The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: (...) “Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one.” The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as “ignorant” and “slow” but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a “mentor” (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task “Maxi and the chocolate,” either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter. (shrink)

We provide a retrospective of 25 years of the International Conference on AI and Law, which was first held in 1987. Fifty papers have been selected from the thirteen conferences and each of them is described in a short subsection individually written by one of the 24 authors. These subsections attempt to place the paper discussed in the context of the development of AI and Law, while often offering some personal reactions and reflections. As a whole, the subsections build into (...) a history of the last quarter century of the field, and provide some insights into where it has come from, where it is now, and where it might go. (shrink)

Frank Welz's "Kritik der Lebenswelt" undertakes a sociology of knowledge criticism of the work of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz that construes them as developing absolutist, egological systems opposed to the "processual" worldview prominent since the modern rise of natural science. Welz, though, misunderstands the work of Schutz and Husserl and neglects how their focus on consciousness and eidetic features pertains to the kind of reflection that one must undertake if one would avoid succumbing to absolutism, that uncovers the (...) presuppositions of the processual worldview itself, and that secures a domain distinctive of philosophy over against sociology. Finally, Welz's charge that Schutz favors a Neo-Kantian social scientific methodology contradictory to his phenomenology neglects the levels of Schutz's discourse and ignores how the Weberian ideal-typical approach can be subsumed within phenomenology. (shrink)

The Metaphysical Club, a gathering of intellectuals in the 1870s associated with Harvard, is widely recognized as the crucible where pragmatism, America's distinctively original philosophy, was refined and proclaimed. Louis Menand's bestseller about the group was a dramatic publishing success. However, only three actual members - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles S. Peirce, and William James - appear in this book, alongside other thinkers such as John Dewey who were never in the Club. The Real Metaphysical Club tells the (...) full story of how this influential group shifted the course of philosophy in America. In addition to pioneering pragmatism, the group explored radical empiricism and idealism, and formulated personalism and process philosophy, equally important developments. This volume contains thirty-seven important writings dating from 1870 to 1885 by the real members of the Metaphysical Club. The first section centers on pragmatism and science; the second part collects writings of the lawyers; and the third part covers idealist and personalist philosophers. Many of these writings have never been reprinted before, and nothing like this impressive collection has ever been attempted. A general introduction provides a narrative history, and the editors' three introductions to the volume's sections vividly bring to life the intense meetings, sustained debates, and pioneering thought from the Metaphysical Club. (shrink)

Le discours international actuel sur l’écologie s’est mué en un mouvement qui s’identifie avec le discours de la vérité scientifique. L’exemple de Greta Thunberg et de ses appels à l’action illustre dans quelle mesure l’identité actuelle du mouvement enveloppe un paradoxe qui lui est inhérent. D’une part, elle s’appuie sur la nature auto-explicative et claire des idées vraies. D’autre part, pour propager ces idées, elle fait résider son pouvoir rhétorique dans l’impact émotionnel. L’approche par Spinoza de la relation entre raison (...) et foi, telle qu’elle apparaît quand on juxtapose les passages pertinents de l’ Éthique et ceux du Traité théologico-politique qui décrivent la prophétie, constitue un cadre théorique susceptible de rendre compte de ce paradoxe inhérent à l’écologie moderne. (shrink)

This research examines the relationships among the types of self-serving political messages sent in organizations, the channels through which they are sent, and the targets to whom they are sent. Two theoretical streams converge in this study: Communication as Political Behavior and Media Usage Theory. A review and synthesis of these two bodies of literature yielded three hypotheses, each of which received strong statistical support. The data suggest that the process of encoding and transmitting self-serving messages is strongly related to (...) the specific target to whom they are sent (boss, subordinate, or peer) and the channel through which they are sent (face-to-face, telephone, memo, or e-mail). (shrink)

