In this paper, we present a survey of the development of the technique of argument diagramming covering not only the fields in which it originated - informal logic, argumentation theory, evidence law and legal reasoning – but also more recent work in applying and developing it in computer science and artificial intelligence. Beginning with a simple example of an everyday argument, we present an analysis of it visualised as an argument diagram constructed using a software tool. In the context (...) of a brief history of the development of diagramming, it is then shown how argument diagrams have been used to analyze and work with argumentation in law, philosophy and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

This book treats modal logic as a theory, with several subtheories, such as completeness theory, correspondence theory, duality theory and transfer theory and is intended as a course in modal logic for students who have had prior contact with modal logic and who wish to study it more deeply. It presupposes training in mathematical or logic. Very little specific knowledge is presupposed, most results which are needed are proved in this book.

There is a long history of the science of intelligent machines and its potential to provide scientific insights have been debated since the dawn of AI. In particular, there is renewed interest in the role of AI in research and research policy as an enabler of new methods, processes, management and evaluation which is still relatively under-explored. This empirical paper explores interviews with leading scholars on the potential impact of AI on research practice and culture through deductive, thematic analysis to (...) show the issues affecting academics and universities today. Our interviewees identify positive and negative consequences for research and researchers with respect to _collective_ and _individual use_. AI is perceived as helpful with respect to information gathering and other narrow tasks, and in support of impact and interdisciplinarity. However, using AI as a way of ‘speeding up—to keep up’ with bureaucratic and metricised processes, may proliferate negative aspects of academic culture in that the expansion of AI in research should assist and not replace human creativity. Research into the future role of AI in the research process needs to go further to address these challenges, and ask fundamental questions about how AI might assist in providing new tools able to question the values and principles driving institutions and research processes. We argue that to do this an explicit movement of meta-research on the role of AI in research should consider the effects for research and researcher creativity. Anticipatory approaches and engagement of diverse and critical voices at policy level and across disciplines should also be considered. (shrink)

The aim of this investigation is to explore the role of argumentation schemes in enthymeme reconstruction. This aim is pursued by studying selected cases of incomplete arguments in natural language discourse to see what the requirements are for filling in the unstated premises and conclusions in some systematic and useful way. Some of these cases are best handled using deductive tools, while others respond best to an analysis based on defeasible argumentations schemes. The approach is also shown to work reasonably (...) well for weak arguments, a class of arguments that has always been difficult to analyze without the principle of charity producing a straw man. (shrink)

This book is a philosophically-oriented introduction to bioethics. It offers the reader an overview of key debates in bioethics relevant to various areas including; organ retrieval, stem cell research, justice in healthcare and issues in environmental ethics, including issues surrounding food and agriculture. The book also seeks to go beyond simply describing the issues in order to provide the reader with the methodological and theoretical tools for a more comprehensive understanding of current bioethical debates. The aim of the book is (...) to present bioethics as an interdisciplinary field, to explore its close relation to other disciplines (such as law, life sciences, theology and philosophy), and to discuss the conditions under which bioethics can serve as an academically legitimate discipline that is at the same time relevant to society. As a systematic and methodologically rigorous overview, Bioethics: Methods, Theories, Domains will be of particular interest to academics and students in the disciplines of Law, Medicine, Ethics and Philosophy. (shrink)

The present paper is based on [11], where a number of conjectures are made concerning the structure of the lattice of normal extensions of the tense logicKt. That paper was mainly dealing with splittings of and some sublattices, and this is what I will concentrate on here as well. The main tool in analysing the splittings of will be the splitting theorem of [8]. In [11] it was conjectured that each finite subdirectly irreducible algebra splits the lattice of normal (...) extensions ofK4t andS4t. We will show that this is not the case and that on the contrary only very few and trivial splittings of the mentioned lattices exist. (shrink)

