Efforts to address algorithmic harms have gathered particular steam over the last few years. One area of proposed opportunity is the notion of an “algorithmic audit,” specifically an “internal audit,” a process in which a system’s developers evaluate its construction and likely consequences. These processes are broadly endorsed in theory—but how do they work in practice? In this paper, we conduct not only an audit but an autoethnography of our experiences doing so. Exploring the history and legacy of a facial (...) recognition dataset, we find paradigmatic examples of algorithmic injustices. But we also find that the process of discovery is interwoven with questions of affect and infrastructural brittleness that internal audit processes fail to articulate. For auditing to not only address existing harms but avoid producing new ones in turn, we argue that these processes must attend to the “mess” of engaging with algorithmic systems in practice. Doing so not only reduces the risks of audit processes but—through a more nuanced consideration of the emotive parts of that mess—may enhance the benefits of a form of governance premised entirely on altering future practices. (shrink)

Metaphysics, morals and science -- The classics : value -- The neo-classics : utility -- The Keynesian revolution -- Development and under-development -- What are the rules of the game?

I address a question in moral metaphysics: How are conflicts between moral obligations possible? I begin by explaining why we cannot give a satisfactory answer to this question simply by positing that such conflicts are conflicts between rules, principles, or reasons. I then develop and defend the “Dispositional Account,” which posits that conflicts between moral obligations are conflicts between the manifestations of obligating dispositions (obligating powers, capacities, etc.), just as conflicts between physical forces are conflicts between the manifestations of (certain) (...) causal dispositions (causal powers, capacities, etc.). This account combines the so-called “moral forces” interpretation of prima facie obligations with a dispositional moral metaphysic according to which the metaphysical grounds of moral obligations are not rules or laws, but rather real, irreducibly dispositional properties (or powers) of moral agents and patients. My principal aims are to offer a theoretically attractive and suitably metaphysical account of conflicts of obligation, and to show that the dispositional moral metaphysic that grounds the Dispositional Account can explain and accommodate plausible normative views that rule- and law-based alternatives cannot, as well as to answer objections that have been pressed against other accounts of moral conflict (especially Ross’s) that appeal to moral dispositions or forces. (shrink)

Introduction -- The ethics of care and global politics -- Rethinking human security -- 'Women's work' : the global care and sex economies -- Humanitarian intervention and global security governance -- Peacebuilding and paternalism : reading care through postcolonialism -- Health and human security : gender, care and HIV/AIDS -- Gender, care, and the ethics of environmental security -- Conclusion. Security through care.

This book gives a descriptive analysis of specific Madhyamika texts. It compares the ideology of Kumarajiva (a translator of the four Madhyamika treatises 400 A.D.) with the ideologies of the three Chinese contemporaries - HuiYuan, Seng-Jui and Seng-Chao. It envisages an intercultural transmission of religious and philosophical ideas from India to China.

Introduction -- On human nature -- The strange history of altruism -- The Freudian self -- Thinking again.

Drawing on the philosophy of C. S. Peirce, Robinson develops a ‘semiotic model’ of the Trinity and proposes a new theology of nature according to which the evolving cosmos may be understood as bearing ‘vestiges of the Trinity in ...

Experiential acquaintance is an alleged relation between ourselves and our experiences that has sometimes been hypothesised as necessary for knowledge of our experiences. This paper begins with a clarification of ‘acquaintance’ and an explanation of ‘experience’ that focuses attention on a famous, but flawed, argument by G. E. Moore. It goes on to critically examine several recent arguments concerning experiential acquaintance and to show how internalist foundationalism can respond to a famous Sellarsian dilemma without appeal to a relation of acquaintance (...) with our experiences. It concludes that we can dispense with experiential acquaintance. (shrink)

Published in 1982 by CUP (pb. 2009) it discusses the forms of materialism then current, including Davidson, early Rorty, but concentrating on Smart and Armstrong, and arguing that central state materialism fails to give a better 'occurrent' account of conscious states than does behaviourism/functionalism, as Armstrong claims. The book starts with a version of the 'knowledge argument' and ends with a chapter claiming that our conception of matter/the physical is more problematic than our conception of mind.