The publication of _Reading Capital_—by Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey, and Jacques Rancière—in 1965 marked a key intervention in Marxist philosophy and critical theory, bringing forth a stunning array of concepts that continue to inspire philosophical reflection of the highest magnitude. _The Concept in Crisis_ reconsiders the volume’s reading of Marx and renews its call for a critique of capitalism and culture for the twenty-first century. The contributors—who include Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, and Fernanda Navarro—interrogate Althusser's (...) contributions in particular within the context of what is surely the most famous collective reading of Marx ever undertaken. Among other topics, they offer a symptomatic critique of Althusser; consider his writing as a materialist production of knowledge; analyze the volume’s conceptualization of value and crisis; examine how leftist Latin American leaders like Che Guevara and Subcomandante Marcos engaged with Althusser and _Reading Capital_; and draw out the volume's implications and use for feminist theory and praxis. Retrieving the inspiration that drove Althusser's reinterpretation of Marx, _The Concept in Crisis_ explains why _Reading Capital_'s revolutionary inflection retains its critical appeal, prompting readers to reconsider Marx's relevance in an era of neoliberal capitalism. Contributors. Emily Apter, Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Adrian Johnston, Warren Montag, Fernanda Navarro, Nick Nesbitt, Knox Peden, Nina Power, Robert J. C. Young. (shrink)

Frank Welz’s Kritik der Lebenswelt undertakes a sociology of knowledge criticism of the work of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz that construes them as developing absolutist, egological systems opposed to the “processual” worldview prominent since the modern rise of natural science. Welz, though, misunderstands the work of Schutz and Husserl and neglects how their focus on consciousness and eidetic features pertains to the kind of reflection that one must undertake if one would avoid succumbing to absolutism, that uncovers the (...) presuppositions of the processual worldview itself, and that secures a domain distinctive of philosophy over against sociology. Finally, Welz’s charge that Schutz favors a Neo-Kantian social scientific methodology contradictory to his phenomenology neglects the levels of Schutz’s discourse and ignores how the Weberian ideal-typical approach can be subsumed within phenomenology. (shrink)

A standard view of reference holds that a speaker's use of a name refers to a certain thing in virtue of the speaker's associating a condition with that use that singles the referent out. This view has been criticized by Saul Kripke as empirically inadequate. Recently, however, it has been argued that a version of the standard view, a /response-based theory of reference/, survives the charge of empirical inadequacy by allowing that associated conditions may be largely or even entirely implicit. (...) This paper argues that response-based theories of reference are prey to a variant of the empirical inadequacy objection, because they are ill-suited to accommodate the successful use of proper names by pre-school children. Further, I argue that there is reason to believe that normal adults are, by and large, no different from children with respect to how the referents of their names are determined. I conclude that speakers typically refer /positionally/: the referent of a use of a proper name is typically determined by aspects of the speaker's position, rather than by associated conditions present, however implicitly, in her psychology. (shrink)