Mediation is an alternative dispute resolution process that is becoming more and more popular particularly in English-speaking countries. In contrast to traditional litigation it has not benefited from technological advances and little research has been carried out to make this increasingly widespread practice more efficient. The study of argumentation in dispute mediation hitherto has largely been concerned with theoretical insights. The development of argumentation theories linked to computational applications opens promising new horizons since computational tools could support mediators, making sessions (...) quicker and more efficient. For this, we need tools for close analysis of mediation discourse in order to explore the argumentative activity in depth, and ultimately get an accurate image of how dialogues unfold in this particular context. This paper therefore aims at laying the foundations of a theory of close analysis for discourse in dispute mediation. Theories provided by the literature serve as a basis for argumentative analyses of transcripts of mediation sessions in order to deliver a clear image of the argumentative structure. Analyses of the argumentative strategies in mediation discourse will allow for the development of a dialogue protocol that can be used to develop operational models which can be embodied in software to help make the mediation process easier and more effective. (shrink)

Proof assistants are software-based tools that are used in the mechanization of proof construction and validation in mathematics and computer science, and also in certified program development. Different such tools are being increasingly used in order to accelerate and simplify proof checking, and the Coq proof assistant is one of the most well known and used in large-scale projects. Language and automata theory is a well-established area of mathematics, relevant to computer science foundations and information technology. In particular, context-free language (...) theory is of fundamental importance in the analysis, design, and implementation of computer programming languages. This work describes a formalization effort, using the Coq proof assistant, of fundamental results of the classical theory of contextfree grammars and languages. These include closure properties (union, concatenation, and Kleene star), grammar simplification (elimination of useless symbols, inaccessible symbols, empty rules, and unit rules), the existence of a Chomsky Normal Form for context-free grammars and the Pumping Lemma for context-free languages. The result is an important set of libraries covering the main results of context-free language theory, with more than 500 lemmas and theorems fully proved and checked. As it turns out, this is a comprehensive formalization of the classical context-free language theory in the Coq proof assistant and includes the formalization of the Pumping Lemma for context-free languages. The perspectives for the further development of this work are diverse and can be grouped in three different areas: inclusion of new devices and results, code extraction, and general enhancements of its libraries. (shrink)

In this article, I reconstruct and evaluate Merleau-Ponty’s main responses to philosophical skepticism in the relevant parts of his work. To begin with, I introduce the skeptical argument that Merleau-Ponty most often tried to refute, namely, the dream argument. Secondly, I show how Merleau-Ponty, in his initial works, excludes the skeptical problem by appealing to a general contact with the world guaranteed by perception. Finally, I analyze how in his last texts Merleau-Ponty considers at least some uses of the skeptical (...) arguments as tools to make our opaque contact with being explicit. (shrink)

Over the past decade or so, a new interdisciplinary field has emerged in the ground between, on the one hand, computer science – and artificial intelligence in particular – and, on the other, the area of philosophy concentrating on the language and structure of argument. There are now hundreds of researchers worldwide who would consider themselves a part of this nascent community. Various terms have been proposed for the area, including "Computational Dialectics," "Argumentation Technology," and "Argument-based Computing," but the term (...) that has stuck is simply Argument & Computation. It encompasses several specific strands of research, such as: . the use of theories of argument, and dialectic in particular, in the design and implementation of protocols for multi-agent action and communication; . the application of theories of argument and rhetoric in natural language processing and affective computing; . the use of argument-based structures for autonomous reasoning in artificial intelligence, and in particular, for defeasible reasoning; . computer-supported collaborative argumentation – the implementation of software tools for enabling online argument in domains such as education and e-government. These strands come together to form the core of a research field that covers parts of artificial intelligence (AI), philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science, but, increasingly, is building an identity of its own. (shrink)

This volume examines the ethical issues generated by recent developments in intelligence collection and offers a comprehensive analysis of the key legal, moral and social questions thereby raised. Intelligence officers, whether gatherers, analysts or some combination thereof, are operating in a sea of social, political, scientific and technological change. This book examines the new challenges faced by the intelligence community as a result of these changes. It looks not only at how governments employ spies as a tool of state (...) and how the ultimate outcomes are judged by their societies, but also at the mind-set of the spy. In so doing, this volume casts a rare light on an often ignored dimension of spying: the essential role of truth and how it is defined in an intelligence context. This book offers some insights into the workings of the intelligence community and aims to provide the first comprehensive and unifying analysis of the relevant moral, legal and social questions, with a view toward developing policy that may influence real-world decision making. The contributors analyse the ethics of spying across a broad canvas – historical, philosophical, moral and cultural – with chapters covering interrogation and torture, intelligence’s relation to war, remote killing, cyber surveillance, responsibility and governance. In the wake of the phenomena of WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden revelations, the intelligence community has entered an unprecedented period of broad public scrutiny and scepticism, making this volume a timely contribution. This book will be of much interest to students of ethics, intelligence studies, security studies, foreign policy and IR in general. (shrink)

