What is the relation between monetary policy and inequalities in income and wealth? This question has received insufficient attention, especially in light of the unconventional policies introduced since the 2008 financial crisis. The article analyzes three ways in which the concern central banks show for inequalities in their official statements remains incomplete and underdeveloped. First, central banks tend to care about inequality for instrumental reasons only. When they do assign intrinsic value to containing inequalities, they shy away from trade-offs with (...) the standard objectives of monetary policy that such a position entails. Second, central banks play down the causal impact monetary policy has on inequalities. When they do acknowledge it, they defend their actions by claiming that it is an unintended side effect, that it is temporary, and/or that any alternative policy would fare even worse. The article appeals to the doctrine of double effect to criticize these arguments. Third, even if one accepts that inequalities should be contained and that today’s monetary policies exacerbate them, is it both desirable and feasible to make containing inequalities part of the mandate of central banks? The article analyzes and rejects three attempts on the part of central banks to answer this question negatively. (shrink)

Algorithmic decision making is used in an increasing number of fields. Letting automated processes take decisions raises the question of their accountability. In the field of computational journalism, the algorithmic accountability framework proposed by Diakopoulos formalizes this challenge by considering algorithms as objects of human creation, with the goal of revealing the intent embedded into their implementation. A consequence of this definition is that ensuring accountability essentially boils down to a transparency question: given the appropriate reverse-engineering tools, it should be (...) feasible to extract design criteria and to identify intentional biases. General limitations of this transparency ideal have been discussed by Ananny and Crawford :973–989, 2018). We further focus on its technical limitations. We show that even if reverse-engineering concludes that the criteria embedded into an algorithm correspond to its publicized intent, it may be that adversarial behaviors make the algorithm deviate from its expected operation. We illustrate this issue with an automated news recommendation system, and show how the classification algorithms used in such systems can be fooled with hard-to-notice modifications of the articles to classify. We therefore suggest that robustness against adversarial behaviors should be taken into account in the definition of algorithmic accountability, to better capture the risks inherent to algorithmic decision making. We finally discuss the various challenges that this new technical limitation raises for journalism practice. (shrink)

Why do policymakers and economists within a policymaking institution choose to throw away a model and to develop an alternative one? Why do they choose to stick to an existing model? This article contributes to the literature on the history and philosophy of modelling by answering these questions. It delves into the dynamics of persistence, change, and building practices of macroeconomic modelling, using the case of forecasting models at the Bank of England (1974–2014). Based on archives and interviews, we document (...) the multiple factors at play in model building and model change. We identify three sets of factors: the agency of modellers, institutional factors, and the material factor. Our investigation shows the diversity of explanations behind the decision to change a model: each time, model replacement resulted from a different combination of the three types of factors. (shrink)

For eighteen centuries the Christian church believed that the fourth gospel was drawn up by the son of Zebedee, John, when the latter lived in Ephesus in his old age. As Clement of Alexandria suggests (II-III century) the beloved disciple wanted to emphasize the divine nature of the Son of which the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke had marked the historical insertion and the human nature.

Une simple anecdote peut révéler des enjeux philosophiques inattendus. Dans une lettre à Clément Rosset du 18 juin 1983, Gilles Deleuze mentionnait l’ « étrange livre » qu’il avait reçu de ma part. Il s’agissait de L’Étranger et le Simulacre, paru quelques mois plus tôt dans la collection « Épiméthée ». Je l’avais adressé par courtoisie..

Psychologists have emphasized children's acquisition of information through firsthand observation. However, many beliefs are acquired from others' testimony. In two experiments, most 4yearolds displayed sceptical trust in testimony. Having heard informants' accurate or inaccurate testimony, they anticipated that informants would continue to display such differential accuracy and they trusted the hitherto reliable informant. Yet they ignored the testimony of the reliable informant if it conflicted with what they themselves had seen. By contrast, threeyearolds were less selective in trusting a reliable (...) informant. Thus, young children check testimony against their own experience and increasingly recognise that some informants are more trustworthy than others. (shrink)

