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)

Time discounting is the phenomenon that a desired result in the future is perceived as less valuable than the same result now. Economic theories can take this psychological fact into account in several ways. In the economic literature the most widely used type of additive time discounting is exponential discounting. In exponential discounting, the fall of valuation depends by a constant factor on the length of the delay period. It is well known, however, that exponential time discounting often does not (...) describe well how people actually behave. Most people are averse to short delays in gratification now, while their future selves may not mind a bit of extra waiting. This behaviour can be described well by non-exponential discounting functions such as hyperbolic discounting. In hyperbolic discounting, valuations fall rapidly for small delay periods, but the fall gets slower for longer delay periods. Hyperbolic discounting captures phenomena such as procrastination, addiction and in general inconsistency over time. This chapter investigates whether forms of non-exponential discounting, in particular close to the so called Quasi-Hyperbolic model, could also be characterized in terms of dynamically consistent choices when individuals discount the welfare of future selves as well as their payoffs. (shrink)

Flow is a state of full task engagement that is accompanied with low-levels of self-referential thinking. Flow is considered highly relevant for human performance and well-being and has, therefore, been studied extensively. Yet, the neurocognitive processes of flow remain largely unclear. In the present mini-review we focus on how the brain's locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system may be involved in a range of behavioral and subjective manifestations of flow. The LC-NE system regulates decisions regarding task engagement vs. disengagement. This is doneviadifferent (...) modes of baseline and stimulus-evoked norepinephrine release. We emphasize the theoretical and empirical overlap between the LC-NE system and flow. For both, a match between a person's skill and task challenge is important in order to induce high levels task-related attention. Moreover, psychophysiological indicators of LC-NE system activity, such as eye pupil diameter and arousal are also sensitive to flow states. Flow is related to arousal in an inverted U-shape. Similarly, in theories on the LC-NE system, task engagement is highest with intermediate levels of arousal. We argue that knowledge about the role of the LC-NE system in establishing the flow experience may help to gain fundamental knowledge of flow and can contribute to unifying various empirical findings on this topic. (shrink)

This article starts from the observation that practices of ‘algorithmic governmentality’ or ‘governance by data’ are reconfiguring modes of social relationality and collectivity. By building, first, on an empirical exploration of digital bordering practices, we qualify these emergent algorithmic categories as ‘clusters’—pulsing patterns distilled from disaggregated data. As fluid, modular, and ever-emergent forms of association, these ‘clusters’ defy stable expressions of collective representation and social recognition. Second, we observe that this empirical analysis resonates with accounts that diagnosed algorithmic governance as (...) a threat to legal subjectivity and socio-political cohesion, and called for a reinvigoration of democratic values and their re-alignment with new ‘infrastructural publics’. Against this backdrop, however, we explore alternatives avenues of legal imagination by pushing in a different (somewhat opposite) direction. Against the re-inscription of liberal categories, we linger with the promise and prospect of illegibility as resistance against the foreclosure of future potentialities in algorithmic forms of subject-making. Instead of falling back on the projection of autonomous human agency and liberal subjectivity to counteract the ‘cluster’, we imagine emancipatory expressions of resistance that are enacted through fugitive, opaque, and experimental collectivities. (shrink)

Apparently inconsistent with the CLASH model, animal research relates predictable environments to rigid routine behaviors and aggression. However, our work on evolutionary and neural adaptations to (un)predictable environments may be able to reconcile the CLASH model with the animal research, but also suggests complexities beyond the dichotomous approach of CLASH.

We describe a neural monitor of environmental and physiological resources that informs effort expenditure. Depending on resources and environmental stability, serotonergic and dopaminergic neuromodulations favor different behavioral controls that are organized in corticostriatal loops. This broader perspective produces some suggestions and questions that may not be covered by the foraging approach to vigor of Shadmehr and Ahmed (2020).

In drawing on Poincare’s conventionalism, Cassirer’s neo-Kantianism, Duhem’s methodological conservatism, and Russell’s holist doctrine of scientific knowledge, Worrall (1989) launched in his classical paper a new position in realism debate. The champions of structural realism have managed to combine a sense in which the development of science is cumulative with a picture of theory change that coheres with the argument of the “pessimistic meta-induction”. Twenty two years after the publication of Worrall’s paper, the volume under review presents an exciting recapitulation (...) of the structuralist movement’s main achievements. The recapitulation is most welcome, since from the very outset of its development not only did structural realism oppose the forms of logical reductionism, but it also got its emancipation as a philosophical position through suggesting an alternative to van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, while at the same time provoking a transformation of the latter into structu .. (shrink)

