21 found
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  1. Human Goals Are Constitutive of Agency in Artificial Intelligence.Elena Popa - 2021 - Philosophy and Technology 34 (4):1731-1750.
    The question whether AI systems have agency is gaining increasing importance in discussions of responsibility for AI behavior. This paper argues that an approach to artificial agency needs to be teleological, and consider the role of human goals in particular if it is to adequately address the issue of responsibility. I will defend the view that while AI systems can be viewed as autonomous in the sense of identifying or pursuing goals, they rely on human goals and other values incorporated (...)
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  2. Mental health, normativity, and local knowledge in global perspective.Elena Popa - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 84 (C):101334.
    Approaching mental health on a global scale with particular reference to low- and mid-income countries raises issues concerning the disregard of the local context and values and the imposition of values characteristic of the Global North. Seeking a philosophical viewpoint to surmount these problems, the present paper argues for a value-laden framework for psychiatry with the specific incorporation of value pluralism, particularly in relation to the Global South context, while also emphasizing personal values such as the choice of treatment. In (...)
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  3. Causation without the causal theory of action.Elena Popa - 2022 - Human Affairs 32 (4):389-393.
    This paper takes a critical stance on Tallis’s separation of causation and agency. While his critique of the causal theory of action and the assumptions about causation underlying different versions of determinism, including the one based on neuroscience is right, his rejection of causation (of all sorts) has implausible consequences. Denying the link between action and causation amounts to overlooking the role action plays in causal inference and in the origin of causal concepts. I suggest that a weaker version of (...)
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  4. Artificial life and ‘nature’s purposes’: The question of behavioral autonomy.Elena Popa - 2019 - Human Affairs 30 (4):587-596.
    This paper investigates the concept of behavioral autonomy in Artificial Life by drawing a parallel to the use of teleological notions in the study of biological life. Contrary to one of the leading assumptions in Artificial Life research, I argue that there is a significant difference in how autonomous behavior is understood in artificial and biological life forms: the former is underlain by human goals in a way that the latter is not. While behavioral traits can be explained in relation (...)
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  5.  62
    Loneliness and negative effects on mental health as trade-offs of the policy response to COVID-19.Elena Popa - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (1):1-5.
    This note introduces a framework incorporating multiple sources of evidence into the response to COVID-19 to overcome the neglect of social and psychological causes of illness. By using the example of psychological research on loneliness and its effects on physical and mental health with particular focus on aging and disability, I seek to open further inquiry into how relevant psychological and social aspects of health can be addressed at policy level.
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  6. A Psychological Approach to Causal Understanding and the Temporal Asymmetry.Elena Popa - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (4):977-994.
    This article provides a conceptual account of causal understanding by connecting current psychological research on time and causality with philosophical debates on the causal asymmetry. I argue that causal relations are viewed as asymmetric because they are understood in temporal terms. I investigate evidence from causal learning and reasoning in both children and adults: causal perception, the temporal priority principle, and the use of temporal cues for causal inference. While this account does not suffice for correct inferences of causal structure, (...)
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  7.  26
    Challenges facing physiologists and the scientific enterprise in a post-truth world.Elena Popa - 2024 - In Faadiel Essop (ed.), Truth Unveiled: Navigating Science and Society in an Era of Doubt. Elsevier. pp. 37-61.
    Post-truth politics comes forward as a challenge to the credibility of science through its association with skepticism and denialism about scientific approaches and findings. While debates over the nature of facts and the social character of scientific knowledge have mainly taken place in an academic setting, the current concerns about science skepticism have connected them to wider social issues. This chapter will examine this question with the focus on biomedical and physiological sciences and cast doubt on the claim that particular (...)
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  8.  57
    Values in Public Health: An Argument from Trust.Elena Popa - 2024 - Synthese 203 (200):1-23.
