Holm (2022) argues that a class of algorithmic fairness measures, that he refers to as the ‘performance parity criteria’, can be understood as applications of John Broome’s Fairness Principle. We argue that the performance parity criteria cannot be read this way. This is because in the relevant context, the Fairness Principle requires the equalization of actual individuals’ individual-level chances of obtaining some good (such as an accurate prediction from a predictive system), but the performance parity criteria do not guarantee any (...) such thing: the measures merely ensure that certain population-level ratios hold. (shrink)

A number of findings in the field of machine learning have given rise to questions about what it means for automated scoring- or decisionmaking systems to be fair. One center of gravity in this discussion is whether such systems ought to satisfy classification parity (which requires parity in accuracy across groups, defined by protected attributes) or calibration (which requires similar predictions to have similar meanings across groups, defined by protected attributes). Central to this discussion are impossibility results, owed to Kleinberg (...) et al. (2016), Chouldechova (2017), and Corbett-Davies et al. (2017), which show that classification parity and calibration are often incompatible. This paper aims to argue that classification parity, calibration, and a newer, interesting measure called counterfactual fairness are unsatisfactory measures of fairness, offer a general diagnosis of the failure of these measures, and sketch an alternative approach to understanding fairness in machine learning. (shrink)

Prediction-based decisions, which are often made by utilizing the tools of machine learning, influence nearly all facets of modern life. Ethical concerns about this widespread practice have given rise to the field of fair machine learning and a number of fairness measures, mathematically precise definitions of fairness that purport to determine whether a given prediction-based decision system is fair. Following Reuben Binns (2017), we take ‘fairness’ in this context to be a placeholder for a variety of normative egalitarian considerations. We (...) explore a few fairness measures to suss out their egalitarian roots and evaluate them, both as formalizations of egalitarian ideas and as assertions of what fairness demands of predictive systems. We pay special attention to a recent and popular fairness measure, counterfactual fairness, which holds that a prediction about an individual is fair if it is the same in the actual world and any counterfactual world where the individual belongs to a different demographic group (cf. Kusner et al. (2018)). (shrink)

We offer an ethical assessment of the market for data used to generate what are sometimes called “consumer scores” (i.e., numerical expressions that are used to describe or predict people’s dispositions and behavior), and we argue that the assessment has ethical implications on how the market for consumer scoring data should be regulated. To conduct the assessment, we employ two heuristics for evaluating markets. One is the “harm” criterion, which relates to whether the market produces serious harms, either for participants (...) in the market, for third parties, or for society as a whole. The other is the “agency” criterion, which relates to whether participants understand the nature and significance of the exchanges they are making, if they can be guaranteed fair representation, or if there is differential need for the market’s good. We argue that consumer scoring data should be subject to the same sort of regulation as the older FICO credit scores. Although the movement in the 1990s that was aimed at regulating the FICO scores was not aimed at restraining a market per se, we argue that the reforms were underwritten by concerns about the same sorts of problems as those outlined by our heuristics. Therefore, consumer data should be subject to the same sort of regulation. (shrink)

This paper examines the practice of using predictive systems to lengthen the prison sentences of convicted persons when the systems forecast a higher likelihood of re-offense or re-arrest. There has been much critical discussion of technologies used for sentencing, including questions of bias and opacity. However, there hasn’t been a discussion of whether this use of predictive systems makes sense in the first place. We argue that it does not by showing that there is no plausible theory of punishment that (...) supports it. (shrink)

There has been considerable recent debate about whether Kant's account of intuitions implies that their content is conceptual. This debate, however, has failed to make significant progress because of the absence of discussion, let alone consensus, as to the meaning of ‘content’ in this context. Here I try to move things forward by focusing on the kind of content associated with Frege's notion of ‘sense ’, understood as a mode of presentation of some object or property. I argue, first, that (...) Kant takes intuitions to have a content in this sense, and, secondly, that Kant clearly takes the content of intuitions, so understood, to be distinct in kind from that possessed by concepts. I then show how my account can respond to the most serious objections to previous non-conceptualist interpretations.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.The Non-Conceptuality of the Content of Intuitions: A New ApproachVolume 18, Issue 1Clinton Tolley DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000313Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. The Non-Conceptuality of the Content of Intuitions: A New ApproachVolume 18, Issue 1Clinton Tolley DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000313Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. The Non-Conceptuality of the Content of Intuitions: A New ApproachVolume 18, Issue 1Clinton Tolley DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000313Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