Introduction, Thomas McLaughlinI Literature as Writing1 Representation, W. J. T. Mitchell2 Structure, John Carlos Rowe3 Writing, Barbara Johnson4 Discourse, Paul A. Bove5 Narrative, J. Hillis Miller6 Figurative Language, Thomas McLaughlin7 Performance, Henry Sayre8 Author, Donald E. PeaseII Interpretation9 Interpretation, Steven Mailloux10 Intention, Annabel Patterson11 Unconscious, Franoise Meltzer12 Determinacy/Indeterminacy, Gerald Graff13 Value/Evaluation, Barbara Herrnstein Smith14 Influence, Louis A. Renza15 Rhetoric, Stanley FishIII Literature, Culture, Politics16 Culture, Stephen Greenblatt17 Canon, John Guillory18 Literary History, Lee Patterson19 Gender, Myra Jehlen20 Race, Kwane Anthony (...) Appiah21 Ethnicity, Werner Sollors22 Ideology, James H. KavanaghIn Place of an Afterword--Someone Reading, Frank LentricchiaReferencesList of ContributorsIndex. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John DeweyFrank X. RyanJames A. Good A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John Dewey Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006. xxx + 288 pp.Among the revelations of Dewey's rare moments of autobiographical reflection, none has generated more curiosity and investigative zeal than his 1930 claim to have (...) "drifted" from Hegel in the decade following his move from Michigan to Chicago in 1894. Beginning with Morton White's Origin of Dewey's Instrumentalism (1943), biographers have divided on the question of whether Dewey's later philosophy was more strongly influenced by William James's experimental psychology or F. J. E. Woodbridge's Aristotelian naturalism. Despite their differences, both approaches are essentially empirical and realistic, and thus the majority of sympathetic commentators have agreed that Dewey was a realist, albeit of a decidedly unorthodox stripe. For them the notion that Dewey retained any significant commitment to idealism, given its virtual eradication at the beginning of the twentieth century, would damage his influence and legacy.It has been something of a puzzle, accordingly, that in the same autobiographical essay Dewey alludes to a "permanent Hegelian deposit." For years Richard Rorty has claimed this differentiates a "good" Dewey committed to "social flourishing" from a "bad" Dewey prone to metaphysical dalliance. But the first systematic inquiry into Dewey's enduring Hegelianism is John R. Shook's Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (2000). Shook argues convincingly that Dewey never abandoned idealism, but rather transformed it into an experimental naturalism by doing away with both "mind-stuff" and equally noxious "things-in-themselves." In many ways James Good's A Search for Unity in Diversity is a bookend to Shook's project, though Good further differentiates Anglo-American Neo-Hegelianism from Hegel himself. According to Good, Dewey endorsed a Humanistic/Historicist interpretation of Hegel rooted in the reciprocal engagement of individuals and societies, rather than the supernatural and architectonic absolute championed by Neo-Hegelians such as T. H. Green, and F. H. Bradley. With [End Page 216] top-notch scholarship and scrupulous attention to detail, A Search for Unity in Diversity is both an excellent intellectual biography and a penetrating plea for a radical reinterpretation of Dewey's contribution to philosophy. I'll briefly sketch the historical account before addressing the more controversial claims about the "permanent Hegelian deposit."Even readers familiar with the half-dozen book-length treatments of Dewey's development will find this account refreshing and informative. Good's professional credentials as a historian shine as he recreates the rough and bustling Burlington of Dewey's youth. In the 1870s, German idealism was considered the epitome of political liberalism and progressive education, and Dewey's journey toward the "inclusive philosophical idea" of the social began in an environment swirling with the crosscurrents of Kant, Hegel, and Schelling. At the White Street Congregational Church, Lewis Barstow preached a liberal orthodoxy that was essentially "man-building" (102), and Good presents a convincing case for the likelihood that even in boyhood Dewey never viewed God as an aloof law-giver or cosmic architect, but as a process unifying the individual and the social within a natural world of unlimited potential. At the University of Vermont Dewey encountered a struggling rural college transformed into the first bastion of American transcendentalism by James Marsh, who inspired a "Burlington philosophy" that rejected atomistic empiricism for a holistic integrity of knowing and doing, facts and values, and pure and practical reasons (57–59).In noting the influence of the "St. Louis Hegelians" upon Dewey, most biographers have focused on W. T. Harris, the prominent founder of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy who published Dewey's earliest submissions and offered encouragement that led to his pursuit of graduate work at Johns Hopkins. Good augments this familiar tale with fascinating depictions of equally influential yet lesser-known Hegelians such as H. C. Brokmeyer, Denton Snider, and Thomas Davidson. At a time when European Hegelianism was polarized between, on the one hand, reactionary apologists for traditional Christianity and Prussian militarism and, on the other, radical... (shrink)

In a series of articles written for the Neue Rhenische Zeitung in 1850, later published by Friedrich Engels as The Class Struggles in France, Karl Marx looked back on the failed French revolution of 1848 and attempted to explain how the democratic aspirations that inspired the February assault on the July Monarchy-and promised to fulfill the dashed hopes of 1789, 1792, and 1830-also led to its termination in the reactionary popular dictatorship of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Popular sovereignty, which had (...) so often defined the emancipatory visions of two generations of radical activists and thinkers was now not only an obstacle to genuine emancipation, but a plebiscitary source of power for newly emergent forms of political domination. Bonapartism became, for Marx, an important way of understanding the complex internal dynamics of popular-and later "populist"-authoritarianism. It is an analysis that continues to resonate powerfully today. The national enthusiasm that propelled the revolution forward, and which overturned the hated regime of Louis Phillippe in three glorious days, had successfully established for the first time in history a parliamentary republic based in universal male suffrage. The Second Republic's provisional government was immediately thrown into a legitimation crisis, however, by the underlying sectional, parliamentary, and class conflicts lurking beneath its illusory foundation in the people's unitary will. When the popular classes of Paris returned to the barricades in June to protest the conservative government's closure of the National Workshops-and to convert the political revolution into a social revolution based in the "right to work"-they were abandoned by their fellow citizens and thousands were massacred in the streets by Cavaignac's National Guard. The "fantastic republic" built around the pretensions of national unity, Marx proclaimed, quickly "dissolved in powder and smoke." Tocqueville described the June days as a "slave's war," and in its aftermath the Party of Order quickly consolidated its power against any furthering of revolutionary aspiration. (shrink)