The landscape of social theory has changed significantly over the three decades since the publication of Anthony Giddens and Jonathan Turner’s seminal Social Theory Today. Sociologists in the twenty-first century desperately need a new agenda centered around central questions of social theory. In Social Theory Now, Claudio E. Benzecry, Monika Krause, and Isaac Ariail Reed set a new course for sociologists, bringing together contributions from the most distinctive sociological traditions in an ambitious survey of where social theory is today (...) and where it might be going. The book provides a strategic window onto social theory based on current research, examining trends in classical traditions and the cutting edge of more recent approaches. From distinctive theoretical positions, contributors address questions about how social order is accomplished; the role of materiality, practice, and meaning; as well as the conditions for the knowledge of the social world. The theoretical traditions presented include cultural sociology, microsociologies, world-system theory and post-colonial theory, gender and feminism, actor network and network theory, systems theory, field theory, rational choice, poststructuralism, pragmatism, and the sociology of conventions. Each chapter introduces a tradition and presents an agenda for further theoretical development. Social Theory Now is an essential tool for sociologists. It will be central to the discussion and teaching of contemporary social theory for years to come. (shrink)

Current methods to capture, analyse and present the audience participation of broadcast events are increasingly carried out using social media. Uptake of such technology tools has so far been poor amongst older adults, and it has the worrying effect of excluding the demographic from participation. Our work explores whether a common desire to interact with debates can be tapped with technology with a very low barrier to entry, to both support better engagement with broadcast debates and encourage greater use of (...) social media. This paper describes experiments where older adults interact with a BBC radio debate programme: The Moral Maze. As a result, we obtained common interaction patterns which then are used to define recommendations for software-supported interaction with debates based on theories of argumentation. Our goal is to combine research on computational models of argument and user-driven research on human-centred computing in a project with the potential for high-profile impact in addressing older adults inclusion in the digital economy. (shrink)

How humans efficiently operate in a world with massive amounts of data that need to be processed, stored, and recalled has long been an unsettled question. Our physical and social environment needs to be represented in a structured way, which could be achieved by reducing input to latent variables in the form of probability distributions, as proposed by influential, probabilistic accounts of cognition and perception. However, few studies have investigated the neural processes underlying the brain’s potential ability to represent a (...) probability distribution’s complex, global features. Here, we presented participants with a sequence of tones that formed a normal or a bimodal distribution. Using a novel, single-trial EEG analysis, we demonstrate a neural response that indexes the likelihood of an item, given previously presented items, and corresponds to the experienced tones’ distribution. Our results indicate that the adult human brain can build a representation of the complex, global pattern of a probability distribution and offer a novel tool for an in-depth understanding of related neural mechanics. (shrink)

This paper explains how to use a new software tool for argument diagramming available free on the Internet, showing especially how it can be used in the classroom to enhance critical thinking in philosophy. The user loads a text file containing an argument into a box on the computer interface, and then creates an argument diagram by dragging lines from one node to another. A key feature is the support for argumentation schemes, common patterns of defeasible reasoning historically know (...) as topics . Several examples are presented, as well as the results of an experiment in using the system with students in a university classroom. (shrink)

Contemporary engineering education recognises the need for engineering ethics content in undergraduate programmes to extend beyond concepts that form the basis of professional codes to consider relationality and context of engineering practice. Yet there is debate on how this might be done, and we argue that the design and pedagogy for engineering ethics has to consider what and to whom ethics is taught in a particular context. Our interest is in the possibilities and challenges of pursuing the dual imperatives of (...) socialization and critique. Socialization involves creating opportunities for all, in a diverse cohort of students, to access and engage with the dominant professional engineering ethics knowledge, while critique involves engaging with a range of ways of knowing, valuing, being and using language as relevant in contemporary engineering practice. We identify conceptual tools from engineering ethics and ethical pedagogy in education scholarship for our context. We illustrate how we use these tools systematically to strengthen our reflective practice in a first-year university engineering ethics module to a deeper form of reflexivity. Specifically, we explore the ways in which we attend to the dual imperatives and also highlight opportunities that we miss. We identify as key opportunities design choices such as how we formulated questions and prompts, and how we attended to content, context and language in selecting classroom texts. Other key opportunities were pedagogical choices of when and how to use student contributions in discussion, and what was made explicit in the classroom and assessment. We share our plans to take our learnings forward in our practice and consider the generative possibilities of these learnings and the concepts in other contexts. (shrink)