Here I revisit Bolzano's criticisms of Kant on the nature of logic. I argue that while Bolzano is correct in taking Kant to conceive of the traditional logic as a science of the activity of thinking rather than the content of thought, he is wrong to charge Kant with a failure to identify and examine this content itself within logic as such. This neglects Kant's own insistence that traditional logic does not exhaust logic as such, since it must be supplemented (...) by a transcendental logic that will in fact study nothing other than thought's content. Once this feature of Kant's views is brought to light, a much deeper accord emerges between the two thinkers than has hitherto been appreciated, on both the nature of the content that is at issue in logic and the sense of logic's generality and formality. (shrink)

Nursing scholars continuously refine nursing knowledge and the philosophical foundations of nursing practice. They advance nursing knowledge by creating new knowledge and weighing the relevance of developments in cognate sciences. Nurse philosophers go further by providing epistemological and ontological arguments for explanations of nursing phenomena. In this article, I engage with Bender's arguments about why mechanisms should have more primacy as carriers of nursing knowledge. Despite the careful scholarship involved, Bender's arguments need to be more convincing. Accordingly, this article encourages (...) debate about Bender's arguments for reorientating nursing science to mechanisms. I begin by suggesting that the claim that the theory‐practice divide can be overcome by reorientating to mechanisms is acceptable only if we accept Bender's depiction of the challenge. Then I question the ontology Bender relies on to justify reorientating nursing science. After that, I argue that mechanisms in models that parallel analytical sociology undermine the kind of nursing science Bender advocates. I illustrate my arguments with a social mechanism thought experiment. Then I explain why Bender's arguments cannot escape the received view of science or inform emancipatory nursing action without theory. Finally, I mention some caveats and implications for nursing science. (shrink)

This book uncovers the lost history of Christianity's encounters with Pythagorean ideas before the Renaissance. David Albertson skillfully examines ancient and medieval theologians, particularly Thierry of Chartres and Nicholas of Cusa, who successfully reconceived the Trinity and the Incarnation within the framework of Greek number theory. David Albertson challenges modern assumptions about the complex relationship between religion and science.

Data-driven, decision-making technologies used in the justice system to inform decisions about bail, parole, and prison sentencing are biased against historically marginalized groups (Angwin, Larson, Mattu, & Kirchner 2016). But these technologies’ judgments—which reproduce patterns of wrongful discrimination embedded in the historical datasets that they are trained on—are well-evidenced. This presents a puzzle: how can we account for the wrong these judgments engender without also indicting morally permissible statistical inferences about persons? I motivate this puzzle and attempt an answer.

I argue for a new delimitation of what Kant means by ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’, on the basis of the intermediate, transitional place that Kant gives to cognition in the ‘progression [Stufenleiter]’ of our representations and our consciousness of them. I show how cognition differs from mental acts lying earlier on this progression—such as sensing, intuiting, and perceiving—and also how cognition differs from acts lying later on this progression—such as explaining, having insight, and comprehending. I also argue that cognition should not be (...) confused with ‘knowledge [Wissen]’, insofar as knowledge represents the culmination of a separate orthogonal progression of acts of ‘holding-true’. Along the way, I show how having in focus the specific progression from representation, to consciousness, to cognition (and beyond) allows us to better appreciate the architectonic significance of the progression of Kant’s analysis in the first Critique (and beyond), and also helps to illuminate the unity of Kant’s account of cognition itself across its variety of (empirical, mathematical, philosophical) forms. (shrink)

I argue for a new delimitation of what Kant means by ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’, on the basis of the intermediate, transitional place that Kant gives to cognition in the ‘progression [Stufenleiter]’ of our representations and our consciousness of them. I show how cognition differs from mental acts lying earlier on this progression—such as sensing, intuiting, and perceiving—and also how cognition differs from acts lying later on this progression—such as explaining, having insight, and comprehending. I also argue that cognition should not be (...) confused with ‘knowledge [Wissen]’, insofar as knowledge represents the culmination of a separate orthogonal progression of acts of ‘holding-true’. Along the way, I show how having in focus the specific progression from representation, to consciousness, to cognition allows us to better appreciate the architectonic significance of the progression of Kant’s analysis in the first Critique, and also helps to illuminate the unity of Kant’s account of cognition itself across its variety of forms. (shrink)

A growing amount of media is paid for by its consumers through their very consumption of it. Typically, this new media is web-based and paid for by advertising. It includes the services offered by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. We offer an ethical assessment of the attention economy, the market where attention is exchanged for new media. We argue that the assessment has ethical implications for how the attention economy should be regulated. To conduct the assessment, we employ two heuristics (...) for evaluating markets. One is the “harm” criterion, which relates to whether the market tends to engender extremely harmful outcomes for individuals or society as a whole. The other is the “agency” criterion, which relates not to the outcomes of the market, but rather, to whether it somehow reflects or has its source in weakened agency. We argue that the attention economy animates concerns with respect to both criteria and that new media should be subject to the same sort of regulation as other harmful, addictive products. (shrink)

