Studies examining the ways in which the training of engineers and scientists shapes their research strategies and scientific identities.

In this paper I present and defend a highly demanding principle of justice in education that has not been seriously discussed thus far. According to the suggested approach, “all the way equality”, justice in education requires nothing short of equal educational outcome between all individual students. This means not merely between equally able children, or between children from different groups and classes, but rather between all children, regardless of social background, race, sex and ability. This approach may seem implausible at (...) first, due to the far-reaching implications it entails, primarily its requirement to deny better-off children their advantage for the sake of equality. However the paper argues that all-the-way-equality, in fact, does a better job realizing the goals of justice in education than alternative conceptions of justice. It is further argued that at least some of the principle’s most radical consequences, those that make it seem counterintuitive, can be mitigated by balancing all-the-way-equality with competing interests. (shrink)

Imagine a student reading Odysseus’ Cretan tale at Odyssey 19.172–84. When faced by a string of unfamiliar names – in addition to ‘native Cretans’, there are Achaeans, Cydonians and Dorians, as well as the individuals Minos, Deucalion, Idomeneus and the speaker, Aethon (Odysseus in disguise) –, they use their digital edition to find out more about each of these people and their places of origin. A personal name opens an online encyclopaedia entry, while clicking on a place launches an emerging (...) world beyond the single text – an online atlas that provides information about the place's toponymy, form and exact location as well as links to other resources (textual and archaeological, ancient and modern) about this place, including those to which our student has contributed. The year? 2023 (Figure 1).1. (shrink)

The military service of combat soldiers may pose many threats to their well being and often take a toll on body and mind, influencing the physical and emotional make-up of combatants and veterans. The current study aims to enhance our knowledge about the combat experiences and the challenges that female soldiers face both during and after their service. The study is based on qualitative methods and narrative analysis of in-depth semi-structured personal interviews with twenty military veterans. It aims to analyze (...) the narratives of American and Israeli female combat soldiers regarding their military service, with emphasis on the soldiers’ descriptions, in their own words, about their difficulties, challenges, coping and successes during their service and transition to civilian life. A recurring theme in the interviews with the veterans of both militaries was the need to be heard and the fact that societies, therapists, and military institutions do not always truly listen to female veterans’ experiences and are not really interested in what actually ails them. Our research suggests that conventional methods used in research relating to veterans might at times be inadequate, because the inherent categorization might abstract, pathologize, and fragment a wide array of soldiers’ modes of post-combat being. Moreover, female veterans’ voices will not be fully heard unless we allow them to be active participants in generating knowledge about themselves. (shrink)

Why Law Matters argues that public institutions and legal procedures are valuable and matter as such, irrespective of their instrumental value. Examining the value of rights, public institutions, and constitutional review, the book criticises instrumentalist approaches in political theory, claiming they fail to account for their enduring appeal.

v. 1 Making special relativity -- v. 2. Making general relativity -- v. 3. Physical science and the language of war -- v. 4. Quantum histories.

This paper provides an economic justification for the exemption from liability for omissions in torts and for the exceptions to this exemption. It interprets the differential treatment of acts and omissions under tort law as a proxy for a more fundamental distinction between harms caused by multiple injurers, where each one can single-handedly prevent the harm, and harms caused by a single injurer. Since the overall cost to which a group of injurers is exposed is constant, attributing liability to many (...) injurers reduces the part each has to pay and, consequently, reduces each one’s incentives to take precautions. Broad exemption from liability for omissions is a way of carving a simple, practical rule to distinguish between the typical cases in which an agent can be easily selected and provided with sufficient incentives and cases in which there is a serious problem of dilution of liability. The exceptions to the rule exempting from liability for omissions are explained in terms of efficiency. The imposition of liability for omissions depends on the ability to identify a salient agent, i.e., to single out one or few liable agents and differentiate their role from that of others. Tort law designs three types of "salience rules." It either creates salience directly, or it can exploit salience created "naturally," or it can induce injurers to create salience voluntarily. (shrink)