In recent decades, issues that reside at the center of philosophical and psychological inquiry have been absorbed into a scientific framework variously identified as "brain science," "cognitive science," and "cognitive neuroscience." Scholars have heralded this development as revolutionary, but a revolution implies an existing method has been overturned in favor of something new. What long-held theories have been abandoned or significantly modified in light of cognitive neuroscience? _Consciousness and Mental Life_ questions our present approach to the study of consciousness and (...) the way modern discoveries either mirror or contradict understandings reached in the centuries leading up to our own. Daniel N. Robinson does not wage an attack on the emerging discipline of cognitive science. Rather, he provides the necessary historical context to properly evaluate the relationship between issues of consciousness and neuroscience and their evolution over time. Robinson begins with Aristotle and the ancient Greeks and continues through to René Descartes, David Hume, William James, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Derek Parfit. Approaching the issue from both a philosophical and a psychological perspective, Robinson identifies what makes the study of consciousness so problematic and asks whether cognitive neuroscience can truly reveal the origins of mental events, emotions, and preference, or if these occurrences are better understood by studying the whole person, not just the brain. Well-reasoned and thoroughly argued, _Consciousness and Mental Life_ corrects many claims made about the success of brain science and provides a valuable historical context for the study of human consciousness. (shrink)

Philosophical dialogue has the power to improve interdisciplinary scientific research. The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI) conducts workshops that foster philosophical dialogue among interdisciplinary researchers. This chapter focuses on 20 of these workshops, all of which used the Toolbox STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) instrument and were conducted with interdisciplinary research teams of scientists. We analyze data from some of these workshops and demonstrate that philosophical dialogues conducted using the Toolbox method have two salutary effects. First, they lead to a (...) significant increase in belief formation about philosophical topics relevant to interdisciplinary science. Scientists sometimes do not have preconceived commitments on issues in philosophy of science, and Toolbox workshops tend to prompt them to adopt views on these topics. Second, these philosophical …. (shrink)

Review and response to Gimbel’s Isn’t That Clever.

In editing Plato's Sophist for the new OCT vol. I, ed. E. A. Duke, W. F. Hicken, W. S. M. Nicoll, D. B. Robinson, and J. C. G. Strachan , there was less chance of giving novel information about W = Vind. Supp. Gr. 7 for this dialogue than for others in the volume, since Apelt's edition of 1897 was used by Burnet in 1900 and was based on Apelt's own collation of W. The result was better than the (...) somewhat confused information printed by Burnet, even in his 1905 reprint, for W for the other dialogues in vol. I. But in the Sophist as elsewhere in vol. I collations largely due to Dr W. S. M. Nicoll added new facts about all of BDTWP and their correctors, and the search for testimonia largely carried out by Dr E. A. Duke added new facts in that area. A reviewer counts 66 changes in our text of the Sophist, which may perhaps be a slight over-estimate. Classification of changes as substantive or as falling into different groups is sometimes difficult, but I think plausible figures are as follows. We have in 25 places made a different choice of readings from the primary mss. and testimonia. We have printed conjectures where Burnet kept a ms. reading in 17 places, but conversely we have reverted to a ms. reading where Burnet had a conjecture in 8 places. We have printed alternative conjectures to conjectures adopted by Burnet in 6 places. So we have actually departed from the primary sources on at most 9 more occasions overall than Burnet. What must be noted is that Burnet had already printed conjectures on something like 87 occasions , so our percentage addition to Burnet's departures from the primary sources is modest. Moreover Burnet printed about 25 readings from testimonia; we have followed him in 20 or so of these cases, and this in turn implies that the primary mss. are in error at these further 20 places. It needs to be underlined that though Burnet undoubtedly deserved to be regarded as a safe and cautious editor, nevertheless he departed from the primary mss. on average about twice per Stephanus page in this dialogue. Sometimes, of course, testimonia showed him right to do this, but testimonia cover only a quite small part of this dialogue. Otherwise Burnet accepted almost 90 conjectures. For the Politicus the figures are fairly similar; Burnet accepted 22 Byzantine conjectures and 35–40 more modern ones. The new OCT there adds 15 or so more conjectures. (shrink)

Humility is a paradoxical virtue. This should come as no great surprise. It doesn’t take much explanation for one to realize that if someone is boasting about how humble he is, then he probably is not humble. In fact, as we shall see, the paradoxical nature of humility has a long history, going back to at least Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. While it may not be a novel claim that there exists an apparent paradox of humility, I will (...) argue that there is more than one humility paradox, perhaps as many as five: the epistemic paradox, the paradox of self-attribution, the inculcation paradox, the agentic paradox, and the axiological paradox. All these paradoxes are distinct, yet seemingly intertwined. Upon examining them each in turn, we will be left with a Gordian knot of humility paradoxes. (shrink)

