This paper analyses and compares some of the automated reasoners that have been used in recent research for compliance checking. Although the list of the considered reasoners is not exhaustive, we believe that our analysis is representative enough to take stock of the current state of the art in the topic. We are interested here in formalizations at the _first-order_ level. Past literature on normative reasoning mostly focuses on the _propositional_ level. However, the propositional level is of little usefulness for (...) concrete LegalTech applications, in which compliance checking must be enforced on (large) sets of individuals. Furthermore, we are interested in technologies that are _freely available_ and that can be further investigated and compared by the scientific community. In other words, this paper does not consider technologies only employed in industry and/or whose source code is non-accessible. This paper formalizes a selected use case in the considered reasoners and compares the implementations, also in terms of simulations with respect to shared synthetic datasets. The comparison will highlight that lot of further research still needs to be done to integrate the benefits featured by the different reasoners into a single standardized first-order framework, suitable for LegalTech applications. All source codes are freely available at https://github.com/liviorobaldo/compliancecheckers, together with instructions to locally reproduce the simulations. (shrink)

We show that, assuming the consistency of a supercompact cardinal, the first inaccessible cardinal can satisfy a strong form of a Löwenheim–Skolem–Tarski theorem for the equicardinality logic L, a logic introduced in [5] strictly between first order logic and second order logic. On the other hand we show that in the light of present day inner model technology, nothing short of a supercompact cardinal suffices for this result. In particular, we show that the Löwenheim–Skolem–Tarski theorem (...) for the equicardinality logic at κ implies the Singular Cardinals Hypothesis above κ as well as Projective Determinacy. (shrink)

The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis has been called `the greatest of all medieval chronicles'. Written in Normandy between 1114 and 1141, it is a detailed history of the Norman people and their conquests, full of vivid, often penetrating portraits of the lives and characters of kings and queens, lords and bishops, simple knights, and humble villagers. The chronicle gives a unique, authentic picture of feudal society during a period of rapid change in church and state which saw the emergence (...) of the Anglo-Norman realm, the spread of new forms of monasticism, and the launching of the Crusades. Published in 1968, volume II of Marjorie Chibnall's six-volume edition of the Ecclesiastical History is now available for the first time in paperback. `a superbly edited Latin text and a unique English translation of the work of a major historian' American Historical Review `Mrs Chibnall is giving us... her edition of a classical medieval text which will itself become a classic of medieval scholarship.' Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

One of the most obvious features that characterises any technology is its in-betweeness—comprising technologies that stand in-between human users and natural affordances (natural objects, processes, or phenomena). This paper analyses technologies on the basis of their first- second- or third-order nature, and discusses how Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are creating a new externality.

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari argues that technological advances of the twenty-first century will usher in a significant shift in how humans make important life decisions. Instead of turning to the Bible or the Quran, to the heart or to our therapists, parents, and mentors, people will turn to Big Data recommendation algorithms to make these choices for them. Much as we rely on Spotify to recommend music to us, we will soon rely on algorithms to decide our (...) careers, spouses, and commitments. Harari also predicts that next, the state will take away individuals’ rights to make their own choices about their lives. If Google knows where your children would flourish best in school, why should the state allow a fallible human parent to decide? Liberalism—which, as Harari uses this term, refers to a state of society in which human freedom to choose is respected and championed—will collapse. In this paper, I argue that Harari’s conception of the future implications of recommendation algorithms is deeply flawed, for two reasons. First, users will not rely on algorithms to make decisions for them because they have no reason to trust algorithms, which are developed by companies with their own incentives, such as profit. Second, for most of our life decisions, algorithms will not be able to be developed, because the factors relevant to the decisions we face are unique to our situation. I present an alternative depiction of the future: instead of relying on algorithms to make decisions for us, humans will use algorithms to enhance our decision-making by helping us consider the most relevant choices first and notice information we might not otherwise. Finally, I will also argue that even if computers could make many of our decisions for us, liberalism as a political system would emerge unscathed. (shrink)

One of the most obvious features that characterises any technology is its in-betweeness—comprising technologies that stand in-between human users and natural affordances (natural objects, processes, or phenomena). This paper analyses technologies on the basis of their first- second- or third-order nature, and discusses how Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are creating a new externality.

