In recent years there has been concern among law enforcement and national security organizations about the use of “anonymous” prepaid mobile phone service and its purported role in supporting criminal and terrorist activities. As a result, a number of countries have implemented registration requirements for such service. Privacy rights advocates oppose such regulatory measures, arguing that there is little practical value in attempting to register prepaid mobile devices, and the issue raises important questions about a citizen's entitlement to anonymity in (...) the ownership of a networked communications device. This article provides an overview of the issue and presents findings drawn from a recent study on prepaid mobile phone regulation in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. The article concludes by suggesting that there are significant problems with the claim that mandatory registration of prepaid mobile phone service is a necessary or an effective regulatory course of action. (shrink)

The founders and 19th-Century leaders of the American democratic experiment sought to base their institution on a rationalist and individualist model of political reality. As characterized by D. M. Levitan, they distrusted representative government and powerful executives, subscribing to a laissez-faire philosophy: he governs best who governs least. Levitan goes on to accentuate the intimate relationship of the political system to its philosophical foundation. While he notes that Liberal ideas were well adapted to the needs of the plutocracy, he does (...) not play down the importance of Liberalism to the particular form taken by political institutions in democracy. A paradigm of this Liberal doctrine is John Stuart Mill's famous Principle: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will is to prevent harm to others.” This Principle, if not the source, can certainly qualify as a rationalization for a great part of what passes for “policy” in a democracy. (shrink)

Radulphus Brito's Quaestiones super Priora analytica Aristotelis is a major work written in the early 1300s which treated Aristotle's text devoted to the theory of the syllogism. Brito, one of the most influential of the group of medieval thinkers known as the Modistae, examines both categorical and hypothetical syllogisms. In the text offered here, based on six known manuscripts which are complete or nearly complete, Brito was critical of many of the theories of his contemporary, Simon of Faversham. Brito edited (...) his work several times; there are at least two versions which indicate Brito returned to this material during his long career at the university in Paris. This volume is the first critical text edition of Brito's Quaestiones super Priora analytica Aristotelis and will therefore be of great interest to those studying the history of logic and its development during the medieval period. (shrink)

This article discusses ethical implications for the academy in the use of cyberspace and virtual reality in conducting its teaching and research responsibilities. It identifies important cyberspace ethics concerns as they intersect with the academy and provides an ethical framework for coming to grips with them. Topics discussed here include the sine qua non of academic collegiality and civility, concerns about digital alteration of images and sounds, and issues pertaining to academic administration and infrastructure.

Consideration of the experimental activities carried out in one discipline, through the lens of another, can lead to novel insights. Here, we comment from a biological perspective upon experiments in quantum mechanics proposed by physicists that are likely to feasible in the near future. In these experiments, an entire living organism would be knowingly placed into a coherent quantum state for the first time, i.e. would be coerced into demonstrating quantum phenomena. The implications of the proposed experiment for a biologist (...) depend to an extent upon the outcomes. If successful, then the organism will have been temporarily in a state where it has an unmeasurable metabolism—not because a metabolic rate is undetectable, but because any attempt to measure it would automatically bring the organism out of the state. We argue that this would in essence represent a new category of cryptobiosis. Further, the organism would not necessarily retain all of the characteristics commonly attributed to living systems, unlike the currently known categories of cryptobiosis. If organisms can survive having previously been in a coherent state, then we must accept that living systems do not necessarily need to remain in a decoherent state at all times. This would be something new to biologists, even if it might seem trivial to physicists. It would have implications concerning the physical extremes organisms can tolerate, the search for extraterrestrial life, and our philosophical view of animation. (shrink)

Concussions in professional sports have received increased attention, which is partly attributable to evidence that found concussion incidence rates were much higher than previously thought. Further to this, professional hockey players articulated how their concussion symptoms affected their professional careers, interpersonal relationships, and qualities of life. Researchers are beginning to associate multiple/repeated concussions with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a structural brain injury that is characterized by tau protein deposits in distinct areas of the brain. Taken together, concussions impact many people in (...) the sporting community from current and former professional athletes and their families to medical and health professionals and researchers. In light of the growing awareness and sensitivity towards concussions, the purpose of this paper is to provide recommendations that are designed to improve player safety in professional hockey and address the ethical issues surrounding these suggestions. (shrink)

