attempt to provide a framework for the usage of these terms in the governmental, academic, and public contexts, while removing some of the noise surrounding the important, and often highly sensitive contexts within which these terms are referenced. In this paper, religious extremism will defined as an ideological prerequisite to fundamentalism, Islamism and jihadism. It is a rejectionist, and dogmatic orientation that neglects balance in all elements of an individual’s ideological outlook. However, a fundamentalist, when defined in terms of faith, seeks to legitimise his or her beliefs through a non-contextual analysis of the relevant religious texts. An Islamist seeks to implement his or her fundamentalist views with a view to altering the structures of governance in accordance with the aforementioned rejectionist traits. Finally, and in relatively simple terms, a jihadist is an individual that champions the violent, global imposition of the Islamists’ beliefs. Jihadism is a subset of Islamism, Islamism is a subset of fundamentalism, and fundamentalism is a subset of extremism. (shrink)