Beginning with a survey of the shortcoming of theories of organology/media-as-externalization of mind/body—a philosophical-anthropological tradition that stretches from Plato through Ernst Kapp and finds its contemporary proponent in Bernard Stiegler—I propose that the phenomenological treatment of media as an outpouching and extension of mind qua intentionality is not sufficient to counter the ̳black-box‘ mystification of today‘s deep learning‘s algorithms. Focusing on a close study of Simondon‘s On the Existence of Technical Objectsand Individuation, I argue that the process-philosophical work of Gilbert (...) Simondon, with its critique of Norbert Wiener‘s first-order cybernetics, offers a precursor to the conception of second-order cybernetics (as endorsed byFrancisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, and Ricardo B. Uribe) and, specifically, its autopoietic treatment of information. It has been argued by those such as Frank Pasquale that neuro-inferential deep learning systems premised on predictive patterning, suchas AlphaGo Zero, have a veiled logic and, thus, are ̳black boxes‘. In detailing a philosophical-historical approach to demystify predictive patterning/processing and the logic of such deep learning algorithms, this paper attempts to shine a light on such systems and their inner workingsàla Simondon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reduction's FutureTheology, Technology, and the Order of KnowledgeKevin L. HughesLet me begin with something of a confession. When as a young undergraduate I first encountered medieval texts, and so, for the first time, began to know something of the medieval "way of seeing," I was intoxicated. And I was intoxicated, in part, by the comprehensiveness and unity of this worldview, where God, humans, the cosmos, (...) science, theology, philosophy, nature, supernature – all of these elements fit. So often in my thinking I have repaired to those famous last lines of Dante's Comedy, to the "Love which moves the sun and other stars," as the epitome of the comprehension, coherence, and harmony of the medieval worldview.Perhaps this is one of the reasons I have been attracted to the work of St. Bonaventure. We may all be familiar with the statements that now have become almost truisms, that to know Bonaventure at all, one needs to know the whole system, and that the whole system is found in every kind of work that he had done. "Procession, exemplarity, return, this is the whole of our metaphysics."1 This principle of Order in Bonaventure, as described and analyzed by Wayne Hellmann, is a kind of keystone to all of Bonaventure's work.2 [End Page 227]If you understand the "order," you understand Bonaventure. Such admirable consistency and harmony! Such remarkable unity of perspective! And, at least by many accounts, the Reduction of the Arts to Theology3 is a perfect concise instance of Bonaventure's synthetic vision.It is precisely this unity, as found in the Reduction of the Arts to Theology, that Dieter Hattrup finds problematic. For Hattrup, the notion of unity itself is not problematic; rather, it is the unity of knowledge as conveyed in the Reduction that approaches a deeply problematic modern understanding of knowledge. Hattrup believes he has discovered in this brief treatise the seeds of what we might call a technological or manipulative knowledge. Whatever the limits of Dieter Hattrup's historical and textual brief against the authenticity of the Reduction, his theological queries should put us all on guard if we are to imagine a future for any "reduction of the arts to theology," Bonaventurean or otherwise.A Theological QuestionBonaventura zwischen Mystik und Mystifikation4 begins with a basic theological premise: Christian theology is interested in the relationship between faith and reason, and this interest follows from the even more basic Christian claim that God is distinct from the world. If one has an intra-cosmic notion of the divine, wherein gods are the greatest or most powerful beings among all other beings, then the question between faith and reason does not arise. Gods who are beings can be known in the way we know all other beings, i.e., through reason. Faith, on the other hand, describes the kind of knowledge we can have of the One who is not part but [End Page 228] Maker of the created order. From the time of Philo on, Jewish and Christian believers5 have drawn this careful distinction and explored how faith and reason might be related without being reduced one into the other. Hattrup suggests that this perpetual question is raised with particular intensity with the revival of Aristotelian philosophy in the High Middle Ages, and Bonaventure stands as a major figure in scholastic inquiry. But, he tells us, this question remains crucial to our own time under the sign of "secularization."6It is important to note this opening overture, as it tells us that Hattrup is exploring what he takes to be first and foremost a theological puzzle: Does the Reduction of the Arts to Theology faithfully represent Bonaventure's understanding of the relationship between faith and reason as ways of knowing? Is it consistent with what we find (and what Hattrup has studied elsewhere)7 in his Sentence Commentary, Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, and the Collations on the Hexaëmeron? Most importantly, and more theologically, does the Reduction distinguish properly between faith and reason, as would befit this Doctor of the Church? Or is it the beginning of the collapse of this classic distinction... (shrink)

As we enter the 21st century, we do well to consider the values implicit in science fiction, the principal arena of future speculation in popular culture. This study explored whether consumption of science fiction (SF) is correlated with distinctive socio-ethical views. SF tends to advocate the extension of value and rights to all forms of intelligence, regardless of physical form; enthusiasm for technology; and social and economic libertarianism. This suggests that consumers with these socio-ethical views would be attracted to (...) the SF genre, and that amount of SF consumption would be correlated with adoption of these views. -/- Groups of respondents involved in medical ethical and environmental issues were surveyed in 1992 (N=278). SF consumption was found, at first-order correlation and controlling for covariates, to be associated with: greater support for extending rights to animal and machine intelligence; greater enthusiasm for technology, and rejection of limits to human endeavors; and greater social libertarianism. SF consumption was not associated with specific views on the cognitively and physically disabled; support for abortion rights; or economic libertarianism. (shrink)

This paper explores the thesis that the concept of cultural techniques should be strictly limited to symbolic technologies that allow for self-referential recursions. Writing enables one to write about writing itself; painting itself can be depicted in painting; films may feature other films. In other words, cultural techniques are defined by their ability to thematize themselves; they are second-order techniques as opposed to first-order techniques like cooking or tilling a field. To illustrate his thesis, Macho discusses a (...) sequence of historical examples, from body signs and death masks to digital code and ID papers. These examples serve to reiterate another basic proposal that is already announced in the paper’s title. The recursive, self-observing qualities of cultural techniques make them a ‘technology of the self’ and thus render them indispensable for the generation, repetition and maintenance of identity. (shrink)

Disruptive technologies can be conceptualized in different ways. Depending on how they are conceptualized, different ethical issues come into play. This article contributes to a general framework to navigate the ethics of disruptive technologies. It proposes three basic distinctions to be included in such a framework. First, emerging technologies may instigate localized “first-order” disruptions, or systemic “second-order” disruptions. The ethical significance of these disruptions differs: first-order disruptions tend to be of modest ethical significance, whereas (...) second-order disruptions are highly significant. Secondly, technologies may be classified as disruptive based on their technological features or based on their societal impact. Depending on which of these classifications one adopts and takes as the starting point of ethical inquiry, different ethical questions are foregrounded. Thirdly, the ethics of disruptive technology raises concerns at four different levels of technology assessment: the technology level, the artifact level, the application level, and the society level. The respective suitability of approaches in technology ethics to address concerns about disruptive technologies co-varies with the respective level of analysis. The article clarifies these distinctions, thereby laying some of the groundwork for an ethical framework tailored for assessing disruptive technologies. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of technology, in particular mediation theory, has largely neglected language and has paid little attention to the social-linguistic environment in which technologies are used. In order to reintroduce and strengthen these two missing aspects we turn towards Ricoeur’s narrative theory. We argue that technologies have a narrative capacity: not only do humans make sense of technologies by means of narratives but technologies themselves co-constitute narratives and our understanding of these narratives by configuring characters and events in (...) a meaningful temporal whole. We propose a hermeneutic framework that enables us to categorise and interpret technologies according to two hermeneutic distinctions. Firstly, we consider the extent to which technologies close in on the paradigm of the written text by assessing their capacity to actively configure characters and events into a meaningful whole; thereby introducing a linguistic aspect in the theory of technological mediation. Secondly, we consider the extent to which technologieshave the capacity to abstract from the public narrative time of actual characters and events by constructing quasi-characters and quasi-events, thereby introducing the social in our conception of technological mediation. This leads us to the outlines of a theory of narrative technologies that revolves around four hermeneutic categories. In order to show the merits of this theory, we discuss the categories by analysing paradigmatic examples of narrative technologies: the bridge, the hydroelectric power plant, video games, and electronic money. (shrink)