Der Logische Empirismus hat in der intellektuellen Welt Frankreichs fast keine Spuren hinterlassen, obwohl die Gruppe sich bei zwei Kongressen 1935 und 1937 der intellektuellen Ôffentlichkeit in Paris prasentierte. Otto Neurath, prominentes Mitglied des «Wiener Kreises », bereitete die Auftritte der Logischen Empiristen in Paris vor. In seiner umfangreichen Korrespondenz manifestieren sich zahlreiche Spannungen sowohl innerhalb der Gruppe ais auch mit ihren Kooperationspartnem in Paris. Der Physiker Philipp Frank war mit der wissenschaftlichen Landschaft in Frankreich viel besser vertraut ais (...) Neurath. Er hat Neurath schon damais darauf aufmerksam gemacht, dass die Rolle Louis Rougiers ais « Botschafter » des Empirismus für die Rezeption in Frankreich problematisch sein konnte. Er driingte Neurath, die Verbindung mit anderen Wissenschaftlem und Philosophen, vor allem mit Henri Berr und dem Centre de synthèse zu verstlirken. (shrink)

This is a book review of the only English translation in book form of Louis-Auguste Blanqui's influential work, "L'Éternité par les Astres", translated by Frank Chouraqui. The review specifically focuses on Chouraqui's extensive, illuminating introduction for the work which compares Blanqui's thesis with Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence.

Frank Mathias Oppenheim was born in Coldwater, Ohio, on May 18, 1925, and studied at Xavier, Loyola, and Saint Louis Universities. He joined the Chicago Province of the Jesuit Order in 1942 and was ordained on June 15, 1955. He is the author of four books on Josiah Royce’s philosophy: Royce’s Journey Down Under, Royce’s Mature Philosophy of Religion, Royce’s Mature Ethics, and Reverence for the Relations of Life: Re-Imagining Pragmatism via Josiah Royce’s Interactions with Peirce, James, and (...) Dewey, in addition to scores of journal articles devoted to Royce. Oppenheim is also the editor of Josiah Royce’s Late Writings: A Collection of Unpublished and Scattered Works, and was... (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 21 In the past two and a half decades, Frank Ankersmit has developed a complex notion of historical experience. Despite its many virtues it has at least one major difficulty: it implies a sharp separation between experience and language. This essay aims to bridge this gap, while preserving the positive aspects of Ankersmit’s theory. To do this, I will first present the ontological and epistemological implications of Ankersmit’s notion of historical experience. Next, I will present (...) my objections to his idea. Finally, I will propose two modifications to his notion of historical experience: first, in the epistemological sense by considering historical experience as a form of Louis Mink’s configurational comprehension and, second, in the ontological sense by relating historical experience with the _vitalist_ ontology of José Ortega y Gasset. (shrink)

The 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis sponsored both an International Congress of Arts and Sciences aimed at unity of knowledge and an anthropology exhibit of diverse peoples. Jointly these represented a quest for unifying knowledge in a diverse world that was fractured by isolated specializations and segregated peoples. In historical perspective, the Congress's quest for knowledge is overshadowed by Ota Benga who was part of the anthropology exhibit. The 1904 World's Fair can be viewed as a Euro-American ritual, (...) a global pilgrimage, which sought to celebrate the advances and resolve the challenges of modernity and human diversity. Three years later Afropentecostalism dealt with these same issues with different methods and rituals. This ritual system became the most culturally diverse and fastest growing religious movement of the twentieth century. I suggest that the anthropological method of Frank Hamilton Cushing, the postcritical epistemology of Michael Polanyi, and the Afropente-costal ritual movement initiated by William J. Seymour are all attempts to develop a postmodern epistemology that is simultaneously constructive, focused on discerning reality, and broad enough to allow for human consciousness and diverse human communities. I explore this confluence of scientific and participatory epistemology through six theses. (shrink)

The Frankish Emperor Louis, only surviving son of Charlemagne, always made it clear that he understood his rule over the Franks as derived directly from God. In 833, however, Louis had to face the second rebellion within three years, and this time, while preparing battle against his three sons, he was deserted by his army on the so-called Field of Lies near Colmar in Alsace and thus was informally deposed. Among those who played an active part in the (...) events in Colmar and later in Compiègne, where Louis was forced to accede to a public penance, was Archbishop Agobard of Lyon. His ‘Libri apologetici’, written in the summer and autumn of 833, bear powerful witness to the difficulties that contemporaries experienced when trying to legitimate the rebellion against a ruler believed to be installed by God. (shrink)