There has been a tendency in some of the most influential recent interpretations of Hegel to downplay the theological characterizations that Hegel gives to the subject-matter of logic, and to emphasize, instead, certain continuities taken to exist between Hegel’s conception of logic and that of Kant. In the work of Robert Pippin and others, this has led to an ‘apperception’-oriented interpretation of Hegel’s logic, according to which Hegel follows Kant in taking logic to be primarily concerned with the nature of (...) human self-conscious subjectivity. Here I put pressure on this interpretation—first, by foregrounding textual and systematic evidence for taking the theological characterizations to accurately convey Hegel’s considered position on logic, as the science of the ‘absolute idea’, and then, secondly, by showing how Hegel’s arguments for the absolute formality and universality of logic point instead to a more fully-fledged rejection of Kant’s conception as too specifically psychological. (shrink)

Curle concludes that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, understood in a Bergsonian context, provides us with a way to affirm in the modern context that ...

Name der Zeitschrift: Journal of Ancient History Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 323-356.

I present an argument for an interpretation ofKant's views on the nature of the ‘content [Inhalt]’ of ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’. In contrast to one of the longest standing interpretations ofKant's views on cognitive content, which ascribes toKant a straightforwardly psychologistic understanding of content, and in contrast as well to the more recently influential reading ofKant put forward byMcDowell and others, according to whichKant embraces a version ofRussellianism, I argue thatKant's views on this topic are of a much moreFregean bent than has (...) traditionally been admitted or appreciated. I conclude by providing a sketch of how a better grasp ofKant's views on cognitive content in general can help bring into sharper relief what is, and what is not, at stake in the recent debates over whether Kant accepts a particular kind of cognitive content—namely, non‐conceptual content. (shrink)

I present an argument for an interpretation of Kant's views on the nature of the ‘content [Inhalt]’ of ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’. In contrast to one of the longest standing interpretations of Kant's views on cognitive content, which ascribes to Kant a straightforwardly psychologistic understanding of content, and in contrast as well to the more recently influential reading of Kant put forward by McDowell and others, according to which Kant embraces a version of Russellianism, I argue that Kant's views on this topic (...) are of a much more Fregean bent than has traditionally been admitted or appreciated. I conclude by providing a sketch of how a better grasp of Kant's views on cognitive content in general can help bring into sharper relief what is, and what is not, at stake in the recent debates over whether Kant accepts a particular kind of cognitive content—namely, non-conceptual content. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how to educate toward democracy, which has as its defining trait the ability to self-correct. We draw on a study that investigated Deep Reflective Thinking (DRT) as a classroom method for cultivating collective doubt, which is essential for developing students’ capacity for self-correction in a community of inquiry.

Impermissivists hold that an agent with a given body of evidence has at most one rationally permitted attitude that she should adopt towards any particular proposition. Permissivists deny this, often motivating permissivism by describing scenarios that pump our intuitions that the agent could reasonably take one of several attitudes toward some proposition. We criticize the following impermissivist response: while it seems like any of that range of attitudes is permissible, what is actually required is the single broad attitude that encompasses (...) all of these single attitudes. While this might seem like an easy way to win over permissivists, we argue that this impermissivist response leads to an indefensible epistemology; permissive intuitions are not so easily co-opted. (shrink)

In this chapter I will argue against both of these interpretations and will begin to develop an alternate account of imagination in experience. Against those who minimize imagination’s role, I will highlight the distinctive contribution of the imagination to experience. In particular, I will foreground the specific role that the imagination plays in making possible the distinct mental act, intermediate between intuition and experience, that Kant calls “perception [Wahrnehmung]” as the “empirical consciousness [Bewußtsein]” of appearances (cf. B207). Because perception involves (...) images essentially (cf. A120), and because Kant understands experience itself to be a “synthesis of perceptions” (cf. B218), this strongly suggests (against minimalists) that experience, too, will incorporate images into the manner in which it allows us to cognize physical objects. By highlighting the contribution of imagination prior to experience, my own account, therefore, overlaps in part with the readings that seek instead to maximize the role of imagination. Against maximalists, however, I will argue that imagination contributes only in (and after) the transition from intuition to perception, rather than already being at work in the stage of intuition itself. More specifically, I will argue that Kant takes the activity of imagination to make perception possible by acting on already-formed intuitions in order to bring about the consciousness of them, rather than to bring the intuitions about in the first place. I will also argue that this synthesis of intuitions should be kept distinct from the activity of understanding. (shrink)