The vision of Horace, combining the sweet and the useful, is an expression of a sense of abundance. It came first and was than supported by Bacon's vision of a science-based technology. Later this was further backed by classical liberalism and by metaphysical progressivism. That technology may impede and even destroy science is obvious. Yet the danger is overlooked--with the aid of the vision of Horace and of neo-conservative (Popperian) politics and of neo-reactionary (Kuhnian) politics of science. (...) The science of science policy needs boosting in order to study means of democratic control of technology. (shrink)

Birth order has been examined over a wide variety of dimensions in the context of modern populations. A consistent message has been that it is better to be born first. The analysis of birth order in this paper is different in several ways from other investigations into birth order effects. First, we examine the effect of birth order in an egalitarian, small-scale, kin-based society, which has not been done before. Second, we use a different (...) outcome measure, fertility, rather than outcome measures of social, psychological, or economic success. We find, third, that being born late in an egalitarian, technologically simple society rather than being born early has a positive outcome on fertility, and fourth, that number of older siblings and sibling set size are even stronger predictors of fertility, especially for males. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to investigate ethical aspects of technology through the moral term “paternalism”. The field of investigation is medicine. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, “paternalism” has gained moral relevance through modern medicine, where physicians have been accused of behaving paternalistic and threatening patients’ autonomy. Secondly, medicine is a brilliant area to scrutinise the evaluative aspects of technology. It is argued that paternalism is a morally relevant term for the ethics of technology, (...) but that its traditional conception is not adequate to address the challenges of modern technology. A modification towards a “technological paternalism” is necessary. That is, “technological paternalism” is a fruitful term in the ethics of technology. Moreover, it is suited to point out the deficiencies of the traditional concept of paternalism and to reform and vitalise the conception of paternalism in ethics in order to handle the challenges of technology. (shrink)

Courses on ethics and technology have become compulsory for many students at the three Dutch technical universities during the past few years. During this time, teachers have faced a number of didactic problems, which are partly due to a growing number of students. In order to deal with these challenges, teachers in ethics at the three technical universities in the Netherlands — in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente — have developed a web-based computer program called Agora (see www.ethicsandtechnology.com). This (...) program enables students to exercise their ethical understanding and skills extensively. The program makes it possible for students to participate actively in moral reflection and reasoning, and to develop the moral competencies that are needed in their later professional practice. The developers of the program have tried to avoid two traps. Firstly, they rejected, from the outset, a cookbook style of dealing with ethical problems that applied ethics is often taken to be and, secondly, they wanted to design a flexible program that respects the student’s as well as the teacher’s creativity, and that tries to engage students in moral reflection. Agora meets these requirements. The program offers possibilities that extend beyond the requirements that are usually accepted for case-exercises in applied ethics, and that have been realised in several other computer models for teaching ethics. In this article, we describe the main considerations in the development of Agora and the features of the resulting program. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary research calls together different scientific disciplines in order to answer a research question which cannot be answered by an individual discipline alone. Technology Assessment (TA) is a problem-oriented approach (Bechmann and Frederichs 1996) dealing with the non-technical aspects of technology development, in order to gain knowledge about the (un-)intended consequences, the (un-)desired impacts, the main and side-effects and the chances and risks of (new) technologies. Moreover, by applying TA, scientists can develop potential solutions to solve (...) societal or political problems related to, for example, the “grand challenges” such as “feeding 10 billion people,” demographic change, global health. These societal problems need to be reframed or transformed into research questions to be dealt with by interdisciplinary research. Which scientific disciplines are invited to participate in an interdisciplinary research project is defined with respect to these research questi. (shrink)

Focusing on the context of graduate training in educational research in the United States today, this article is organized into two principal parts. The first overviews the state of research training in order to emphasize the preoccupation with, indeed dominance of, study of methodology. This has turned ‘how to do research’ into valuing method as technology for its own sake, and thus into technologization. The second part turns to three critiques of technology that together point to (...) potential totalization in research: technologization that limits research processes and potential results. The writings of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Ellul provide a broad frame; the three specific critiques are found in contributions from Henry Adams, Aldous Huxley, and Donna Haraway. The conclusion calls for a questioning of the current form of graduate training and by implication its hold on current research practice. (shrink)

One of the first envatted brains, the most cyborgian element of J. D. Bernal’s 1929 futuristic manifesto, The world, the flesh and the the devil, proposed a technological solution to the dreary certainty of mortality. In Bernal’s scenario the brain is maintained in an ‘out of body’ but ‘like-body’ environment—in a bath of cerebral–spinal fluid held at constant body temperature. In reality, acquiring prospective immortality requires access to very different technologies—those that allow human organs and tissues to be preserved (...) in a quite ‘inhuman’ life-world—the cryogenic storage chamber. Like Bernal, today’s cryonicists consider that immortality can be secured through preservation of the brain alone. In this article I trace attempts to preserve or suspend life, and especially brain function, through the application of new ‘technologies of immortality’. Drawing together historical information on the development of refrigeration, cryopreservation, transplantation, and nanotechnologies, I explore the uneasy relationship between cryonics and the technology on which it depends for its success—cryogenics. In so doing, I argue that the ability to successfully realize the science fiction fantasy of human immortality will rest on a moral and scientific parasitism: the capacity to use the biotechnological artifacts or proxies—cryogenically preserved brains, archived brains, tissues, and immortalized cell lines—derived from the dead, in order to prolong life. (shrink)