This paper explores the consequences of applying two natural ideas from epistemology to decision theory: (1) that knowledge should guide our actions, and (2) that we know a lot of non-trivial things. In particular, we explore the consequences of these ideas as they are applied to standard decision theoretic puzzles such as the St. Petersburg Paradox. In doing so, we develop a “knowledge-first” decision theory and we will see how it can help us avoid fanaticism with regard to the St. (...) Petersburg puzzle and related puzzles. The result will be a decision theory that gives a novel, but well-motivated, reason for discounting small probabilities when making decisions. We examine the merits and demerits of such a decision theory. (shrink)

ABSTARCT When people go shopping, they enter a building. But the shop cannot be identified with the building, because it would remain the same shop if it moved to another building or if it became an e-store. Daniel Korman [2019] uses these two observations to argue that establishments are immaterial objects. However, all that follows is that establishments are not buildings. I argue that establishments are organisations or corporate agents that are constituted by people. This entails that they are material (...) objects. Korman’s observations can be accommodated in terms of the further observation that corporate agents can but need not own or rent buildings. (shrink)

Meaningful work is a key element of positive functioning of employees, but what makes work meaningful? Based on research on self-determination theory, basic psychological needs, and prosocial impact, we suggest that there are four psychological satisfactions that substantially influence work meaningfulness across cultures: autonomy (sense of volition), competence (sense of efficacy), relatedness (sense of caring relationships), and beneficence (sense of making a positive contribution). We test the relationships between these satisfactions and perceived meaningful work in Finland (n = 594, employees (...) of several organizations), India (n = 342, collected through Mturk), and the USA (n = 373, collected through Mturk). Regression analyses show that – except for competence in USA – all four satisfactions are significantly and independently associated with meaningful work. Moreover, structural equation modeling shows that they fully mediated the relationship between occupational position and work meaningfulness in India and in the USA. In sum, the results support the importance of these four satisfactions in explaining the psychological underpinnings of meaningful work. (shrink)

This paper will critically engage with Daniel Buckley's argument against “evidential minimalism” (EM), i.e., the claim that necessarily, bits of evidence (are or) provide epistemic reasons for belief. Buckley argues that in some cases, a subject has strong evidence that p (and fulfills further minimal conditions), does not believe p, but nevertheless is not epistemically criticizable and has no epistemic reason to believe p. I will defend EM by pointing out that Buckley's argument trades on an ambiguity between a strong (...) and a weak notion of criticizability. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Die im Dezember 2022 in Kraft getretene Erweiterung des Infektionsschutzgesetzes sieht vor, im Fall einer Pandemie knappe intensivmedizinische Ressourcen nach dem Kriterium der Überlebenswahrscheinlichkeit zu priorisieren. Der Aufsatz geht der Frage nach, ob der Vorwurf, diese Regelung setze Menschen mit Behinderung einer erheblichen Diskriminierungsgefahr aus, berechtigt ist. Nach einer kurzen Darstellung des im Infektionsschutzgesetz festgelegten Zuteilungsverfahrens wird zunächst das vielschichtige Konzept der Diskriminierung erörtert. Im Kontext der Allokation knapper intensivmedizinischer Ressourcen besteht vornehmlich das Risiko einer nichtintendierten Diskriminierung, die in (...) direkter wie auch indirekter Form erfolgen kann. Die Regelungen, die das Infektionsschutzgesetz trifft, bieten Menschen mit Behinderung einen vergleichsweise hohen Schutz vor direkter Diskriminierung. Dennoch müssen Menschen mit bestimmten Behinderungen gravierende Nachteile hinnehmen, weil sie im Fall einer COVID-19-Infektion absehbar eine geringere Überlebenswahrscheinlichkeit als gesunde Menschen haben. Eine indirekte Diskriminierung liegt aber nur dann vor, wenn für die Auferlegung disproportionaler Nachteile keine hinreichende Rechtfertigung angeführt werden kann. In modernen pluralistischen Gesellschaften, die durch tiefgreifende Wertkonflikte gekennzeichnet sind, sollten unterschiedliche ethische Theorien – darunter auch konsequentialistische Positionen – als mögliche Grundlage einer Rechtfertigung anerkannt werden. Im Ergebnis erweist sich der Vorwurf, eine am Kriterium der Überlebenswahrscheinlichkeit orientierte Zuteilung knapper intensivmedizinischer Ressourcen bewirke eine Diskriminierung von Menschen mit Behinderung, als nicht stichhaltig. (shrink)

In this chapter we take stock of some of the complexities of the sprawling field of AI ethics. We consider questions like "what is the proper scope of AI ethics?" And "who counts as an AI ethicist?" At the same time, we flag several potential uses and abuses of AI ethics. These include challenges for the AI ethicist, including what qualifications they should have; the proper place and extent of futuring and speculation in the field; and the dilemmas concerning how (...) we use our public and academic resources. (shrink)

Ratio, Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 277-285, December 2021.