Escapism as artistic politics: propaganda in Black Panther (2018) Escapism is omnipresent in contemporary mass art, even though it has a bad reputation. This article traces that reputation back to a pragmatist conviction that art should give expression to experiences, and morals, from everyday practical life. Through a philosophical conversation with two pragmatist aestheticians, W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul C. Taylor, and an art-critical discussion of an escapist film, Black Panther (2018), I provide a pragmatist defence of the use of (...) escapism as political-aesthetic motif. Works that set themselves the task of communicating standards of radical equality (among which: standards of racial equality applicable to white supremacist societies), cannot appropriately express what they want since they necessarily fail to appropriately address their audience. The only utopian course that remains is to react negatively to, by trying to escape, the norms that a present audience necessarily imports from white supremacist society. (shrink)

Art-science, as its name suggests, combines art with science. The idea of combining art and science raises the question whether the outcome, art-scientific works, can succeed against a standard properly belonging to them. In other words: can there be such a thing as an art-scientific work, or do such works merely belong to either art or science while superficially seeming to belong to the other sphere as well? Surprisingly perhaps, these concerns overlap with a chief point of contention as regards (...) Adorno’s mature thinking, in particular his Aesthetic Theory ([1970] 2002): whether or not it is coherent to believe that knowledge can have an aesthetic form. This essay is motivated by the thought that Adorno’s reflections are useful for understanding contemporary art as well, and the burgeoning paradigm of art-science represents a welcome occasion to ask the reverse question: can art become theoretical? The first aim of this essay is, accordingly, to consider how Adorno’s negative dialectic of philosophy and art might illuminate the field of art-science, how its works might express sui generis truths. In turn, an examination of how the aestheticisation theme in Adorno might be appropriated for the business of art-science critique, might tell us something about the relationship between artistic content and philosophical interpretation, beauty and truth, in Adorno. (shrink)

There is no consensus about appropriate philosophical method that can be relied on to settle philosophical questions and instead of established findings, there are multiple conflicting arguments and positions, and widespread disagreement and debate. Given this feature of philosophy, it might seem that philosophy has proven to be a worthless endeavour, with no possibility of philosophical progress. The challenge then is to develop a conception of philosophy that reconciles the lack of general or lasting agreement with the possibility of philosophical (...) progress. I present such a conception in this paper. I argue that the aim of philosophy is to resolve philosophical problems, which is different from establishing settled and final answers or positions. Philosophical problems involve inadequate or incongruous conceptions that cannot be settled once and for all but can be resolved by transforming our conceptions so they are now congruous and adequate. There is philosophical progress every time a warranted, defensible position is developed that resolves a philosophical problem, even if there are competing resolutions and further problems to resolve, as there always are in philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophy for Children is an important educational programme that engages children in philosophical inquiry as the means for them to make sense of the world. A key to its success is that students make progress in their attempts to make sense of the world or, more colloquially, they develop better ideas. Although philosophical progress is essential to the value of Philosophy for Children, there is little written on this concept and what is written tends to be merely suggestive. The result (...) is that teachers and students often find themselves lost in the dialogical, open inquiry of Philosophy for Children where there are no pre-determined end-points or uncontroversial ‘ right ’ answers that they can move towards. This thesis uses philosophical analysis and inquiry to uncover the impediments to progress faced by this educational programme, and to answer the question: What conception of philosophical progress would be efficacious for Philosophy for Children? (shrink)

New media (highly interactive digital technology for creating, sharing, and consuming information) affords users a great deal of control over their informational diets. As a result, many users of new media unwittingly encapsulate themselves in epistemic bubbles (epistemic structures, such as highly personalized news feeds, that leave relevant sources of information out (Nguyen forthcoming)). Epistemically paternalistic alterations to new media technologies could be made to pop at least some epistemic bubbles. We examine one such alteration that Facebook has made in (...) an effort to fight fake news and conclude that it is morally permissible. We further argue that many epistemically paternalistic policies can (and should) be a perennial part of the internet information environment. (shrink)

This article explains how teachers might navigate inquiry learning despite the experience of a constant tension between abandoning their students and controlling them. They do this by conceiving of themselves as guides who decide the path with students, not for them. I build on a conception of teaching as guiding from Burbules, and argue that inquiry teachers should take the particular stance of an expedition-educator (rather than the stance of either a tour-leader or an expedition-leader). They should guide students to (...) make progress during co-inquiry, rather than leading them to follow the teacher’s agenda. This stance gives a heuristic they can use to balance control and abandonment in their pedagogical practice—they judge which pedagogical actions to take, and when, according to which actions are likely to help their students to engage in autonomous inquiry and hence learn to guide themselves. Students thus can learn to inquire by participating in an inquiry which is guided, but not controlled, by their teacher. (shrink)