Courses on ethics and technology have become compulsory for many students at the three Dutch technical universities during the past few years. During this time, teachers have faced a number of didactic problems, which are partly due to a growing number of students. In order to deal with these challenges, teachers in ethics at the three technical universities in the Netherlands — in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente — have developed a web-based computer program called Agora (see www.ethicsandtechnology.com). This (...) program enables students to exercise their ethical understanding and skills extensively. The program makes it possible for students to participate actively in moral reflection and reasoning, and to develop the moral competencies that are needed in their later professional practice. The developers of the program have tried to avoid two traps. Firstly, they rejected, from the outset, a cookbook style of dealing with ethical problems that applied ethics is often taken to be and, secondly, they wanted to design a flexible program that respects the student’s as well as the teacher’s creativity, and that tries to engage students in moral reflection. Agora meets these requirements. The program offers possibilities that extend beyond the requirements that are usually accepted for case-exercises in applied ethics, and that have been realised in several other computer models for teaching ethics. In this article, we describe the main considerations in the development of Agora and the features of the resulting program. (shrink)

The present working paper analyzes the world order in the past, present and future as well as the main factors, foundations and ideas underlying the maintaining and change of the international and global order. The first two sections investigate the evolution of the world order starting from the ancient times up to the late twentieth century. The third section analyzes the origin and decline of the world order based on the American hegemony. The authors reveal (...) contradictions of the current unipolar world and explain in what way globalization has become more profitable for the developing countries but not for the developed ones. The paper also explains the strengthening belief that the US leading status will inevitably weaken. In this connection we discuss the alternatives of the American strategy and the possibility of the renaissance of the American leadership. The last section presents a factor analysis which allows stating that the world is shifting toward a new balance of power and is likely to become the world without a leader. The new world order will consist of a number of large blocks, coalitions and countries acting within a framework of rules and mutual responsibility. However, the transition to a new world order will take certain time (about two decades). This period, which we denote as the epoch of new coalitions, will involve a reconfiguration of the World-System and bring an increasing turbulence and conflict intensity. There are grounds to conclude that in 2011–2012 the World-System experienced to some extent a phase transition to a qualitatively new state of global protest activity. This phase transition is shown to bear some resemblance to the one which the World-System experienced in the early 1960s. The first (after 1919) phase transition of this sort occurred in the early 1960s and was related to the growth of global informational connectivity after the World War II, as well as the improvement of the means of protest self-organization due to the spread of television, portable radio receivers, portable electric loud-speakers and other technologies of the Fourth Kondratieff Cycle. The phase transition of the early 2010s was prepared by a new wave of growth of global informational connectivity, as well as the improvement of the means of protest self-organization due to the spread of various technologies of the Fifth Kondratieff cycle (the Internet, satellite television, Twitter and other social networks, mobile telephony etc.). Similarly to what was observed during the Fourth Kondratieff Wave, during the Fifth Cycle while the spread of these technologies was going on for many years before 2011, their internal colossal potential for generating and spreading protest activity was realized in one leap, as a phase transition. (shrink)

The following lines aim at two goals: firstly, connecting the three blind spots that Katrin Becker's article has identified in the analysis of society promoted by advocates of blockchain technology; secondly, reflecting on the possible hybridization between classical and digital forms of legal procedures. What we are witnessing is a transfer of legality from a spatial and linguistic order to a non-spatial, non-linguistic one which is based on out-of-space lines of written code. The interpretation of what space means (...) for justice becomes therefore a crucial social stake in the possible hybridization of classical and digital procedures. (shrink)

In Beyond Disruption: Technology's Challenge to Governance, experts from academia, media, government, and the military wrestle with understanding the nature of these technologies' threats to our societies and their great potential for our economies. In a series of vivid analyses and colorful commentary from a conference as Stanford University's Hoover Institution, the authors expand upon their first-hand interpretations of what's at stake for the global operating system in the midst of turbulent change. In the dynamic game of world (...) order, it's a primer for decision makers on where the puck is headed. (shrink)

Although no scholarly consensus exists on the issue, the claim that a substantive reconfiguration of the Internet has occurred in the beginning of the 2000s has settled firmly in public common sense. The label tentatively chosen for the new turn in the medium’s evolution is Web 2.0. The developments constituting this turn have been contemplated from different perspectives in technical and business publications (O’Reilly 2005), in treatises on convergence or participatory culture (Jenkins 2006; Jenkins et al. 2009), and could be (...) usefully interrogated by means of political economy concepts such as the social factory and free labor (Terranova 2004). Marked, or rather symbolically constructed, by these discursive pickets lies a field of practice that the members of the participatory culture, the produsers (Bruns 2008) of open journalism, blogs, social networking sites and other characteristic Web 2.0 applications inhabit and animate with their everyday thought, decision making and action. This paper undertakes a theoretical exploration of the user practices emerging and consolidating around the new technological and organizational models making up Web 2.0. It is informed by a qualitative study of bloggers and Facebook users conducted through focus group methodology, although the concrete empirical data are not presented here. Rather, the analysis employs the concept of technologies of the self by Foucault (1988) as a heuristic device in order to situate Web 2.0 use, first, in a long history of culturally evolved forms of self-constitution and, second, in a complex matrix of relationships with other types of technologies, namely, those of production, sign systems and power. This conceptual choice, we argue, furnishes a study of Web 2.0 use, which holds in balance its liberatory potential and its susceptibility to new forms of domination, rationalization and commodification. (shrink)

Based on recent trends in philosophy of science, in philosophy of technology, and in technosience studies it can be concluded that the following formula expresses a significant relationship of the relevant disciplines: science is equal to technology plus philosophy. In order to disclose the meaning of this relationship first of all we have to characterize a kind of philosophy of technology. In this view, the human rule over technological situations and the creation/use of tools play (...) a fundamental role. The tools are created by interpretation, and any technological praxis is situation-bound. The characteristics of sciences are very different – or even the opposite – ones: in sciences we want to reach a situation-free knowledge. Scientific knowledge is not situation-bound, it is universally valid. The question is: how can we use the situation-bound technological praxis for building up of situation-free scientific knowledge? It can be shown that a specific application of philosophical principles and ideas makes this possible. Philosophy can create worlds from situations. Consequently, following certain prescriptions of both technology and philosophy, we can perform a scientific praxis. In this paper, some historical and philosophical arguments will be presented to show this interrelatedness, the most fundamental relationships between science, technology, and philosophy. (shrink)