This article gives a brief introduction to the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool-Treatment (MacCAT-T) and critically examines its theoretical presuppositions. On the basis of empirical, methodological and ethical critique it is emphasised that the cognitive bias that underlies the MacCAT-T assessment needs to be modified. On the one hand it has to be admitted that the operationalisation of competence in terms of value-free categories, e.g. rational decision abilities, guarantees objectivity to a great extent; but on the other hand it bears (...) severe problems. Firstly, the cognitive focus is in itself a normative convention in the process of anthropological value-attribution. Secondly, it misses the complexity of the decision process in real life. It is therefore suggested that values, emotions and other biographic and context specific aspects should be considered when interpreting the cognitive standards according to the MacArthur model. To fill the gap between cognitive and non-cognitive approaches the phenomenological theory of personal constructs is briefly introduced. In conclusion some main demands for further research to develop a multi-step model of competence assessment are outlined. (shrink)

Legal reasoning requires identification through search of authoritative legal texts that apply to a given legal question. In this paper, using a network representation of US Supreme Court opinions that integrates citation connectivity and topical similarity, we model the activity of law search as an organizing principle in the evolution of the corpus of legal texts. The network model and probabilistic search behavior generates a Pagerank-style ranking of the texts that in turn gives rise to a natural geometry of the (...) opinion corpus. This enables us to then measure the ways in which new judicial opinions affect the topography of the network and its future evolution. While we deploy it here on the US Supreme Court opinion corpus, there are obvious extensions to large evolving bodies of legal text. The model is a proxy for the way in which new opinions influence the search behavior of litigants and judges and thus affect the law. This type of “legal search effect” is a new legal consequence of research practice that has not been previously identified in jurisprudential thought and has never before been subject to empirical analysis. We quantitatively estimate the extent of this effect and find significant relationships between search-related network structures and propensity of future citation. This finding indicates that “search influence” is a pathway through which judicial opinions can affect future legal development. (shrink)

The debate about physician-assisted suicide has long been entwined with the nature of the doctor–patient relationship. Opponents of physician-assisted suicide insist that the traditional goals of medicine do not and should not include intentionally bringing about or hastening a patient’s death, whereas proponents of physician-assisted suicide argue that this practice is an appropriate tool for doctors to relieve a patient’s suffering. In this article, I discuss these issues in light of the relevance of a Christian account of the doctor–patient (...) relationship. I argue that Christians typically object to assist suicide independently of the doctor–patient relationship. I argue that a focus on the Christian virtues of charity, compassion, and humility helps to explain why doctors should not assist their patients in suicide. (shrink)

Explanation is commonly considered one of the central goals of science. Although computer simulations have become an important tool in many scientific areas, various philosophical concerns indicate that their explanatory power requires further scrutiny. We examine a case study in which atomistic simulations have been used to examine the factors responsible for the transport selectivity of certain channel proteins located at cell membranes. By elucidating how precisely atomistic simulations helped scientists draw inferences about the molecular system under investigation, we (...) respond to some concerns regarding their explanatory power. We argue that atomistic simulations can be tools for managing molecular complexity and for systematically assessing how the occurrence of the explanandum is sensitive to a range of factors. (shrink)