    Research on the role of values in science and objectivity has typically approached trust through its epistemic aspects. Yet, recent work on public trust in science has emphasized the role of non-epistemic values in building and maintaining trust. This paper will use a concept of trust that adds concerns about justice to epistemic conditions to investigate this problem in relation to public health. I will argue that trust-conducive values, particularly justice, are relevant in deciding which value influences are legitimate in (...)
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  9. Is Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel Inextricably Linked to the Self?Elena Popa - 2017 - Australasian Philosophical Review 1 (4):420-425.
    Ganeri's [2018] discussion of mental time travel and the self focuses on remembering the past, but has less to say with respect to the status of future-oriented mental time travel. This paper aims to disambiguate the relation between prospection and the self from the framework of Ganeri's interpretation of three Buddhist views—by Buddhaghosa, Vasubandhu, and Dignaga. Is the scope of Ganeri's discussion confined to the past, or is there a stronger assumption that future thought always entails self-representation? I argue that (...)
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  10. Causality, Human Action and Experimentation: Von Wright's Approach to Causation in Contemporary Perspective.Elena Popa - 2017 - Acta Philosophica Fennica 93:355-373.
    This paper discusses von Wright's theory of causation from Explanation and Understanding and Causality and Determinism in contemporary context. I argue that there are two important common points that von Wright's view shares with the version of manipulability currently supported by Woodward: the analysis of causal relations in a system modelled on controlled experiments, and the explanation of manipulability through counterfactuals - with focus on the counterfactual account of unmanipulable causes. These points also mark von Wright's departure from previous action-based (...)
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  11. Causal Projectivism, Agency, and Objectivity.Elena Popa - 2016 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 30 (2):147-163.
    This article examines how specific realist and projectivist versions of manipulability theories of causation deal with the problem of objectivity. Does an agent-dependent concept of manipulability imply that conflicting causal claims made by agents with different capacities can come out as true? In defence of the projectivist stance taken by the agency view, I argue that if the agent’s perspective is shown to be uniform across different agents, then the truth-values of causal claims do not vary arbitrarily and, thus, reach (...)
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  12.  25
    Just pluralism: thinking about concepts of mental disorder in global context.Elena Popa - 2024 - Synthese 204 (3):1-19.
    This paper will investigate justice requirements that a pluralist stance on concepts of mental disorder should meet for use on a global scale. This is important given that different concepts of mental disorder are connected to particular interventions which may be more or less successful in specific contexts. While taking a broadly normative view on mental disorders, I will describe relevant concepts in a more fine grained manner, referring to their connections to particular approaches to biology, the self, or community. (...)
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  13. Beauvoir’s ethics, meaning, and competition.Elena Popa - 2019 - Human Affairs 29 (4):425–433.
    This paper discusses Simone de Beauvoir’s views on the meaning of life as presented in The Ethics of Ambiguity. I argue that Beauvoir’s view matches contemporary hybrid views on the meaning of life, incorporating both subjective and objective elements, while connecting them in a distinct way—through the tension between self and other. I then analyze the meaning of excessively competitive projects through Beauvoir’s ethics and conclude that success that amounts to denying other people’s access to the things one values is (...)
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  14. Collingwood, Pragmatism, and Philosophy of Science.Elena Popa - 2018 - In Karim Dharamsi, Giuseppina D'Oro & Stephen Leach (eds.), Collingwood on Philosophical Methodology. Cham: Springer Verlag. pp. 131-149.
    This paper argues that there are notable similarities between Collingwood’s method of investigating absolute presuppositions and contemporary strands of pragmatism, focusing on two areas - the critique of realism and causation. It is first argued that there are methodological similarities between Collingwood’s argument against realism and his Kantian-inspired critique of metaphysics, and Putnam’s critique of externalism. Regarding causation, it is argued that Collingwood’s view and Price’s pragmatist approach have a common method – investigating causation in the context of specific human (...)
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  15. Concepts of Biodiversity, Pluralism, and Pragmatism: The Case of Walnut Forest Conservation in Central Asia.Elena Popa - 2022 - SATS 23 (1):97-116.