This contribution focuses on two claims advanced by the proponents of the project of “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance.” Firstly, it is maintained that this project represents something genuinely new and quite unique. Secondly, it is argued that the future prospects of the project are extraordinarily positive. In order to critically assess both claims this paper first focuses on the question of whether there is actually anything genuinely new about the project of improving human performance by means (...) of converging NBIC technologies. In addition it is analyzed whether the project warrants that we be optimistic about its future prospects. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Artificial Intelligence and the many data science methods associated with it, such as machine learning and large language models, are first and foremost epistemic technologies. In order to establish this claim, I first argue that epistemic technologies can be conceptually and practically distinguished from other technologies in virtue of what they are designed for, what they do and how they do it. I then proceed to show that unlike other kinds of (...) technology (_including_ other epistemic technologies) AI can be uniquely positioned as an epistemic technology in that it is primarily designed, developed and deployed to be used in _epistemic contexts_ such as inquiry, it is specifically designed, developed and deployed to manipulate _epistemic content_ such as data, _and_ it is designed, developed and deployed to do so particularly through _epistemic operations_ such as prediction and analysis. As has been shown in recent work in the philosophy and ethics of AI (Alvarado, AI and Ethics, 2022a), understanding AI as an epistemic technology will also have significant implications for important debates regarding our relationship to AI technologies. This paper includes a brief overview of such implications, particularly those pertaining to explainability, opacity, trust and even epistemic harms related to AI technologies. (shrink)

In their paper, “Autonomy and the ethics of biological behaviour modification”, Savulescu, Douglas, and Persson discuss the ethics of a technology for improving moral motivation and behaviour that does not yet exist and will most likely never exist. At the heart of their argument sits the imagined case of a “moral technology” that magically prevents people from developing intentions to commit seriously immoral actions. It is not too much of a stretch, then, to characterise their paper as a (...) thought experiment in service of a thought experiment. In order for an argument involving a thought experiment to progress debate in applied ethics three things must be true. First, the thought experiment must accurately represent and illuminate a pressing ethical dilemma. Second – and most obviously – the central claims of the argument regarding the thought experiment must be plausible. Third, it must be possible to apply or develop the arguments established with reference to the thought experiment to the real world cases the experiment is intended to illuminate. In this commentary, I argue that there are serious reasons to question the extent to which their argument meets each of these challenges involved in the use of thought experiments in applied ethics. While Savulescu et al. succeed in showing how behavioural modification might be compatible with freedom and autonomy – and perhaps justifiable even if it were not — in the fantastic case they consider, there is little we can conclude from this about any technology of “moral bioenhancement” in the foreseeable future. Indeed, there is a real danger that their argument will license attempts to manipulate behaviour through drugs and brain implants, which raise profound moral issues that they barely mention. (shrink)

Designed to help educators address science-related social issues, this publication considers: (1) major challenges associated with science-related social issues; (2) the extent to which these challenges are being met; (3) ways in which educators can improve the education of citizens in science, technology, and social issues; and (4) promising practices that can contribute to building connections between social studies and science curricula. Three challenges outlined in the first of five sections include: (1) informing citizens about complex social issues (...) and decisions, (2) connecting diverse fields of knowledge in school curricula, and (3) resisting antagonists of science and technology. In order to determine the extent to which these challenges are currently being met, the second section examines: goal statements in curriculum reports and major reports in the social studies and the sciences; research findings on student knowledge and attitudes regarding science, technology, and society; and analyses of current curricula and textbooks. The third section describes ways in which "integrative threads" can be used to provide common learning experiences within and between distinct courses in the social studies and sciences. The fourth section presents promising practices that can contribute to this building of connections between social studies and science curricula; the use of "decision trees" and case studies, the use of role play and simulation, and the use of instructional television and microcomputers. Concluding observations in the final section and a bibliography listing over 170 publications conclude the document. (LH). (shrink)