Philosophers agree that an important part of our knowledge is acquired via testimony. One of the main objectives of social epistemology is therefore to specify the conditions under which a hearer is justified in accepting a proposition stated by a source. Non-reductionists, who think that testimony could be considered as an a priori source of knowledge, as well as reductionists, who think that another type of justification has to be added to testimony, share a common conception about children development. Non-reductionists (...) believe that infants and children are fundamentally gullible and their gullibility could be seen as an example for justifying testimony, while reductionists believe that this gullibility is merely an exception that should be taken into account. The objective of this paper is to review contemporary literature in developmental psychology providing empirical grounds likely to clarify this philosophical debate. What emerges from current research is a more elaborated vision of children’s attitude toward testimony. Even at a very young age, children do not blindly swallow information coming from testimony; doubtful or contradictory information is automatically screened by their cognitive system. Even if they are unable to give positive reasons for the acceptance of a given testimony, young children are not gullible. Such empirical findings tend to call into question the radical opposition between reductionism and non-reductionism. (shrink)

A pioneering work in the philosophy of mind, Content and Consciousness brings together the approaches of philosophers and scientists to the mind--a connection that must occur if genuine analysis of the mind is to be made. This unified approach permits the most forbiddingly mysterious mental phenomenon--consciousness--to be broken down into several distinct phenomena, and these are each given a foundation in the physical activity of the brain. This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent (...) work in the area. (shrink)

Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Intellectual character education has been primarily expressed in terms of educating for intellectual virtues (EFIV). This aim of teaching intellectual virtues has received some challenges, such as how it fails to articulate adequate action guidance through exemplarist pedagogy, and how it neglects the pervasiveness of intellectual vice among students. To respond to these challenges, this paper considers the aim of educating against intellectual vices (EAIV) – teaching students not to develop intellectual vices or weakening those that they have already developed (...) – which comes with the emergence of vice epistemology. More specifically, I look at how negative epistemic exemplars can be used as a classroom strategy for EAIV, and demonstrate how this could address the aforementioned weaknesses of EFIV. (shrink)

Common sense has it that animals matter considerably less than humans; the welfare and suffering of a cow, a chicken or a fish are important but not as much as the welfare and suffering of a human being. Most animal ethicists reject this “speciesist” view as mere prejudice. In their opinion, there is no difference between humans and other animals that could justify such unequal consideration. In the opposite camp, advocates of speciesism have long tried to identify a difference that (...) would fit the bill, but they have consistently seemed to fail. In light of this, some naturally began to appeal to Moorean arguments: the case against speciesism must be flawed somehow, these philosophers maintain, because speciesism is supported by a strong and widespread intuition. This chapter draws on recent findings in social psychology to criticize this defence of speciesism. It argues that the strong and widespread intuition that humans count more than animals is epistemically defective because it is causally shaped by a pair of irrelevant influences: cognitive dissonance and tribalism. Accordingly, it is no suitable basis for a Moorean argument. (shrink)

Driven by the increasing availability and deployment of ubiquitous computing technologies across our private and professional lives, implementations of automatically processable regulation (APR) have evolved over the past decade from academic projects to real-world implementations by states and companies. There are now pressing issues that such encoded regulation brings about for citizens and society, and strategies to mitigate these issues are required. However, _comprehensive yet practically operationalizable_ frameworks to navigate the complex interactions and evaluate the risks of projects that implement (...) APR are not available today. In this paper, and based on related work as well as our own experiences, we propose a framework to support the conceptualization, implementation, and application of _responsible_ APR. Our contribution is twofold: we provide a holistic characterization of what responsible APR means; and we provide support to operationalize this in concrete projects, in the form of leading questions, examples, and mitigation strategies. We thereby provide a scientifically backed yet practically applicable way to guide researchers, sponsors, implementers, and regulators toward better outcomes of APR for users and society. (shrink)