L'altérité est l'un des phénomènes les plus étudiés et l'un des concepts les plus utilisés au cours des trente dernières années, mais c'est aussi une notion des plus polysémiques et des plus controversées, jusque dans les usages idéologiques qu'on peut en faire aujourd'hui. Ce livre interroge les bases philosophiques, le contexte sociohistorique et la portée éthique et esthétique de ce phénomène ou de cette notion à la lumière de ses différentes valeurs. L'autre est à la fois l'étranger, exclu ou minorisé, (...) pour les études culturelles, l'un des pôles de la construction identitaire pour certaines théories du sujet, l'expression même de la Loi et du Symbolique pour d'autres, la figure emblématique de la responsabilité pour une certaine pensée éthique, le fondement de toute relation intersubjective et de tout dialogisme ou, plus radicalement encore, la manifestation de la nature essentiellement hétérogène de l'existence. Chaque fois, ce qui est en jeu concerne nos manières de vivre-ensemble et nos façons de faire et de créer. Les auteurs réunis dans cet ouvrage analysent les "politiques de l'altérité" que notre histoire impose ou propose comme choix de société et " les poétiques de l'autre" que les différentes pratiques artistiques, ancrées dans la mémoire et l'imaginaire collectifs, déploient comme possible ou comme alternative face à notre situation historique. (shrink)

Criminal sanctions are typically inflicted by the state. The central role of the state in determining the severity of these sanctions and inflicting them requires justification. One justification for state-inflicted sanctions is simply that the state is more likely than other agents to determine accurately what a wrongdoer justly deserves and to inflict a just sanction on those who deserve it. Hence, in principle, the state could be replaced by other agents, for example, private individuals. This hypothesis has given rise (...) to recent calls to reform the state's criminal justice system by introducing privately inflicted sanctions, for example, shaming penalties, private prisons, or private probationary services. This paper challenges this view and argues that the agency of the state is indispensable to criminal sanctions. Privately inflicted sanctions sever the link between the state's judgments concerning the wrongfulness of the action and the appropriateness of the sanction and the infliction of sufferings on the criminal. When a private individual inflicts punishment, she acts on what she and not the state judges to be a justified response to a criminal act. Privately inflicted sanctions for violations of criminal laws are not grounded in the judgments of the appropriate agent, namely the state. It is impermissible on the part of the state to approve, encourage, or initiate the infliction of a sanction on an alleged wrongdoer on the basis of a private judgment. Such an approval grants undue weight to the private judgment of the individual who inflicts the sanction. (shrink)

Recounts the works of Immanuel Velikovsky and the controversies surrounding it, discussing his influence on the counterculture and debates with such luminaries as Carl Sagan.

AI-based algorithms are used extensively by public institutions. Thus, for instance, AI algorithms have been used in making decisions concerning punishment providing welfare payments, making decisions concerning parole, and many other tasks which have traditionally been assigned to public officials and/or public entities. We develop a novel argument against the use of AI algorithms, in particular with respect to decisions made by public officials and public entities. We argue that decisions made by AI algorithms cannot count as public decisions, namely (...) decisions that are made in the name of citizens and that this fact should be taken into consideration when utilizing AI to replace public officials. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction The Nature of Rights: Logic, Substance, and Strength Rights and Their Role in Moral Theory Conclusion References.

The state has a duty to protect individuals from violations of their basic rights to life and liberty. But does the state have a duty to criminalize such violations? Further, if there is a duty on the part of the state to criminalize violations, should the duty be constitutionally entrenched? This paper argues that the answer to both questions is positive. The state has a duty not merely to effectively prevent violations of our rights to life and liberty, but also (...) to criminalize such violations. Further, the duty to criminalize ought to be constitutionally entrenched. In the absence of criminal prohibitions on violations of the right to life and liberty individuals live ‘at the mercy’ of others. In the absence of a constitutional duty to criminalize, life and liberty of individuals is contingent upon the judgments and inclinations of the legislature. In both cases citizens’ rights are ‘at the mercy of others’. I also show that the decisions of the German Constitutional Court concerning abortion can be justified on such grounds. (shrink)