In order to shorten the time for users to query news on the Internet, this paper studies and designs a network news data extraction technology, which can obtain the main news information through the extraction of news text keywords. Firstly, the TF-IDF keyword extraction algorithm, TextRank keyword extraction algorithm, and LDA keyword extraction algorithm are analyzed to understand the keyword extraction process, and the TF-IDF algorithm is optimized by Zipf’s law. By introducing the idea of model fusion, five (...) schemes based on waterfall fusion and parallel combination fusion are designed, and the effects of the five schemes are verified by experiments. It is found that the designed extraction technology has a good effect on network news data extraction. News keyword extraction has a great application prospect, which can provide the basis for the research fields of news key phrases, news abstracts, and so on. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe thesis of this paper is that there are three basic processes by which a technological innovation is fitted into an existing culture: Rejection, in situations where all interested groups are satisfied with a traditional technology and reject apparently superior innovations because they would force unwanted changes in technology and ideology; Acceptance, in situations where a new technology is embraced by all because it appears to serve the same social and ideological functions as an inferior, or (...) inoperative, traditional technology; and — most commonly in complex societies — conflict over acceptance or rejection, in situations where a new technology introduced or proposed by one group, who perceive it as advancing their interests, is resisted by another group, who perceive it as threatening their welfare. A traditional tripartite concept of culture is employed, distinguishing technology, social organization, and ideology. Four case studies are introduced to illuminate the issue: the Thonga tribesmen of Mozambique, whose occupation as gold and diamond miners at first suited perfectly the requirements of the Thonga lineage and marriage system; the Yir Yoront of Australia, an aboriginal group who found that the steel axe introduced by whites disrupted the patriarchal status system and confounded their mythology; the Senecas, an American Indian tribe that for generations rejected male plow agriculture because their way of life was organized around female horticulture, but who took up male agriculture at the urging of a prophet when traditional male roles disintegrated on the reservation; and the anthracite miners and mine operators of nineteenth-century Pennsylvania, who discovered that fundamental changes in both social organization and ideology were needed in order to cope with catastrophically high rates of industrial accidents attendant on the new system of deep-shaft mining. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eclecticism and the Technologies of Discernment in Pietist PedagogyKelly J. WhitmerWhile the Franckesche Stiftungen (the Francke Foundations) of Halle/Saale are perhaps best known today as the institutional centre of German Pietism, throughout much of the eighteenth century they were widely regarded as a pedagogically innovative Schulstadt (or city of schools). The founder of this Schulstadt, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), was many things to many people: Pietist, radical Lutheran, theologian, (...) pedagogue, professor of Greek and Oriental languages, preacher, member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and proponent of a Protestant mission. Like most participants in what was initially a grassroots movement oriented around the personality of Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), a minister active in Frankfurt am Main around 1670 who sought to breathe new life into the Lutheran church,2 Francke rarely referred to himself as a Pietist. From his post at the University of Halle (founded in 1694), this Spenerian prote´gé set out to create a new "universal seminar" that would make the assimilation of many diverse points of view, identities, and competing strands of knowledge its [End Page 545] defining mandate. "My purpose," Francke wrote in a letter to a Pastor Ring from Grünebartau (October 29, 1712), "is to develop a universal institution, useful for bringing into a good and holy order all that is important for the Christianity of all orders of society and relates, in some way, to the healing power of the soul."3 His Schulstadt would "bring into order" a myriad of relationships around a single point and relied, quite deliberately I propose, on an eclectic methodology to do this.In recent years, the relationship of Francke's Schulstadt to the implementation of Brandenburg-Prussia's first compulsory schooling system and teacher training institutes has been better documented than in the past.4 Scholars of education have paid closer attention to the methodological innovations of Pietist pedagogy, and its points of convergence with the ideas of John Locke (1632–1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) have become subjects of mounting interest.5 Francke's significance for the history of education has been assessed mainly in terms of his ability to realize the pedagogically inclined reform projects of seventeenth-century figures, such as Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670).6 We know that the thousands of children who participated in the life of the Schulstadt very often left Halle to become actively involved as teachers and ministers throughout the German states. Several played pivotal roles in the development of the late eighteenth-century educational reform movement known as Philanthropismus and its associated practices and institutions.7 [End Page 546]Perhaps the most striking feature of Francke's Schulstadt was its curriculum, which featured innovative training regimens in applied mathematics for children from diverse social backgrounds.8 The scale and rigor of these programs were to be found nowhere else at the time and can be linked to the overtly pedagogical mandate of the Berlin Academy of Sciences (f. 1701). These regimens deliberately juxtaposed artisanal and learned knowledge and stressed the importance of the eye as a conciliatory medium.9 Despite having acquired largely anti-empiricist reputations over the years due to their lingering interest in alchemy and their roles in securing the banishment of the "rationalist" mathematician and philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679–1754), from their community in 1723, careful consideration of what Halle Pietists were teaching in their schools suggests a different view. These historical actors reconciled categories of knowledge production and transmission often framed as oppositional—despite what several scholars have recently shown to be their clear interconnectedness.10I argue here for the predominance of eclecticism in the Schulstadt, including a pronounced emphasis on the "middling" mathematical and mechanical sciences as tools of conciliation and self-improvement. I seek to illustrate how eclecticism was much more than a Philosophiebegriff that was well received by some Pietists, as Walter Sparn has argued, but that it is better understood as a set of conciliatory practices, traces of which resonate in Pietist lesson plans.11 Teachers in Francke's schools integrated experimental philosophy into an educational program that was introducing children to the exercises of... (shrink)

Ethics is ordinarily understood as being concerned with questions of responsibility for and in the face of an other. This other is more often than not conceived of as another human being and, as such, necessarily excludes others – most notably animals and machines. This essay examines the ethics of such exclusivity. It is divided into three parts. The first part investigates the exclusive anthropocentrism of traditional forms of moral␣thinking and, following the example of recent innovations in animal rights (...) philosophy, questions the mechanisms of such exclusion. Although recent work in animal- and bio-ethics has successfully implemented strategies for the inclusion of the animal as a legitimate subject of moral consideration, its other, the machine, has remained conspicuously excluded. The second part looks at recent attempts to include these machinic others in moral thinking and critiques the assumptions, values, and strategies that have been employed by these various innovations. And the third part proposes a means for thinking otherwise. That is, it introduces an alternative way to consider these other forms of otherness that is not simply reducible to the conceptual order that has structured and limited moral philosophy’s own concern with and for others. (shrink)

Engaged scholarship is an intellectual movement sweeping across higher education, not only in the social and behavioral sciences but also in fields of natural science and engineering. It is predicated on the idea that major advances in knowledge will transpire when scholars, while pursuing their research interests, also consider addressing the core problems confronting society. For a workable engaged agenda in science and technology studies, one that informs scholarship as well as shapes practice and policy, the traditional terms of (...) engagement must be renegotiated to be more open and mutual than has historically characterized the nature of inquiry in this field. At the same time, it is essential to protect individual privacy and preserve government confidentiality. Yet there is a scientific possibility for and benefit to introducing more collaborative and deliberative research approaches between scholar and subject in ways that will not violate these first-order ethics. To make the case, this article discusses the possibilities and perils of engaged science and technology scholarship by drawing on our own recent experiences to conduct and apply STS research while embedded in the National Science Foundation. Brief accounts of these experiences reveal the opportunities as well as the challenges of engaged scholarship. They also provide lessons for those fellow travelers who might follow the authors to this or other like host organizations with ambitions of increasing fundamental knowledge about and applying research to the policies, programs, and decisions of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