La philosophie de Rosset n'a cessé, pendant près de soixante ans, de voir dans la morale l'un des lieux privilégiés du refus de la réalité, ou du tragique. Dès La philosophie tragique, et jusqu'à ses dernières productions, Rosset a montré comment la morale, plutôt qu'une réflexion, n'exprimait qu'une certaine affectivité. Les jugements moraux ne sont, d'après lui, que des désirs déguisés, ayant tous comme objectif commun de récuser la réalité à laquelle est confronté l'homme. Ce texte, rédigé entre 1960 et (...) 1961, offre, à l'étonnement des lecteurs de Rosset, une "éthique tragique" de la force qui s'oppose avec vigueur à la morale de la faiblesse. Cet inédit est suivi d'une réédition de Le monde et ses remèdes, publié aux Puf en 1964 et réédité en 2014, suite logique et chronologique du Dialogue avec la faiblesse."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Perhaps more than any philosophy written in the past few centuries, the work of Friedrich Nietzsche has given rise to controversy, misunderstanding, and dissent. Today Nietzsche is remembered as the revolutionary author of such polemical ideas as the death of God, the revaluation of values, the will to untruth, and the Übermensch. Yet is Nietzsche’s philosophy as atheistic, relativistic, nihilistic, and immoral as some commentators have claimed? Or ought we perhaps to give more credence to Nietzsche’s own assertion that one (...) writes books “precisely to conceal what one harbors” (BGE, 9, 289)? If “whatever is profound loves masks” (BGE, 2, 40) then might Nietzsche’s more daring claims be interpreted as clever masks behind which he conceals a deeper philosophy and on which he reveals a hidden truth? Is it not possible that the standard readings of Nietzsche are in fact misreadings—that his work invites misreading, that it is intentionally unclear, deceptive, disguised? The goal of this volume is to reread Nietzsche for all that he shows and all that he hides. It is to dig deeper into his work in order to challenge misreadings of old and invite misreadings anew—as, indeed, his work itself calls for and demands. (shrink)

Our societies are marked by anthropocentrism: most people treat animals in ways in which they would by no means treat fellow humans. One might nonetheless expect this prejudice to be much less prevalent in animal shelters since these places are created for the very sake of non-humans and generally managed by people who truly care about animal welfare. This chapter questions this expectation. It discusses three practices that are widespread in animal shelters and yet could be suspected of anthropocentrism: killing (...) animals for lack of resources, partnering with the livestock industry, and feeding animals meat. Drawing on the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory, the chapter argues that management euthanasia and cooperation with animal agriculture are acceptable in non-ideal theory even though they would be condemned by ideal theory. Then it argues that meat-based pet food should be rejected even in the non-ideal circumstances faced by animal shelters. (shrink)

We propose a new approach to the study of introspection. Instead of asking what form introspection actually takes in humans or other animals, we ask what forms it could take, in natural or artificial minds. What are the dimensions along which forms of introspection could vary? This is a relatively unexplored question, but it is one that has the potential to open new avenues of study and reveal new connections between existing ones. It may, for example, focus attention on possible (...) forms of introspection radically different from the human one and help to integrate competing theories of human introspection in a non-adversarial manner. We introduce and motivate the project, provide a preliminary mapping of the space of possible forms of introspection, and sketch a programme for interdisciplinary research on the topic. (shrink)

" Quand aurons-nous complètement "dédivinisé" la nature? Quand nous sera-t-il enfin permis de commencer à nous rendre naturels, à nous "naturiser", nous hommes, avec la pure nature, la nature retrouvée, la nature délivrée? " (Gai savoir, Nietzsche). " L'idée de nature apparaît comme un des écrans majeurs qui isolent l'homme par rapport au réel, en substituant à la simplicité chaotique de l'existence la complication ordonnée d'un monde. " Nombre de philosophes depuis l'Antiquité se sont attachés à définir la notion de (...) nature. S'inscrivant dans cette longue tradition, Clément Rosset reprend l'opposition entre nature et artifice, analyse les philosophies artificialistes, des Sophistes à Hobbes, puis les philosophies naturalistes, de Platon à Rousseau. Il termine en soulignant l'actualité philosophique du naturalisme et les aléas modernes de l'idée de nature. " D'une certaine manière, la conclusion de ce livre est de présenter l'artifice comme vérité de l'existence et l'idée de nature comme erreur et fantasme idéologique. ". (shrink)

A l’opposé d’une philosophie ayant pour tâche de débrouiller le désordre apparent, de faire apparaître dans notre monde « des relations constantes et douées d’intelligibilité, se rendre maître des champs d’activité ouverts par la découverte de ces relations », il s’est trouvé, de loin en loin, des penseurs pour lesquels la philosophie se doit de dissoudre l’ordre apparent et d’affronter le chaos. « A de tels penseurs, cette tâche empoisonnée est apparue comme non seulement tâche unique mais encore tâche nécessaire (...) de la philosophie ». Réussir à penser le pire, tel est le but commun propre à ces philosophes et l’objet de ce livre est de s’interroger sur la nature de cette nécessité, sur la possibilité d’une philosophie tragique. (shrink)

In this paper, we point out that explainability is useful but not sufficient to ensure the legitimacy of algorithmic decision systems. We argue that the key requirements for high-stakes decision systems should be justifiability and contestability. We highlight the conceptual differences between explanations and justifications, provide dual definitions of justifications and contestations, and suggest different ways to operationalize justifiability and contestability.