Following Foucault’s remarks on the importance of architecture to disciplinary power, this paper offers a typology of power relations expressed in different models of Internet governance. Infrastructure governance understands the Internet as a common pool or public resource, on the model of traditional infrastructures like roads and bridges. Modulation governance, which I study by way of Net Neutrality debates in the U.S., understands Internet governance as traffic shaping. Portal governance, which I study by way of data collection policies of dominant (...) platform companies, understands the Internet as creating a user experience that facilitates data mining. The latter two are forms of architectural disciplinary power that undermine the first. I then argue that the rise of portal and modulation governance primarily serves to remake parts of civil society by fostering market norms of consumption and entrepreneurialism. In that sense, efforts to shape Internet architecture need to be understood as techniques of subjectification. (shrink)

As a central part of the regulation of contemporary economies, intellectual property (IP) is central to all aspects of our lives. It matters for the works we create, the brands we identify and the medicines we consume. But if IP is power, what kind of power is it, and what does it do? Building on the work of Michel Foucault, Gordon Hull examines different ways of understanding power in copyright, trademark and patent policy: as law, as promotion of public (...) welfare, and as promotion of neoliberal privatization. He argues that intellectual property policy is moving toward neoliberalism, even as that move is broadly contested in everything from resistance movements to Supreme Court decisions. This work should be read by anyone interested in understanding why the struggle to conceptualize IP matters. (shrink)

This paper situates the data privacy debate in the context of what I call the death of the data subject. My central claim is that concept of a rights-bearing data subject is being pulled in two contradictory directions at once, and that simultaneous attention to these is necessary to understand and resist the extractive practices of the data industry. Specifically, it is necessary to treat the problems facing the data subject structurally, rather than by narrowly attempting to vindicate its rights. (...) On the one hand, the data industry argues that subjects of biometric identification lack legal standing to pursue claims in court, and Facebook recently denied that that its facial recognition software recognizes faces. On the other hand, industry takes consent to terms of service and arbitration clauses to create enforceable legal subject positions, while using promises of personalization to create a phenomenological subject that is unaware of the extent to which it is being manipulated. Data subjects thus have no legal existence when it is a matter of corporate liability, but legal accountability when it is a matter of their own liability. Successful reform should address the power asymmetries between individuals and data companies that enable this structural disempowerment. (shrink)

Like Lewis, many philosophers hold reductionist accounts of chance (on which claims about chance are to be understood as claims that certain patterns of events are instantiated) and maintain that rationality requires that credence should defer to chance (in the sense that under certain circumstances one's credence in an event must coincide with the chance of that event). It is a shortcoming of an account of chance if it implies that this norm of rationality is unsatisfiable by computable agents. This (...) shortcoming is more common than one might have hoped. (shrink)

A comprehensive look at the intellectual and cultural innovations of the Weimar period During its short lifespan, the Weimar Republic witnessed an unprecedented flowering of achievements in many areas, including psychology, political theory, physics, philosophy, literary and cultural criticism, and the arts. Leading intellectuals, scholars, and critics—such as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Martin Heidegger—emerged during this time to become the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century. Even today, the Weimar era remains a vital resource for (...) new intellectual movements. In this incomparable collection, Weimar Thought presents both the specialist and the general reader a comprehensive guide and unified portrait of the most important innovators, themes, and trends of this fascinating period. The book is divided into four thematic sections: law, politics, and society; philosophy, theology, and science; aesthetics, literature, and film; and general cultural and social themes of the Weimar period. The volume brings together established and emerging scholars from a remarkable array of fields, and each individual essay serves as an overview for a particular discipline while offering distinctive critical engagement with relevant problems and debates. Whether used as an introductory companion or advanced scholarly resource, Weimar Thought provides insight into the rich developments behind the intellectual foundations of modernity. (shrink)

The Internet: A Philosophical Inquiry offers the first concise and accessible exploration of the issues which arise as we enter further into the world of Cyberspace.