Theories of networked individualism and forms of urban alienation challenge the continued purpose and relevance of conventional community tools in urban neighbourhood. However, the majority of urban residents surveyed in this research still believe that there are people living in their immediate neighbourhood who may share their interests or who are at least personally compatible, but they do not know them. Web-based community networking systems have the potential to facilitate intra-neighbourhood interaction and support community-building efforts. Community networking studies have shown (...) that technical connectivity alone does not ensure community and that new and weak communities do not benefit from community networking systems as much as existing and strong communities do. This paper builds on these findings to present a methodology combining principles of participation, animation and design. This approach builds on intrinsic motivation in residents to find out about and meet one another in a private and inobtrusive way. It encourages residents to take social ownership of the community-building process and the community network. The approach recognises the network qualities in the communicative ecology of urban residents and supplements collective approaches towards community-building with personalised networking strategies. (shrink)

This volume looks at the forms and functions of counterspeech as well as what determines its effectiveness and success from multidisciplinary perspectives. Counterspeech is in line with international human rights and freedom of speech and it can be a much more powerful tool against dangerous and toxic speech than blocking and censorship. In the face of online hate speech and disinformation, counterspeech is a tremendously important and timely topic. The book uniquely brings together expertise from a variety of disciplines. (...) It explores linguistic, ethical and legal aspects of counterspeech, looks at the functions and effectiveness of counterspeech from anthropological, practical and sociological perspectives and addresses the question of how we can use modern technological advances to make counterspeech a more instantaneous and efficient option to respond to harmful language online. The greatest benefit of counterspeech lies in the ability to reach bystanders and prevent them from becoming perpetrators themselves. This volume is an excellent opportunity to spread the word about counterspeech, its potential, importance, and future endeavors. This anthology is a great resource for scholars and students of linguistics, philosophy of language, media and communication studies, digital humanities, natural language processing, international human rights law, anthropology and sociology, and interdisciplinary research methods. It is also a valuable source of information for practitioners and anyone who wants to speak up against harmful speech. (shrink)

A simple thought experiment and web search tools are brought to bear on conventional notions of disability. A Nobel Prize winner weighs in.

The use of perfumes, incense, colognes, and plant and flower essences in Amazonian healing practices is a hallmark feature of vegetalismo, a form of healing in Peru’s Amazonian regions. Sprayed, smoked, rubbed on bodies, and poured in medicinal baths, these odorous tools are vital allies to the curandero for cleansing bodies and spaces, for protection, or to add potency to medicinal plants. Certain perfumes are more common than others, particularly the citrusy Agua de Florida, an 18th Century eau de cologne (...) from the United States. Focusing in on the history of Agua de Florida and its ubiquity in Western Amazonia, I suggest the necessity of a sensory anthropology for exploring the vast healing potential of vegetalismo. Going beyond the visual to consider other sensory experiences lends insight into the various healing mechanisms in Amazonian shamanism that are often overlooked by western epistemologies of health and healing. (shrink)

Background Design thinking is a tool for generating and exploring ideas from multiple stakeholders. We used DT principles to introduce students to the ethical implications of organ transplantation. Students applied DT principles to propose solutions to maximise social justice in liver transplant allocation. Methods A 150 min interactive workshop was integrated into the longitudinal ethics curriculum. Following a group didactic on challenges of organ donation in the USA supplemented by patient stories, teams of students considered alternative solutions to optimise (...) fairness of organ distribution and ethical implications of changing the current model. Facilitators led students through DT steps of empathy, defining the team’s point of view, ideating on potential solutions, prototyping a specific idea and testing the idea through oral presentation, with questions and answers by peers and faculty. The curriculum was evaluated with presurveys and postsurveys including quantitative and open-ended items. Results 100 first year medical students participated. Before the session, 75.3% of students had no practical experience with DT. Following participation, students reported an increased understanding of the current liver transplant allocation system and an increased appreciation of shortcomings of the current organ allocation system. After the session, 73.8% of students felt that DT could be used to approach complex health system problems. Discussion Students participating in a DT workshop displayed improved knowledge and attitudes toward organ transplantation and DT. In this pilot study, DT showed promise as a student-led approach emphasising collaboration and creativity in ethics curricula in medical education. (shrink)

We analyze three applications of Ramsey’s Theorem for 4-tuples to infinite traceable graphs and finitely generated infinite lattices using the tools of reverse mathematics. The applications in graph theory are shown to be equivalent to Ramsey’s Theorem while the application in lattice theory is shown to be provable in the weaker system RCA0.