The philosophical tradition in the West has always subjected life to conceptualdivisions and questions about meaning. In Vital Nourishment, François Jullien contends that althoughthis process has given rise to a rich history of inquiry, it proceeds too fast. In their anxietyabout meaning, Western thinkers since Plato have forgotten simply to experience life. In thisinstallment of his continuing project of plumbing the philosophical divide between Eastern andWestern thought, Jullien slows down, and, using the third and fourth century B.C.E. Chinese thinkerZhuanghi (...) as a foil, begins to think about life from a point outside of Western inquiry.The questionof how to "feed life," or nourish it, is the point of departure for the Chinese traditionthat Jullien locates in Zhuanghi. Life passes through each of us, and we have a duty to becomeamenable to its ebbs and flows. We must cultivate a sense of being adequate to it so that we canhouse it. Exploring notions of breath, energy, and immanence, Jullien reopens a vibrant space ofintellectual exchange between East and West. In doing so, he refuses to commit to a rigid frameworkof meaning, and his text unfolds as an elegant process that mirrors the very type of thought heexplores. Pointing out that it seems intellectually and politically imperative today to reinvigorateWestern thought with ideas from the East, Jullien seeks to create a space of mutual inquiry thatmaintains the integrity of both Eastern and Western thinking. Vital Nourishment is both a richintellectual historical journey and a text very much attuned to the philosophical politics of thepresent.François Jullien is Professor at the Université Paris VII-Denis Diderot and director at theInstitut de la Pensée Contemporaine. He is the author of Detour and Access: Stratgies of Meaning inChna and Greece, The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China, and In Praise ofBlandness: Proceeding from Chinsese Thought and Aesthetics, all published by Zone Books. (shrink)

(2003). What are the facts of the matter? A Response to Timothy Costelloe on The Lives of Animals. Philosophical Papers: Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 133-139. doi: 10.1080/05568640309485117.

In this highly insightful analysis of Western and Chinese concepts of efficacy, François Jullien subtly delves into the metaphysical preconceptions of the two civilizations to account for diverging patterns of action in warfare, politics, and diplomacy. He shows how Western and Chinese strategies work in several domains (the battlefield, for example) and analyzes two resulting acts of war. The Chinese strategist manipulates his own troops and the enemy to win a battle without waging war and to bring about victory (...) effortlessly. Efficacity in China is thus conceived of in terms of transformation (as opposed to action) and manipulation, making it closer to what is understood as efficacy in the West. Jullien’s brilliant interpretations of an array of recondite texts are key to understanding our own conceptions of action, time, and reality in this foray into the world of Chinese thought. In its clear and penetrating characterization of two contrasting views of reality from a heretofore unexplored perspective, A Treatise on Efficacy will be of central importance in the intellectual debate between East and West. (shrink)

Several authors have noted the proximity of Marty’s and Grice’s ideas. Both Marty and Grice distinguish natural meaning and the sort of meaning involved in human communication; and they both attempt to provide a characterization of human communication that does not essentially appeal to the conventional nature of its linguistic devices. In this contribution, I single out what I take to be a main difference between Marty and Grice. Marty views linguistic communication as continuous with natural meaning while Grice insists (...) on their irreducible difference. I argue that Marty is better positioned than Grice to account for intermediate cases like Grice’s Salome example, and that this can be done without losing the benefits of Grice’s reflexive analysis of communicative intentions. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 103, Issue 1106, Page 536-553, July 2022.

La pensée a été donnée à l'homme pour lui permettre de se dissimuler la vérité : telle est la thèse centrale de cet essai de jeunesse de Clément Rosset qui considère l'activité intellectuelle, sous ses formes les plus fréquentes, comme une production de " philtres d'oubli " grâce auxquels la plupart des hommes, et notamment des philosophes, parvient à s'épargner une représentation lucide, c'est-à-dire pessimiste et tragique, de la réalité.

The term “biology” was introduced in 1802 by a German, Treviranus, and by a Frenchman whose name would remain well known to posterity, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.