On Jeff McMahan's influential ‘responsibility account’ of moral liability to defensive killing, one can forfeit one's right not be killed by engaging in an ordinary, morally permissible risk-imposing activity, such as driving a car. If, through no fault of hers, a driver's car veers out of control and toward a pedestrian, the account deems it no violation of the driver's right to save the pedestrian's life at the expense of the driver's life. Many critics reject the responsibility account on the (...) grounds that, first, it has draconian implications for threateners like the driver, and second, it contravenes the plausible principle that wronging one's victim is necessary for forfeiting one's rights. But I argue, drawing on the account's luck-egalitarian underpinnings, that the account lacks the draconian implications widely attributed to it, and contrary to what many assume, wrongdoing is unnecessary for rights-forfeiture. Via these arguments, I seek both to deepen our understanding of the responsibility account, and to reissue it in a more plausible and attractive form. (shrink)

This paper attempts a theoretical discussion of effects on the legal regime of copyright induced by the change from material to digital media. Specifically, a fundamental question remains unanswered: what is the relationship between an object and a copy? A conceptually clear answer to this question has been unnecessary because it has always been possible to provide an ad hoc answer through visual inspection of an object. Authorized mechanical reproductions – authorized copies – look similar to one another, and unauthorized (...) reproductions bear tangible evidence of degradation. Digital reproduction, however, makes such visual inspection impossible, as both authorized and unauthorized digital reproductions look the same. At that moment, one “would expect” that copyright protects the essence of the object, independently of how it looks. Indeed, this is precisely what copyright jurisprudence, which emphasizes originality, tries to do. However, absent the baseline of visual intelligibility, there is no criterion for knowing which object legitimately embodies its eidos and which does not. The effects of this absence stand behind many of the battles surrounding digital reproduction. In section 2, I discuss more precisely how digital reproduction undermines the original/copy distinction. In section 3, I show how the effects of this are manifest in contemporary debates. Section 4 attempts a more theoretical discussion, organized around Deleuze's discussion of Platonism (and the degree to which, for Deleuze, the Platonic original/copy distinction functions to enable the police work of good copy/bad copy). The essay concludes with some thoughts about future developments in copyright and the suggestion that the move to digital rights management technologies are appropriately seen as a response to these conceptual limitations in copyright. (shrink)

Quantum degrees of freedom greatly enrich nonlinear systems, which can support nonlocal control and superposition of states. Basing my discussion on Yasue’s quantum brain dynamics, I suggest that the Cartesian subject is a cybernetic process rather than a substance: I am nonlocal control and my meanings are cybernetic variables. Meanings as nonlocal attunements are not mechanically determined, thus is it concluded we have freedom to mean.

This paper compares the features and methods of the two leading implemented systems that offer a tool for helping a user to find or invent arguments to support or attack a designated conclusion, the Carneades Argumentation System and the IBM Watson Debater tool. The central aim is to contribute to the understanding of scholars in informal logic, rhetoric and argumentation on how these two software systems can be useful for them. One contribution of the paper is to explain to these (...) potential users how the two tools are applicable to the task of inventing arguments by using some simple illustrative examples. Another is to redefine the structure of argument invention as a procedure. (shrink)

In this paper, I ponder the question of whether Socrates follows a method of investigation — the method of hypothesis — which he advocates in Plato's Phaedo. The evidence in the dialogue suggests that he does not follow the method, which raises additional questions: If he fails to do so, why does he articulate the method? Does his statement of method affect his actions or is it mainly forgotten? Although Socrates is a fictional character, his actions in the Phaedo suggests (...) questions about the function of espoused methods in actual situations. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Hobbes’s understanding of signification, the process whereby words come to have meaning. Most generally, Hobbes develops and extends the nominalist critique of universals as it is found in Ockham and subsequently carried forward by early moderns such as Descartes. Hobbes’s radicality emerges in comparison with Ockham and Descartes, as, unlike them, Hobbes also reduces the intellectual faculty entirely to imagination. According to Hobbes, we have nothing in which a stabilizing, pre-discursive mental language could inhere. Hobbes thus concludes (...) that all thinking is affective and semiotic, and depends on the regulation of conventionally established regimes of signs. Establishing this regulation is one of the central functions of the Hobbesian commonwealth. (shrink)