Supermax prisons are often described as "high_tech." Observers seem to mean two things by this. The first is that these "prisons within prisons" are a technology in themselves: hard_edged and brightly lit, the fortress_like supermax clearly signals its specialized purpose of isolation and control. The second is that supermax prisons rely heavily on specialized, relatively new technologies: computerized systems produce new forms of intensive surveillance while special teams armed with electronic shields maintain control over prisoners.But as Leo Marx (...) observed several years ago in this journal, "technology is a hazardous concept" . We need to see the technology of the supermax prison in these terms if we are to understand its effects. My aim here is to consider three aspects of the technology of supermax. The first is the sense in which the supermax prison is itself a "machine" _ a specific invention with a purpose and meaning closely linked to its features as a technology. This aspect is important for understanding what makes the construction of these prisons so attractive to correctional professionals and so seemingly acceptable to the general public. The second aspect is the use of specialized tools of control inside the supermax prison. These internal solutions to problems of order _ I will discuss computerized surveillance, special response teams, and stun technology _ offer clues to how specific technologies intersect with intensive confinement to frame punishment as decisive "action" produced by prisoners' "choices" and analogous to "war." Finally, supermax technology imposes specific practices and ways of being on both prisoners and prison staff. These need to be understood not only for how they augment and intensify other negative aspects of these environments, but also for their potential to affect prisoners in quite different ways depending on individual vulnerabilities.A common theme running through my discussion of each of these aspects of supermax is that the appearance of specialized technology constitutes what Garland describes, for penal practices in general, as a "signifying practice" . Beyond its immediate effects during use, supermax technology offers the cultural gloss of a "high_tech solution" that helps to frame problems _ some of them caused by supermax confinement in the first place _ largely in terms of their susceptibility to technical intervention. In other contexts "technology" signifies a "clean," profitable, scientific, and masculine approach: direct action on manageable problems. The spillover of this imagery into prisons _ in association with other meanings of crime and punishment _ is one element serving to obscure the larger issues posed by mass incarceration. As Marx points out, the reification of technology has the effect of producing an aura of inevitability. I will return to this point at the end to consider briefly how a framing of supermax primarily in terms of technology can itself be seen as hazardous. (shrink)

Mosquito-borne diseases represent a significant global disease burden, and recent outbreaks of such diseases have led to calls to reduce mosquito populations. Furthermore, advances in ‘gene-drive’ technology have raised the prospect of eradicating certain species of mosquito via genetic modification. This technology has attracted a great deal of media attention, and the idea of using gene-drive technology to eradicate mosquitoes has been met with criticism in the public domain. In this paper, I shall dispel two moral objections (...) that have been raised in the public domain against the use of gene-drive technologies to eradicate mosquitoes. The first objection invokes the concept of the ‘sanctity of life’ in order to claim that we should not drive an animal to extinction. In response, I follow Peter Singer in raising doubts about general appeals to the sanctity of life, and argue that neither individual mosquitoes nor mosquitoes species considered holistically are appropriately described as bearing a significant degree of moral status. The second objection claims that seeking to eradicate mosquitoes amounts to displaying unacceptable degrees of hubris. Although I argue that this objection also fails, I conclude by claiming that it raises the important point that we need to acquire more empirical data about, inter alia, the likely effects of mosquito eradication on the ecosystem, and the likelihood of gene-drive technology successfully eradicating the intended mosquito species, in order to adequately inform our moral analysis of gene-drive technologies in this context. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse’s oeuvre is driven by the recurring theme of“emancipation”—that is, the attempt to liberate man from socialexploitation and the projection of an alternative society, a socialistsociety which Marcuse describes as “free, happy, and non-repressive.”1 This suggests that Marcuse saw the existing society as pathological and therefore it needs to be diagnosed and remedied. His readings on Marx led him to his initial findings that the capitalist social order is the primordial cause of thesepathologies, and, hence, it is the (...) transformation of this social order that can bring emancipation to fruition. Inasmuch as this struggle for emancipation requires an active political agent, a critical theorist is, therefore, bound to seek for this agent. This is precisely what concerned Marcuse in his pre-World War II writings. His theory of historicity, which straddles Heidegger, Hegel, andMarx, is a search for that viable political agent who can be the hope of emancipation. Thus, Marcuse’s theory of historicity is premised, among other things, on the attempt to develop a theory of emancipation, and I call this “Marcuse’s first theory of emancipation.”. (shrink)

This article calls into question the simplistic identification of modern technology with quantitative efficiency in order to develop three main themes. First, I establish that technology, broadly construed, is the use of knowledge and resources to meet specific human needs. Accordingly, dominant technical practice that favors efficiency and numerical criteria and discriminates against other technologies should more appropriately be called “technology of technology.” Second, I delineate how dominant practice in engineering is an exemplar of (...) technology of technology, when it becomes socially ambitious while remaining technically provincial and bears upon our personal and institutional life. Third, I illustrate what I call the “subjugated technical practice,” which exists under the rule of the dominant technical practice. Recognizing the importance of subjugated technical practices to engineering, I propose the concept of “critical technology of technology,” which is intended to advance technological alternatives and make critique an essential part of our technological world. (shrink)

In order to analyze e-commerce from the perspective of theories of the philosophy of technology, first the characteristics of e-commerce are examined and then analyzed from the viewpoint of the philosophy of technology. In the first section of the article, topics such as definitions and models of e-commerce, electronic contracts, electronic payments, and electronic customs are investigated. In the second section, topics including the technology of e-commerce, requirements of e-commerce, ethics and e-commerce, identity and (...) e-commerce, virtual reality of e-commerce, and the power of aggregation in e-commerce are analyzed. (shrink)

The aim of this project to expose the reasons behind the pandemic of misinformation (henceforth, PofM) by examining the enabling conditions of epistemic agency and the emerging technologies that threaten it. I plan to research the emotional origin of epistemic agency, i.e. on the origin of our capacity to acquire justification for belief, as well as on the significance this emotional origin has for our lives as epistemic agents in our so-called Misinformation Age. This project has three objectives. First, (...) I plan to expose the degree to which epistemic agency is made possible by an under-researched species of emotion called epistemic feelings. Perhaps, the most epistemically significant is the feeling of confidence. In particular, epistemic feelings make epistemic agency possible by making errors in reasoning salient or the potential lack thereof. -/- Second, in order to diagnose the reasons for PofM, I will analyze the emotional basis of epistemic agency in the context of emerging technologies. Epistemic feelings ought to be construed as motivators of epistemic acts, specifically acts following exposure to misinformation spread by social media. For example, a recent study found that subjects on YouTube have a 6.3% probability in five clicks to go from watching innocuous videos to misogynistic videos. Accordingly, one prominent view holds that social media algorithms lead subjects down the proverbial rabbit hole, producing content that elicits strong emotional reactions. -/- But under-researched is the degree to which these emotions are intertwined with epistemic feelings, so that subjects are likely to misjudge the information as correct due to being primed to do so by processing the AI's suggested media. Thus, when this technology is used in epistemic practices, the result is invariably epistemically bad behavior because of how this manner of producing content motivates epistemic acts through the production of erroneous feelings of confidence, which result from the perceived ease of cognitive processing: the content is easy to process and so, the subject confidently misjudges, it is true. As of yet, an account of this cognitive and emotional decision-making process has not been used to analyze how emerging technologies are threatening epistemic agency, and thus our wellbeing as knowers. -/- Finally, I plan to develop therapeutics for PofM by outlining how to reform our collective epistemic practices. Thus, this project complements existing research in virtue epistemology, specifically by articulating the challenges to cultivating epistemic virtues and warding off the vices of the mind. In summation, the project aims to account for how emerging technologies are committing a form of epistemic injustice through the exploitation of cognitive biases and the production of erroneous epistemic feelings, with the overarching goal being a framework for convalescing from the pandemic of misinformation plaguing our age. (shrink)