In his recent book Shared and Institutional Agency, Bratman (2022) argues that institutional agents consist of social rules of procedure. Those rules are policies that are shared among many of their members. In this review essay, I argue that the theory can plausibly be interpreted in terms of ontological holism. It shows how a holistic theory can be constructed out of individualistic building blocks. At the same time, Bratman rejects mental holism, the idea being that institutional agents form only a (...) limited range of mental states. Furthermore, he claims that they can perform actions literally for no reason. I propose that, if this is indeed possible, a morally accountable agent will avoid doing so. (shrink)

The restructuration of municipalities which has been decided by the Belgian government, is not only a purely technical operatzon but rather, and in the first place, a social problem. The shape and duty-profile of a local authority should not, indeed, be attuned only to fast changing expectations as far as services are concerned, but to consultation and participation as well.Public administration research cannot keep aloof from this debate, but is considerably hampered by the institutional confusion and the insufficient explicitation of (...) the aims of the present reform. A starting-pointcan, however, be found in the mergers of municipalities that were realized in 1964 and in 1970/1971. In 67 of these municipalities an inquiry was held concerning the consequences of the merger, and moreover, in twotest-cases this inquiry grew to a full-scale systematic policy analysis.This research shows that, as a rule, the former municipalities are reasonably represented in the new entity's council, but it also reveals that few efforts are made to give this representation a broader impact along formal or informal participation-channels. Integration of employees has not caused insurmountable problems. However, in large sized municipalities, resulting from mergers, one could notice a drastic increase in municipal personnel, not only with regard to new duties and objectives but to traditional administrative and police duties as well. Such a phenomenon points to the far-reaching changes which a substantial scale-increase provokes in a municipality's structure and policy profile. A large municipality resulting from mergers is no langer a simple sum of component parts, but a completely new entity, wishing to catch up as fast as possible with comparable municipalities that passed through a progressive growth process. Therefore, scale-increase is not only a means of economizing or an intra-administrative matter, but rather a way of creating chances for further development or wealth and well-being. (shrink)

This volume analyses, from a computational point of view, how culture may arise, develop and evolve through time. The four sections in this book examine and analyse the modelling of culture, group and organisation culture, culture simulation, and culture-sensitive technology design. Different research disciplines have different perspectives on culture, making it difficult to compare and integrate different concepts and models of culture. By taking a computational perspective this book nevertheless enables the integration of concepts that play a role in culture, (...) even though they might originate from different disciplines. Culture is usually regarded as something vague and qualitative and thus difficult to deal with in a computational and formal setting. Taking a computational approach to culture thus encompasses a twofold risk: taking a too simplistic approach to cultural influence on behaviour; or trying to capture too much, hence not leading to useful computational tools. However, the approaches and insights in this collection show how different perspectives by leading researchers described in thirteen chapters still can form a coherent picture. The book thus illustrates the potential of using computing systems to better understand culture. By describing methods, theories and concrete application results about the integration of cultural aspects into computer systems, this book provides inspiration to researchers of all disciplines alike and presents the start of an interdisciplinary dialogue on culture. (shrink)

Algorithmic decision-making increasingly shapes people's daily lives. Given that such autonomous systems can cause severe harm to individuals and social groups, fairness concerns have arisen. A human-centric approach demanded by scholars and policymakers requires considering people's fairness perceptions when designing and implementing algorithmic decision-making. We provide a comprehensive, systematic literature review synthesizing the existing empirical insights on perceptions of algorithmic fairness from 58 empirical studies spanning multiple domains and scientific disciplines. Through thorough coding, we systemize the current empirical literature along (...) four dimensions: (1) algorithmic predictors, (2) human predictors, (3) comparative effects (human decision-making vs. algorithmic decision-making), and (4) consequences of algorithmic decision-making. While we identify much heterogeneity around the theoretical concepts and empirical measurements of algorithmic fairness, the insights come almost exclusively from Western-democratic contexts. By advocating for more interdisciplinary research adopting a society-in-the-loop framework, we hope our work will contribute to fairer and more responsible algorithmic decision-making. (shrink)