Legal philosophers often ask whether a person has a reason to obey the law simply because it is the law. We ask the contrary question: does a person have a reason to disobey the law simply because it is the law? Many philosophers who have considered the question of disobedience have focused on injustice; others have defended disobedience on libertarian or anarchist grounds. In contrast, we argue that there is a content-independent reason to disobey the law even when it is (...) not unjust, illegitimate, or otherwise undesirable. Legal philosophers generally agree that law claims peremptory authority, but they also generally agree that any duty to obey the law is substantially more limited. We argue that insofar as the law makes inflated claims to authority, it generates a content-independent reason to disobey. This anti-authoritarian principle is grounded in the virtue of clearly communicating one’s political commitments to others within a democratic society. By disobeying, one communicates one’s conviction that the law makes inflated claims to authority. We show how our account of disobedience as such is distinct from more familiar theories of anarchism and civil disobedience and argue that it is applicable whether one lives under conditions of justice or injustice. (shrink)

The importance of education and its profound effect on people's life make it a central issue in discussions of distributive justice. However, promoting distributive justice in education comes at a price: prioritising the education of some, as is often entailed by the principles of justice, inevitably has negative effects on the education of others. As a result, all theories of distributive justice in education face the challenge of balancing their requirements with conflicting interests. This article aims to contribute to developing (...) an account of conflicting interests by identifying a category of conflicting interests—non-positional conflicting interests—the realisation of which does not necessarily disrupt distributive justice. Non-positional conflicting interests include, for example, the interest in realising one's full potential and parents’ interest in familial relations. The article argues that the core dimensions of non-positional conflicting interests can usually be realised without upsetting distributive justice, and that actions that do upset distributive justice tend to be peripheral to these interests. Either way, there is no severe friction between distributive justice and non-positional conflicting interests: in the former cases, both are realised simultaneously. In the latter, tension exists; however, because the infringement on the conflicting interest is of relatively little weight, it is often justified, all things considered, in order to promote distributive justice. The conclusion is that while there are indeed cases in which distributive justice must retreat in the face of other interests, the friction between distributive justice and other interests is actually weaker than meets the eye. (shrink)

This is an introduction to the special issue on criminal law theory.

Fertility treatments, which are part of "assisted reproductive technologies" (ART), mainly undertaken through in vitro fertilization (IVF), offer the opportunity to infertile couples to conceive. IVF treatments are undertaken in Israel in significantly higher numbers than in the rest of the world. As such, Israel provides an important case-in-point for examining the validity of the actual claims used to justify the more generous public funding of IVF treatments at the policy level. In this article, we utilize an analytical philosophy approach (...) to conduct this examination. First, we highlight two fundamental concepts that were used at the Israeli public policy level in order to justify the generous public funding of IVF treatments. These concepts are “emotional vulnerability” and the “worthlessness of the childless,” where the latter emphasizes the infinite value of children. Then, by applying the perspective of the European model of Bioethical Principlism, and focusing the attention to these two concepts we show that these justifications are invalid. Specifically, it is suggested that these concepts are on the one hand both relying on and expressing the principles of vulnerability, dignity, and integrity; yet on the other hand, these concepts are also undermining the very principles of bioethics they are supposed to express and rely on. Based on this suggested criticism, we offer two “take home” messages informed by our analysis of the Israeli case, but reaching beyond it. (shrink)

This paper takes three distinct passes through the history of Machine Translation (MT) in the Soviet Union, which is typically understood as concentrating in a single boom period that lasted from roughly 1955 to 1965. In both the Soviet Union and the United States—in explicit competition with each other—there was a tremendous wave of investment in adapting computers to nonnumerical tasks that has only recently drawn the attention of historians, primarily focusing on the American example. The Soviet Union, however, quickly (...) came to assume prominence in the field both in terms of scale and diversity of approaches. At the same moment, Soviet linguists excavated a forgotten precursor, P. P. Smirnov-Troianskii, who had designed a translating machine in the early 1930s. Juxtaposing the multiple contexts in which Smirnov-Troianskii’s machine was reconceptualized and reappropriated for various ends, the article demonstrates the fundamental embodying of the algorithm in the early days of MT and also how the proliferation of narratives about Soviet MT exposes fault lines in contemporary historiography. (shrink)