Assertion is widely regarded as an act associated with an epistemic position. To assert is to represent oneself as occupying this position and/or to be required to occupy this position. Within this approach, the most common view is that assertion is strong: the associated position is knowledge or certainty. But recent challenges to this common view present new data that are argued to be better explained by assertion being weak. Old data widely taken to support assertion being strong has also (...) been challenged. This paper examines such challenges and finds them wanting. Far from diminishing the case for strong assertion, carefully considering new and old data reveals that assertion is as strong as ever. (shrink)

Speakers offer testimony. They also hedge. This essay offers an account of how hedging makes a difference to testimony. Two components of testimony are considered: how testimony warrants a hearer's attitude, and how testimony changes a speaker's responsibilities. Starting with a norm-based approach to testimony where hearer's beliefs are prima facie warranted because of social norms and speakers acquire responsibility from these same norms, I argue that hedging alters both components simultaneously. It changes which attitudes a hearer is prima facie (...) warranted in forming in response to testimony, and reduces how much responsibility a speaker undertakes in testifying. A consequence of this account is that speakers who hedge for strategic purposes deprive their hearers of warrant for stronger doxastic attitudes. (shrink)

Il saggio illustra le ragioni alla base di quella tradizione politica che indica in un raffinamento culturale delle strategie della paura la soluzione dei conflitti mortali che minacciano la vita sociale, e si spinge oltre, a indagare la corposa sezione del Leviatano che affronta questioni religiose, cioè quell’area della vita umana in cui i conflitti non riguardano i beni morali bensì la diversità di opinioni relative alle condizioni della salvezza. Qui gli strumenti della violenza politica risultano inservibili e si rende (...) necessario ‘persuadere’ gli individui della compatibilità fra obbedienza al sovrano e obbedienza a Dio.The paper examines the foundations of a political tradition according to which culturally sophisticated strategies of fear represent the most powerful tool to resolve social conflicts. Moreover the paper focuses on that part of Leviathan, dealing with religious issues, with that side of human life where conflicts stem from the variety of opinions regarding the conditions of salvation. In this case the tool of political violence is not useful. Hobbes thinks that this kind of conflicts can be resolved only if all the individuals involved will be persuaded of the consistency between obedience to the King and obedience to God. (shrink)

Starting from a distinction between global and globalised and a definition of the concept of global threat for future generations, this paper aims to identify cognitive, moral and emotional phenomena that hinder to the adoption of effective policies against global warming. The main thesis of this paper is that it is difficult to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases mainly because the unlimited economic growth is the imperative of our company and the continuous increase of material goods and personal consumption is (...) what is closest to our idea of happiness and wellbeing. (shrink)

Is epistocracy epistemically superior to democracy? In this paper, I scrutinize some of the arguments for and against the epistemic superiority of epistocracy. Using empirical results from the literature on the epistemic benefits of diversity as well as the epistemic contributions of citizen science, I strengthen the case against epistocracy and for democracy. Disenfranchising, or otherwise discouraging anyone to participate in political life, on the basis of them not possessing a certain body of (social scientific) knowledge, is untenable also from (...) an epistemic point of view. Rather than focussing on individual competence, we should pay attention to the social constellation through which we produce knowledge to make sure we decrease epistemic loss (by ensuring diversity and inclusion) and increase epistemic productivity (by fostering a multiplicity of perspectives interacting fruitfully). Achieving those epistemic benefits requires a more democratic approach that differs significantly from epistocracy. (shrink)

What does it mean to have “strong beliefs”? My thesis is that it can mean two very different things. That is, there are two distinct psychological features to which “strong belief” can refer, and these often come apart. I call the first feature epistemic confidence and the second identity centrality. They are conceptually distinct and, if we take ethnographies of religion seriously, distinct in fact as well. If that’s true, it’s methodologically important for the psychological sciences to have measures that (...) tease them apart. In this paper, I critique some measures that are currently in use and propose some strategies for developing measurement tools that track the distinction in question. (shrink)

Wie ‘Mill’ zegt, zegt in eerste instantie bovenal ‘vrijheid’ en ‘utilisme’. In hun onderling verband vormen deze begrippen nog steeds een sterke verwoording van het zelfbegrip van de moderne mens. In de maakbare, nieuwe wereld van het modernisme ervaart de mens de mogelijkheid en wenselijkheid, de wereld naar eigen inzicht en ontwerp in te richten. Daarbij verlangt hij zo veel mogelijk verschoond blijven van onderdrukkende, traditionele, paternalistische machten, of die nu van de overheid komen of uit de samenleving. Richtsnoer vormt (...) niet meer louter de morele wet die hij zichzelf oplegt, of door anderen opgelegd krijgt, maar het systeem van sociale wetten zoals dat wordt geformuleerd in de positieve wetenschap: de economie en de sociologie. (shrink)

Fundamentele filosofische studie over hermeneutiek, opgevat als het stem geven aan degene die niet (meer) zelf kan spreken, met beschouwingen over het betreffende gedachtegoed van enkele vooraanstaande denkers zoals Plato en Heidegger.