    This paper examines philosophical debates about concepts of biodiversity, making the case for conceptual pluralism. Taking a pragmatist perspective, I argue that normative concepts of biodiversity and eco-centric concepts of biodiversity can serve different purposes. The former would help stress the values of local communities, which have often been neglected by both early scientific approaches to conservation, and by policy makers prioritizing the political or economic interests of specific groups. The latter would help build local research programs independent of pressures (...)
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  16. Teaching Philosophy in Central Asia: Effects on Moral and Political Education.Elena Popa - 2019 - Interchange 50 (2):187-203.
    This paper investigates how an introductory philosophy course influences the moral and political development of undergraduate students in a Liberal Arts university in Central Asia. Within a context of rapid changes characteristic of transitional societies—reflected in the organization of higher education—philosophy provides students with the means to reason about moral and political values in a way that overcomes the old ideological tenets as well as contemporary reluctance to theoretical inquiry. Studying philosophy provides a remedy for deficiencies in both secondary and (...)
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  17.  92
    Loneliness as Cause.Elena Popa - 2023 - Topoi 42 (5):1175-1184.
    While loneliness has been linked to various mental and physical health problems, the sense in which loneliness is a cause of these conditions has so far attracted little philosophical attention. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing research on health effects of loneliness and therapeutic interventions through current approaches to causality. To deal with the problem of causality between psychological, social, and biological variables, the paper endorses a biopsychosocial model of health and disease. I will investigate how three (...)
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  18. Getting counterfactuals right: the perspective of the causal reasoner.Elena Popa - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-18.
    This paper aims to bridge philosophical and psychological research on causation, counterfactual thought, and the problem of backtracking. Counterfactual approaches to causation such as that by Lewis have ruled out backtracking, while on prominent models of causal inference interventionist counterfactuals do not backtrack. However, on various formal models, certain backtracking counterfactuals end up being true, and psychological evidence shows that people do sometimes backtrack when answering counterfactual questions in causal contexts. On the basis of psychological research, I argue that while (...)
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  19.  47
    Policy change without ethical analysis? Commentary on the publication of Smajdor.Elena Popa, Jakub Zawiła-Niedźwiecki & Michał Zabdyr-Jamróz - 2023 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 44 (4):379-385.
    This commentary addresses the proposal and argumentative line presented in the paper ‘Whole Body Gestational Donation’ (WBGD) by Anna Smajdor (2023), published as an intended ‘outrageous argument’ in a dedicated special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. We believe that the paper is fatally flawed due to its lack of engagement with relevant approaches in ethics and essential sources in health sciences as well as its insufficient, superficial, and rash argumentation. Its critical weaknesses include, among others, that it does not (...)
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  20. Decision Making, Values and Trust in Science: Two Cases from Public Health.Elena Popa - 2024 - In Michael Resch, Nico Formanek, Joshy Ammu & Andreas Kaminski (eds.), Science and the Art of Simulation: Trust in Science. Springer.
    This paper examines trust in science in relation to public health and decisions affecting different groups. I employphilosophical work on trust and distrust, particularly how the perpetuation of injustices leads to warranted distrust, andliterature on science and values to argue that trust in science can increase if justice and equity are taken into account in thedecision-making process. As illustration, I discuss the case of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, and protectingmaternal and fetal health from metylmercury poisoning by removing fish from (...)
     
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  21. Medical Cosmopolitanism.Elena Popa - forthcoming - In Alex Broadbent (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Medicine. Oxford University Press.
    Medical cosmopolitanism has been introduced partly as a response to the shortcomings of evidence-based medicine. This chapter will describe the main tenets of medical cosmopolitanism, connecting its four stances to other relevant philosophical contributions, and will answer two critiques that have been raised against it. Firstly, the charges of relativism can be addressed by disentangling relativism from pluralism, and accepting a weaker or stronger version of the latter. Secondly, medical cosmopolitanism can incorporate evidence from anthropological studies of local medical knowledge (...)
     
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