The Affective Turn in writing studies, the author argues, has actually gone through two phases, or three, if one counts the expressionist work on "finding one's true voice" that he dubs Phase Zero. Phase One runs from Alice Glarden Brand through Sue McLeod, and contains mostly empirical studies of affect in the classroom; Phase Two begins with Lynn Worsham's "Going Postal" and contains mostly theoretical studies of viral ecologies of affect. This book offers a signal contribution to Phase Two, re-theorising (...) affective ecologies as "somatic exchanges" and exploring their operation--and how to enhance their operation--in the writer-reader relationship, the classroom, and writing programmes. (shrink)

The most common form of direct realism is Phenomenological Direct Realism. PDR is the theory that direct realism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with Semantic Direct Realism, the theory that perceptual experience puts you in direct cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked by PDR. PDR is what most understand by direct realism. My (...) argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories. (shrink)

Throughout its history, the insanity defense specifically and the more general concept of mental defect or incompetence have been grounded in the assumption that those people fit for the rule of law are able to give and to comprehend reasons for their actions. This chapter traces the evolution of perspectives on the nature of mental illness and the manner in which cultural and extra-scientific influences have shaped perspectives. These perspectives are most saliently expressed in statutory provisions and relevant case law (...) summarized here and covering historical developments from ancient Greece and Rome to the present. Significant interactions between law and psychiatry are further highlighted and informed by core and controversial philosophical assumptions. Attention is given to differences between juridical and medical conceptions of responsibility. (shrink)

We provide an overview of a proposal for a new metaphysical framework within which theology and science might both find a home. Our proposal draws on the triadic semiotics and threefold system of metaphysical categories of C. S. Peirce. We summarize the key features of a semiotic model of the Trinity, based on observed parallels between Peirce's categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness and Christian thinking about, respectively, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We test and extend the semiotic model (...) by exploring how Peirce's taxonomy of signs offers a new approach to theological reflection on the Incarnation. This leads to a novel way of framing scientific questions about human evolution in semiotic terms and to a new approach to theological anthropology. Finally, we use the semiotic model of the Trinity as the basis of a trinitarian approach to the theology of creation according to which the semiotic processes that are fundamental to life and to human behavior and cognition may be understood as “vestiges of the Trinity in creation.”. (shrink)

Virtues are acquirable, so if intellectual humility is a virtue, it’s acquirable. But there is something deeply problematic—perhaps even paradoxical—about aiming to be intellectually humble. Drawing on Edward Slingerland’s analysis of the paradoxical virtue of wu-wei in Trying Not To Try (New York: Crown, 2014), we argue for an anti-individualistic conception of the trait, concluding that one’s intellectual humility depends upon the intellectual humility of others. Slingerland defines wu-wei as the “dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person (...) who is optimally active and effective” (Trying Not to Try, 7). Someone who embodies wu-wei inspires implicit trust, so it is beneficial to appear wu-wei. This has led to an arms race between faking wu-wei on the one hand and detecting fakery on the other. Likewise, there are many benefits to being (or seeming to be) intellectually humble. But someone who makes conscious, strategic efforts to appear intellectually humble is ipso facto not intellectually humble. Following Slingerland’s lead, we argue that there are several strategies one might pursue to acquire genuine intellectual humility, and all of these involve commitment to shared social or epistemic values, combined with receptivity to feedback from others, who must in turn have and manifest relevant intellectual virtues. In other words, other people and shared values are partial bearers of a given individual’s intellectual humility. If this is on the right track, then acquiring intellectual humility demands epistemic anti-individualism. (shrink)

According to the most popular versions of the flicker defense, Frankfurt-style cases fail to undermine the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) because agents in these cases are (directly) morally responsible not for making the decisions they make but for making these decisions on their own, which is something they could have avoided doing. Frankfurt defenders have primarily focused on trying to show that the alternative possibility of refraining from making the relevant decisions on their own is not a robust alternative, (...) while generally granting that this alternative cannot easily be eliminated from successful cases of this sort. In a recent issue of this journal, Stockdale (2022) attempts to sidestep the debate concerning robustness and develops a novel kind of Frankfurt-style case in which agents are unable to avoid making the relevant decisions on their own. The fundamental problem with Stockdale’s argument is that it hinges on an implausible conception of acting on one’s own. I help clarify the pertinent sense of what it means to do a thing on one’s own in this context and show that these new cases are unable to overcome the targeted versions of the flicker defense of PAP. (shrink)