Aan het eind van Zur Genealogie der Moral kondigt Nietzsche aan dat hij later een boek zal schrijven over ‘de geschiedenis van het Europese nihilisme’ . Dat boek is er nooit gekomen, althans niet van Nietzsches hand. Het enige wat we hebben zijn de aantekeningen daarvoor in zijn nalatenschap. Een van die notities is het beroemde ‘Lenzer Heide Ontwerp’ , een tekst waaraan Nietzsche zelf de titel Het Europese nihilisme gaf.Nadat Nietzsche de winter van 1886/87 in Nice had doorgebracht, trok (...) hij in het voorjaar weer richting Zwitserland om zich voor de zomer in Sils Maria te vestigen. In Nice had hij juist Dostojevski ontdekt, van wie hij onder andere de Aantekeningen uit het ondergrondse las, een boek dat een zeer kritische psychologie van de nihilist bevat. Op zijn reis naar het Engadin bleef Nietzsche steken omdat het in het hooggebergte nog te koud was en de Julier-pas nog niet sneeuwvrij. Tijdens zijn gedwongen oponthoud in Lenzer Heide noteerde hij deze tekst, aan de hand waarvan we nu een paar elementen van Nietzsches analyse van het Europese nihilisme belichten. (shrink)

Hoewel misschien minder dan vroeger, zijn velen van ons op zoek naar waarheid, of ‘de’ waarheid . We beseffen dat het ‘hebben’ van waarheid een groot goed is. We beseffen ook dat waarheid, of ‘de’ waarheid, soms of vaak, moeilijk te achterhalen is: het is een soms of vaak ongrijpbaar goed. Wie echter geen volslagen scepticus is kan in beginsel lijsten aanleggen van beweringen waarvan hij weet dat ze waar zijn, beweringen waarvan hij weet dat ze onwaar zijn, maar ook (...) van beweringen waarvan hij niet weet of ze waar dan wel onwaar zijn. (shrink)

van Els, Paul. "Echo's van de Weg" (Echoes of the Dao). Dutch translation of Huainanzi chapter 12. Het Trage Vuur 40 (December 2007): 29–35.

van Els, Paul. "Tegen aanvalsoorlogen" (Against Offensive Warfare). Dutch translation of Mozi chapters 17, 18, and 19. Het Trage Vuur 40 (December 2007): 8–19.

van Els, Paul. "#MeToo avant la lettre." Filosofie-Tijdschrift 28, no. 3 (May 2018): 35–39.