In Computers Ltd, David Harel, best-selling author of Algorithmics, explains and illustrates one of the most fundamental, yet under-exposed facets of computers - their inherent limitations. Looking at the bad news that is proven, lasting, and robust, discussing limitations that no amounts of hardware, software, talents, or resources can overcome, the book presents a disturbing and provocative view of computing at the start of the 21st century.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The meritocratic principle of educational justice maintains that it is unfair that individuals with similar ability who invest equal effort, have unequal educational prospects. In this paper I argue that the conception of ability that meritocracy assumes, namely as an innate trait, is critically flawed. Absent a coherent conception of ability, meritocracy loses its ability to morally evaluate educational practices and policies, rendering it an unworkable principle of educational justice. Replacing innate ability with an alternative conception of ability is, therefore, (...) crucial for meritocratic educational justice. I propose incorporating an alternative conception of ability into meritocracy—as the ″current limits of student ability″. The account of meritocracy that follows entails that unequal educational prospects are fair only when they result from the constraints of individual potential (or from differential effort). I argue that this potential-based account of meritocracy, though demanding, is a plausible and attractive account of educational justice. (shrink)

Why Law Matters examines various legal and political institutions and procedures and argues that the desirability of these institutions and procedures is not contingent and does not hinge on the prospects that these institutions are conducive to the realization of valuable ends. Instead, various legal institutions and legal procedures that are often perceived as contingent means to facilitate the realization of valuable ends matter as such.

Over the last decade, the efforts towards unraveling the complex interplay between the brain, body, and environment have set a promising line of research that utilizes neuroscience to study human performance in natural work contexts such as aviation. Thus, a new discipline called neuroergonomics is holding the promise of studying the neural mechanisms underlying human performance in pursuit of both theoretical and practical insights. In this work, we utilized a neuroergonomic approach by combining insights from ecological psychology and embodied cognition (...) to study flight expertise. Specifically, we focused on the Mirror Neuron system as a key correlate for understanding the interaction between an individual and the environment, suggesting that it can be used to index changes in the coupling of perception-action associated with skill development.In this study, we measured the EEG mu suppression as a proxy of the Mirror Neuron system in experts (pilots) and novices while performing a distance estimation task in a landing scenario. To survey the specificity of this measure, we considered central, parietal and occipital electrode pools and analyzed alpha (8-13 Hz) and beta (18-25 Hz) rhythm bands. We hypothesized that in experts vs. novices, specific neural sensorimotor brain activity would underpin the connection between perception and action in an in-flight context. Preliminary results indicate that alpha and beta suppression was area-specific irrespective of groups, present in the central electrodes placed over the motor areas. Group analysis revealed that specifically alpha mu rhythm, but not beta, was significantly more suppressed in pilots vs. novices. Complementing these findings we found a trend in which the strength of mu suppression increased with the sense of presence experienced by the pilots. Such sensorimotor activation is in line with the idea that for a pilot, a distance judgment is intimately associated with the function of landing. This reflects the ability to use optical invariants to see the world in terms of the capabilities of the aircraft (e.g., reachability and glide angle).These preliminary findings support the role of embodied simulation mechanisms in visual perception and add important insights into a practical understanding of flight expertise, suggesting sensorimotor mechanisms as potential neuro-markers. (shrink)

Much of the scholarship in the history of science has undervalued the significance of the debates around language choice and language use. After surveying various historiographical trends characterizing the relationship of science to language, this introduction explores the role of language-choice in nation-building, education, publication and transnational exchanges. It concludes with a brief summary of the four case studies in this special issue, which explore the German, Greek, English and Russian languages in the context of the sciences in nineteenth-century Europe.

This paper investigates whether Palestinians have an interest in return rather than a mere interest in settling within the territory of a state that provides them with civil rights and economic opportunities. The paper establishes the following three claims. First, Palestinians have some interests in return to the territory of Palestine-Israel. Second, many of these interests can be satisfied by establishing an independent Palestinian state in part of historical Palestine. Third, some of these interests are similar to the interests that (...) may justify an analogous right of return for Jews to the same land. (shrink)