In the midst of extreme and dualistic religio-political debates regarding women’s sexual wellness and abortion, one begins to wonder what a new theo-ethical approach might look like which rejects overly-simplistic, harmful understandings of such crucial issues. What might it look like to truly centre women’s full human experiences, loving each other in a way that addresses harm and meets tangible needs? This article examines the complex inequitable structural and institutional realities of sexual wellness and abortion through an intersectional theo-ethical lens. (...) The article then proceeds to suggest a new socio-religio-political ‘Pro-Love’ philosophy, undergirded by foundational theological understandings of justice-oriented love, and situated within the broad fields of Feminist, Liberation, Process, and Queer Theologies, within the Christian tradition. The suggested approach requires systematically addressing root issues affecting the lack of equitable access to sexual wellness and the racist/sexist/classist structures forcing women into under-resourced and unsafe environments, leading to high demand for abortion services. (shrink)

One approach to validating simulation models is to formally compare model outputs with independent data. We consider such model validation from the point of view of Frequentist statistics. A range of estimates and tests of goodness of fit have been advanced. We review these approaches, and demonstrate that some of the tests suffer from difficulties in interpretation because they rely on the null hypothesisHypothesis that the model is similar to the observationsObservations. This reliance creates two unpleasant possibilities, namely, a model (...) could be spuriously validated when dataData are too few, or inappropriately rejected when data are too many. Finally, these tests do not allow a principled declaration of what a reasonable level of difference would be considering the purposes to which the model will be put. We consider equivalence tests, and demonstrate that they do not suffer from the previously identified shortcomings. We provide two case studies to illustrate the claims of the chapter. (shrink)

Este artigo descreve em primeiro lugar os quatro tipos de duração que parecem ser sustentados por Platão: eternidade, sempiternidade, perpetuidade e tempo. Uma descrição é oferecida do tipo surpreendente de entropia que caracteriza o cosmos no Mito do Político, onde o universo começa a partir de um impulso inicial, eventualmente retorna àquele ponto e então começa o processo novamente, em perpetuidade. Essa perspectiva é então apresentada como sendo irresistivelmente consoante com a teoria cosmológica contemporânea.This article first describes the four types (...) of duration to which Plato seems to have been committed: eternity, sempiternity, everlastingness and time. A description is offered of the very startling type of entropy characterizing the cosmos of the Myth of the Politicus, in which the universe starts from an initial impulse, eventually returns to that point, and then begins the process all over again, in perpetuity. This view is then shown to be compellingly consonant with contemporary cosmological theory. (shrink)

Ethics, religion, and spirituality -- Spirituality in care -- Spirituality and ethics -- Love -- The community of care : fit for purpose -- Values, virtues, and the patient -- Challenging faith -- Spirituality and the domain of justice.

The simple model maintains that morally relevant factors combine in a simple, additive way, like weights on a scale. Although intuitive and familiar, this model entails that certain plausible views about particular cases and how morally relevant factors combine and interact therein are false. Shelly Kagan suggests that we could accommodate the relevant views and interactions by rejecting either of two assumptions the simple model makes: that the moral status of an act is determined by the sum of the contributions (...) made by each of the factors relevant thereto (additivity); and that neither the “weight” nor the “valence” of a factor’s contribution can be affected by other factors (atomism). But is there an atomistic option, a way of accommodating the relevant views and interactions by rejecting additivity rather than atomism? I argue that developing an atomistic option requires offering a conception of contribution that renders coherent the particular claims that must be true if there is, indeed, such an option. And I consider whether Rossian pluralism—the locus classicus for the idea of a contributory right-making factor—offers the resources necessary to offer such a conception, and whether it could accommodate the relevant views and interactions other than by rejecting atomism. (shrink)

In the preceding article in this section, F. LeRon Shults responds to our article preceding his, “Semiotics as a Metaphysical Framework for Christian Theology.” We respond here to his criticisms of our proposal. We discuss his concerns about the concept of “vestiges of the Trinity in creation” and argue that this does not undermine the absolute ontological difference between God and creation. We offer a clarification of our idea that the Incarnation may be understood, in terms of Peirce's taxonomy of (...) signs, as a qualisign of God's being. Finally, we discuss the idea that all symbols “break on the infinite.”. (shrink)

Chapter 1 The Author: Life and Works 1 . Historical and Cultural Background In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Jews of southern France (the Midi, ...