Bringing Flowers HomeWe try to put a bandage on the wound,offering a vague apology:Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.Towers turn out to have been built on sand.Regimes collapse. No use in asking whywe ripped the bandage off that bleeding wound.An earthquake followed by a hurricane,fires, floods: they've passed some of us by.Us. And who is we? And what is home?Last week an enormous yellow moonhung low in a corner of the sky.Beauty is no bandage for the wound,hole in (...) the future much too big to mendor even to imagine, though we tryto camouflage it, bringing flowers home.You said, when we were talking of the end,that no one teaches us to say goodbye,or how to ease the bandage from the wound.Forgive me, death. I brought these flowers home.Moving the PianoCompact, gleaming, black and white,this sturdy Yamaha uprightstood staunchly in one room for yearsuntil, maneuvered through several doorstoday by two young slender menand up a ramp into their van,it ventured briefly out into the world again.The change of space, the space of change:the walls look naked, empty, strange.Heavy has given way to light.Habitual soliditytoo familiar to seeyields to possibilitytoo unfamiliar to see.Late and early, early, late,end, beginning—all are swirledinto a mist that veils the world.The black and white of status quoblends to a color I don't know,transition that I cannot name,but I salute it all the same.Goodbye, piano, and hello.So where is the piano going?Where will it find another life,music and memories unpackedin an unfolding second act?North Carolina, near a riverwhose stream, like time, is always flowing.My son lives there with his wife.Beloved, nothing is forever.You can't step twice into this life.Nap at Stony PointMy cousin and my friendon their respective recent deathbedsslid from my mind. I noticedthe scarlet splash of a cardinal perched on a cannonon a bluff above the Hudson.I lay down on a picnic table,sun on my face, five turkey vulturescircling overhead, and closed my eyes.And when I opened them I felt as pleasedas if I had completed some needful taskinstead of having forgottenhow my friend in January and my cousin in March,both of them alert and wry and tranquil,had faced what each of them clearly saw approaching—more, had recognized and greeted it,instead of ignoring it by looking through it,the way some people, even iftheir office is two doors down the hall,look right through you, pretending not to see you.Or maybe they don't see youany more than one envisions deathon a sunny April afternoon.The Last Lecture HallTheaters that were never ours,classrooms empty and refill.Nor do the trees belong to us.We cross the stage and disappearor venture in among the treesand lose ourselves there.Feverish categories blur.Genre distinctions: what for?The empty theater becomesa lecture hall. A classroom morphsinto a forest murmuringwith voices. Words pelt down like rainor rise like mist and dissipate.The rustling trees swell to a roar.But they were never still.Theater, classroom, maple, fir:feverish categories blur,presences pressing through the veilof the phenomenal;a leopard padding down the aisle.Tiger-masked students fill the seatsof the amphitheater.The old professor, looking outover the upturned faces, said“You are all allegoricalfigures to me. I will not learnyour names.” Did the students laugh?Tragedy, satire, comedy:genres are deciduous.Modes blur, leaves spin and fall.The leaves of memory seemed to makeA mournful rustling in the dark(Longfellow, “The Fire of Driftwood”).Lights go on in the theater.Class is over. We stumble out.The GatesWhen I woke up I had walked through a gate.I looked around the room—trickle or torrent, stepping into time—and bent my head to drink at a black stream.I look around a roomthick with the dust of after and before.Am I meant to drink from this black stream?My lips are dry,thick with the crust of after and before,gate of ivory and gate of horn.My lips are dry, I'm thirsty.Heat, cold, fire, snow, sun.Gate of ivory and gate of horn:to cross a threshold ends one story(firelight; snow squeaking; winter sun)and begins another.To cross a threshold ends one story(ever after? or a transformation?)and begins anotherthere is no law compelling us to enter.Ever after or a transformation.Torrent, trickle: we set foot in time,but there's no law compelling us to enterstory once we've latched the gate of dream.FilamentsYour past is thickening. You can seeits filaments, as carefullyyou begin to part the strands(they're all connected) with both hands,and clear a path. Now warilyenter the web—not all the way,but toward some kind of clarity.We have been rightly taught that wecan't finish, but must do, the work.Partway through the leafy murk,crisscrossing dapple of the trees,so tough and so precarious,you find yourself in the dawn air,the circle's center everywhere.Along the PromenadeReading a book about transitioningin the twenty-first-century meaning of the wordblends with plans for my son's upcoming weddingand scraps of conversation overheardat the Japanese-themed street fair today.Somnambulists along the promenadefloat in the warm currents of Broadway,eat talk look linger in the sun and shade.Then to the park: October leaves still green(climate change or merely Indian summer?).Snatched memories, I catch them on the wing:Samos Septembers, pomegranate tree,lemon tree, okra, a chameleon,the little summer of Saint Dimitri,they called it. All this happened; but to me?Streams of conversation flowing by.The sound artist described his work like this(if work is the right word): “Accidentallyuploading seemingly private messages,”which describes, also, dreams and poetry,the drifting crowd, incessant carousel,city and weather, time and holiday,all lived, palped, tasted, tested, overheard.Somnambulists along the promenadehave set up booths, their dreams... Bookending my dawn dream: symmetricalsoaking sponges dripping... DNA?Destiny, temperament, personality:the cards we're dealt and that we have to play,except we now can change them gradually.Transition: he or she or rather they,constructed, deconstructed, rearranged,the tarot spread of genealogy,inheritance as aleatoric play.We walked west to Eleventh Avenue,drawn by rumors of Ad Reinhardt's blue,which buzzed and throbbed. Stand still: my head was spinning.Allusions to water or to sky,dense, deep, alarming, ending or beginning... I sat awhile and watched the crowd glide by,enchanted promenaders all drawn inon the exhibition's last dayby the silence's cerulean humming.And then they climbed the stairs, and so did we,to lighter textures on an upper floorwhere Ruth Asawa's baskets in midairweightlessly demonstrated gravity,twigs, trees, crowns, bubbles dancing in white space.Next week my class will read “On Being Ill.”“Blogs,” I'll tell them, is the word we nowuse, not “essay,” for the moving mind,that saunterer who takes note and leaves behindand doubles back and ponders and regretsamidst the wash of vision, the flowand tidal pull of what we see and know,what we've dreamed, what we have said and heard,the thrumming colors and the floating crowd,as if the bubbly brew of sunny dayand anxious dreams could somehow all be caughtup in one enormous, one all-encompassing word. (shrink)

In ‘My body, not my choice: against legalised abortion’, Hendricks offers an intriguing argument that suggests the state can coerce pregnant women into continuing to sustain their fetuses. His argument consists partly in countering Boonin’s defence of legalised abortion, followed by an argument from analogy. I argue in this response article that his argument from analogy fails and, correspondingly, it should still be a woman’s legal choice to have an abortion. My key point concerns the burdensomeness of pregnancy which is (...) morally relevant to the question of whether the state can coerce people to use their bodies to help another person. (shrink)