Our relationship with technology has become co-dependent and somehow a personal and an intimate one. Generally speaking, we tend to think that we experience the world around us as it is, but that is not what we really do. In a lifetime, we learn and store knowledge, but we only use from it what we think and feel it will help us to realize the most important projects in our lives. Therefore, we invent things that have the purpose to (...) make our lives easier, just to have time to manage and work on the other part of life – the non-material part of it -, that concerns the personal development of human. First of all, that is or that should be the idea for developing technology, but on second thoughts, we somehow fail to adapt to it, and from that it deceives us – transforming itself in an insecurity, like high-tech products that are too hard to use, or too unreliable to be counted on, the lack of necessary knowledge in order to use it, the costs. Even if we have these technologies as available, we manage to lose ourselves, by becoming more into it than into us and those around us. We like to think we possess knowledge, that we are experts in some areas, we hold and keep lectures on ethics, moral values, efficient communication, but all become a strategic action – from ones that have the power to others that need guidance and confirmation for looking good for others, to win over, convince or convert new adepts to the proposed ideas of ones that have the power, to court those in power, to please everyone, except yourself. But all of that leads to failure – a self-failure, an inner weakness – and we are becoming our own adversaries, which are silent ones. But if technology is so worthy, why we do not manage so well on moral and ethical aspects? (shrink)

Agricultural decision making is characterized by two challenges common to multiple arenas: linking science to decision making and linking science and decision making across multiple levels. The U.S. agricultural research, education, and extension system was designed to address these challenges. By investigating this system, this study deepens the understanding of science and decision making, specifically exploring the notion of boundary organizations in two significant ways. First, it provides a preliminary test of the hypothesis that boundary organizations mediate between the (...) shifting domains of science and policy, finding that they are instrumental in creating and maintaining an integrated system of assessment and decision making for addressing depletion of the High Plains Aquifer. Second, it extends the concept of boundary organization beyond the science-policy dimension to incorporate the dimension of levels of organization—not only bridging science and policy but linking science and policy across different levels. (shrink)

Niccolò Machiavelli is the most prominent and notorious theorist of violence in the history of European political thought - prominent, because he is the first to candidly discuss the role of violence in politics; and notorious, because he treats violence as virtue rather than as vice. In this original interpretation, Yves Winter reconstructs Machiavelli's theory of violence and shows how it challenges moral and metaphysical ideas. Winter attributes two central theses to Machiavelli: first, violence is not a generic (...) technology of government but a strategy that tends to correlate with inequality and class conflict; and second, violence is best understood not in terms of conventional notions of law enforcement, coercion, or the proverbial 'last resort', but as performance. Most political violence is effective not because it physically compels another agent who is thus coerced; rather, it produces political effects by appealing to an audience. As such, this book shows how in Machiavelli's world, violence is designed to be perceived, experienced, remembered, and narrated. (shrink)

One of the pressing issues in philosophy of technology is the role of human creativity in human-technology relations. We first observe that a techno-centric orientation of philosophy of technology leaves open the role and contribution of human creativity in technological evolution, while an anthropocentric orientation leaves open the role of the technical milieu in technological evolution. Subsequently, we develop a concept of creation as deviation and responsiveness in response to affordances in the environment, inspired by the (...) affordance theory by James Gibson. With this concept of creation as deviative responsiveness, we articulate the human contribution to human-technology creation, namely, our intentional deviation of the inhibiting forces of the currently dominant niche or meaningful world of human-technology relations, in order to become responsive to new affordances in human-technology creation that constitute a new niche or world of human-technology relations. (shrink)

Transformer-based language models (TLMs) have widely been recognized to be a cutting-edge technology for the successful development of deep-learning-based solutions to problems and applications that require natural language processing and understanding. Like for other textual domains, TLMs have indeed pushed the state-of-the-art of AI approaches for many tasks of interest in the legal domain. Despite the first Transformer model being proposed about six years ago, there has been a rapid progress of this technology at an unprecedented rate, (...) whereby BERT and related models represent a major reference, also in the legal domain. This article provides the first systematic overview of TLM-based methods for AI-driven problems and tasks in the legal sphere. A major goal is to highlight research advances in this field so as to understand, on the one hand, how the Transformers have contributed to the success of AI in supporting legal processes, and on the other hand, what are the current limitations and opportunities for further research development. (shrink)

Ethical reflection on drone fighting suggests that this practice does not only create physical distance, but also moral distance: far removed from one’s opponent, it becomes easier to kill. This paper discusses this thesis, frames it as a moral-epistemological problem, and explores the role of information technology in bridging and creating distance. Inspired by a broad range of conceptual and empirical resources including ethics of robotics, psychology, phenomenology, and media reports, it is first argued that drone fighting, like (...) other long-range fighting, creates epistemic and moral distance in so far as ‘screenfighting’ implies the disappearance of the vulnerable face and body of the opponent and thus removes moral-psychological barriers to killing. However, the paper also shows that this influence is at least weakened by current surveillance technologies, which make possible a kind of ‘empathic bridging’ by which the fighter’s opponent on the ground is re-humanized, re-faced, and re-embodied. This ‘mutation’ or unintended ‘hacking’ of the practice is a problem for drone pilots and for those who order them to kill, but revealing its moral-epistemic possibilities opens up new avenues for imagining morally better ways of technology-mediated fighting. (shrink)