Intertemporal choice is the study of how people make choices about what and how much to do at various points in time, when choices at one time influence the possibilities available at other points in time. These choices are influenced by the relative value people assign to two or more payoffs at different points in time. Most choices require decision-makers to trade off costs and benefits at different points in time. These decisions may be about savings, work effort, education, nutrition, (...) exercise, health care and so forth. Since early in the twentieth century, economists have analyzed intertemporal decisions using the discounted utility model, which assumes that people evaluate the pleasures and pains resulting from a decision in much the same way that financial markets evaluate losses and gains, exponentially 'discounting' the value of outcomes according to how delayed they are in time. Discounted utility has been used to describe how people actually make intertemporal choices and it has been used as a tool for public policy. Policy decisions about how much to spend on research and development, health and education all depend on the discount rate used to analyze the decision. (shrink)

We are developing the Neurological Disease Ontology (ND) to provide a framework to enable representation of aspects of neurological diseases that are relevant to their treatment and study. ND is a representational tool that addresses the need for unambiguous annotation, storage, and retrieval of data associated with the treatment and study of neurological diseases. ND is being developed in compliance with the Open Biomedical Ontology Foundry principles and builds upon the paradigm established by the Ontology for General Medical Science (...) (OGMS) for the representation of entities in the domain of disease and medical practice. Initial applications of ND will include the annotation and analysis of large data sets and patient records for Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and stroke. (shrink)

The Argument Web is maturing as both a platform built upon a synthesis of many contemporary theories of argumentation in philosophy and also as an ecosystem in which various applications and application components are contributed by different research groups around the world. It already hosts the largest publicly accessible corpora of argumentation and has the largest number of interoperable and cross compatible tools for the analysis, navigation and evaluation of arguments across a broad range of domains, languages and activity types. (...) Such interoperability is key in allowing innovative combinations of tool and data reuse that can further catalyse the development of the field of computational argumentation. The aim of this paper is to summarise the key foundations, the recent advances and the goals of the Argument Web, with a particular focus on demonstrating the relevance to, and roots in, philosophical argumentation theory. (shrink)

Instead of drawing out exact paths for overcoming barriers, the authors of the book Enhancing Science Impact refer back to the necessity of reflecting on all aspects of research. There is no one-fits-all solution of approaching sustainability. Instead a comprehensive understanding of problem-structuring is necessary for addressing current challenges. Even though the work provides a practical foci-guideline, a critical reflection on how nature is represented within research programmes and projects is missing.

This reappraisal of the geographical aspects of philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s theories finds fresh meanings and contemporary applications in his work. The book reveals what they tell us about space and politics today, how they can interpret modern geopolitics and provide the tools to overturn the status quo.

This paper examines Marcuse’s complex relationship to feminism, both in his own time and today. It examines Marcuse’s celebration of and comments on the feminism of his time alongside Ellen Willis’s criticisms of Marcuse’s characterization of consumerism as “feminized.” The paper suggests that the widespread “one-dimensionality” of Marcuse’s 1964 diagnosis remains an apt diagnostic tool when the continued exploitation of women in many ways includes their mass entry into the workforce—once seen as a liberation from the domestic sphere—and the (...) continued pushing of consumerist models of existence as supposedly characterizing the “good life.”. (shrink)

Philosophy in Minutes distils 200 of the most important philosophical ideas into easily digestible, bite-sized sections. The core information for every topic - including debates such as the role of philosophy in science and religion, key thinkers from Aristotle to Marx, and introductions to morality and ethics - is explained in straightforward language, using illustrations to make the concepts easy to understand and remember. Whether you are perplexed by existentialism or pondering the notion of free will, this accessible small-format book (...) will help any reader to quickly grasp the basics of this highly nuanced subject. Chapters include: Truth and logic, Marxism, Communism and Socialism, Ontology, Philosophy and literature, Existence of God, Feminist theory, Consciousness, The future of philosophy. (shrink)

Die Frage nach der Legitimität staatlicher Strafe ist Gegenstand einer anhaltenden und bisweilen ausufernden Diskussion, die inzwischen eine kaum noch überschaubare Fülle von Texten im rechts- und moralphilosophischen, staatstheoretischen und strafrechtlichen Schrifttum hervorgebracht hat. Mit Benthams utilitaristischem Prinzip des größten Glücks der größten Zahl und des im Retributivismus entscheidenden intrinsischen Unwertes der Tat als Anknüpfungspunkt der Strafe sowie dessen prominentesten Vertreter Kant werden die verschiedenen Strafkonzeptionen vorgestellt - einschließlich jenen, in denen beide Elemente miteinander verknüpft sind - wie etwa im (...) Strafziel der Resozialisierung. Darüber hinaus werden die unterschiedlichen staatstheoretischen Modelle, die dem utilitaristischen und retributivistischen Ansatz entsprechen im einzelnen entfaltet. Die Anwort auf die Frage nach der Vereinigung der Zweckbestimmungen staatlichen Strafens mit den fundamentalen Vorstellungen über Freiheit, Verantwortlichkeit, Schuldfähigkeit und damit Personalität, wie sie innerhalb des gedanklichen Horizontes einer staatlichen Gemeinschaft konsensfähig sind, bleibt jedoch zwangsläufig offen. (shrink)

Quick, accessible, compact guide to understanding key political concepts. Contents include: Liberty, Justice, Equality, Human rights, Social contract, Democracy, Monarchy, Anarchism, Capitalism, Socialism, Nationalism and Globalisation.

This article seeks to clarify the potential that Herbert Marcuse's and Theodor W. Adorno's psychoanalytic accounts may have with respect to the philosophy of education today. Marcuse and Adorno both share the view that psychoanalytic theory enables a deeper understanding of the social and biological dynamics of consciousness. For both thinkers, psychoanalytic theory provides conceptual tools for thinking through contradictions between the needs of an individual and those of the governing entity. In fleshing this out, I first explore Marcuse's radical (...) account of sublimation which seeks to demonstrate how the revision of instinctual energy makes it possible to establish a subjectivity which utilises the human potentiality to its fullest. I then turn to Adorno who emphasises the importance of understanding that exterior conditions transform our instinctual energies. After recapitulating Adorno's conception of natural, instinctual impulses and his use of psychoanalytic theory, I will explore the possibility of a critical rationality through a critique of rationality's current mode. From the perspective of Adorno's and Marcuse's theories, both rationality and sensuous desire play their respective roles in enabling critical rationality. In conclusion, the article reflects the different advantage points of Marcuse's and Adorno's accounts from the perspective of philosophy of education. Thus, education should provide individuals with the ability to recognise the subtle and invisible ways through which the calculating mode of rationality operates in late-capitalist society. Regarding education, Adorno's conception of non-identity could be developed in the direction of promoting ways of experiencing non-conformity within such a society. (shrink)

Redrawing the Lines,the first book to focus on that interaction, brings together ten essays by key figures who have worked to connect literary theory and philosophy and to reassess the relationship between analytic and Continental ...

People are unable to report how they decide whether to move backwards or forwards to catch a ball. When asked to imagine how their angle of elevation of gaze would change when they caught a ball, most people are unable to describe what happens although their interception strategy is based on controlling changes in this angle. Just after catching a ball, many people are unable to recognise a description of how their angle of gaze changed during the catch. Some people (...) confidently choose incorrect descriptions that would guarantee failure of interception demonstrating unconscious knowledge co-existing with systematically different conscious beliefs. Where simple solutions to important evolutionary problems exist, unconscious perception needs to be impervious to conscious beliefs. (shrink)

This article argues that existing approaches to programming ethical AI fail to resolve a serious moral-semantic trilemma, generating interpretations of ethical requirements that are either too semantically strict, too semantically flexible, or overly unpredictable. This paper then illustrates the trilemma utilizing a recently proposed ‘general ethical dilemma analyzer,’ GenEth. Finally, it uses empirical evidence to argue that human beings resolve the semantic trilemma using general cognitive and motivational processes involving ‘mental time-travel,’ whereby we simulate different possible pasts and futures. I (...) demonstrate how mental time-travel psychology leads us to resolve the semantic trilemma through a six-step process of interpersonal negotiation and renegotiation, and then conclude by showing how comparative advantages in processing power would plausibly cause AI to use similar processes to solve the semantic trilemma more reliably than we do, leading AI to make better moral-semantic choices than humans do by our very own lights. (shrink)