The five of us research and teach risk analysis with an eye towards decision support. Our work has been dedicated to taming risks and helping to make challenging decisions. But nothing had prepared us for the Covid-19 pandemic. We first had to grapple with the news coming from abroad, including, for some of us, our home countries. Then, some information and research, but mostly opinions, started coming in from our academic community, and we felt the tensions. Finally, the UK went (...) into an unofficial and then official lockdown, and all University staff were asked to redirect their research capacity so as to support the national effort for risk analysis and decision support. As we write this on the 20th of April, many countries, including the UK, are starting to consider how to get out of lockdown. Like the previous stages of the pandemic, there is little data, perhaps a bit more research, surely many more opinions, and definitely an overwhelming amount of personal experiences and thoughts. Here we reflect on all of the above, just in case it can help the readers of this Minds in Society flash editorial to think and act, or at least, to not have to do so entirely on their own. As it can be expected, our collage introduces more questions than it can answer. (shrink)

Autonomous vehicles (AV) offer promising benefits to society in terms of safety, environmental impact and increased mobility. However, acute challenges persist with any novel technology, inlcuding the perceived risks and trust underlying public acceptance. While research examining the current state of AV public perceptions and future challenges related to both societal and individual barriers to trust and risk perceptions is emerging, it is highly fragmented across disciplines. To address this research gap, by using the Web of Science database, our study (...) undertakes a bibliometric and performance analysis to identify the conceptual and intellectual structures of trust and risk narratives within the AV research field by investigating engineering, social sciences, marketing, and business and infrastructure domains to offer an interdisciplinary approach. Our analysis provides an overview of the key research area across the search categories of ‘trust’ and ‘risk’. Our results show three main clusters with regard to trust and risk, namely, behavioural aspects of AV interaction; uptake and acceptance; and modelling human–automation interaction. The synthesis of the literature allows a better understanding of the public perception of AV and its historical conception and development. It further offers a robust model of public perception in AV, outlining the key themes found in the literature and, in turn, offers critical directions for future research. (shrink)

In this paper, we put forth an analysis of sensitivity which aims to discern individual from merely statistical evidence. We argue that sensitivity is not to be understood as a factive concept, but as a purely epistemic one. Our resulting analysis of epistemic sensitivity gives rise to an account of legal proof on which a defendant is only found liable based on epistemically sensitive evidence.

The scale is the most famous emblem of the law, including intellectual property (IP). Because IP rights impose social costs on the public by limiting access to protected work, the law can be justified only to the extent that, on balance, it encourages enough creation and dissemination of new works to offset those costs. The scale is thus a potent rhetorical trope of fairness and objectivity, but also an instrument the law thinks with – one that is constantly invoked to (...) justify or to question the extent of available IP protection. The balancing act that underlies the legitimacy of IP is, however, literally impossible to perform. Because we are unable to measure the benefits that IP has for inventors or the costs it has for the public, the scale has nothing to weigh. It conveys a clear sense that IP law can be balanced, but in fact propagates only a visible simulacrum of balance – one that is as empty as it is powerful. (shrink)

This paper considers Carson’s rewriting of Heracles’ tragic madness— through the art of collage, an assembling and disassambling of textual fragments, scraps of papers, drawings, chromatic smears, and sketches—as an imagistic site for theorizing the anti-normative materiality, physical and metaphysical, of par-a-noia. I make a case for a materiality of par-a-noia by proposing a comparison with Alain Badiou’s Marxist political formalism. The distinctive formal trait of H of H, verbal and pictorial juxtaposition, invites us to think of par-a-noia as an (...) aesthetico-political radicality located on the edge of a voiding of thought (noein), a radicality that, as I suggest at the end, can be aligned with modes of non-normate cognition, with neuroqueer countersociality. (shrink)

At the beginning of the third section of Book II of Capital, Marx distinguishes between the direct process of the production of capital and the total process of its reproduction. The former includes both the work process as well as the value-creating process. As we shall see, the latter includes both the process of consumption mediated by circulation, as well as the process of reproduction of capital itself. In the different forms assumed by capital within its cycle, and even more (...) in the different forms assumed by this cycle, the movement of individual capital turns out to be a part of the total movement of social capital. (shrink)

In the De mineralibus, Albert the Great clearly states that minerals do not possess life, since – following the Aristotelian path – life is always connected with the operations of the soul. Nevertheless, dealing with the virtues of stones, Albert speaks about a curious difference between “living” and “dead” stones: living stones are substances that possess virtues caused by their forms, while non-living stones are called stones only equivocally because their virtues have expired. Moreover, throughout his work, Albert often seeks (...) help from the biological world to explain the nature and the processes of mineral substances: the coming-into-being of stones and metals is often compared to the generation of plants and animals; places where minerals are formed act as the mother’s womb for the embryo; sulphur and quicksilver are said to be the father and the mother of all metals; etc. The tendency to biologise inorganic nature is a key strategy that Albert uses to explain the processes and functions of the mineral world. (shrink)

Recently the CJEU decision in the case of ‘Ewa Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland Limited’ has raised the issue of the transcultural/trans-territorial signification of hate speech and hate crimes. Taking a cue from this decision and the related semiotic/legal implications, the paper proposes an analysis of the semio/pragmatic conditions for the production of performativity inherent in hate speech across different cultural universes of discourse. Given that web-based digital communication is global—at least, potentially—regardless of any spatial/political compartmentalization, it crosses different semio-cultural circuits. (...) This trans-spatiality implies transcultural crossings that can multiply and even transfigure the semantic implications of the original signifier and the related prognoses of ‘semantic effectiveness.’ Cultural boundaries therefore may function as a kind of ‘horizon of events’ for hate speech and, more inclusively, all linguistic acts and their legal signification/classification. The question then arises regarding whether and to what extent the performativity of hate speech is able to withstand the variation of cultural boundary conditions. Insofar as cultures are universes of experience, the issue to be investigated broadens, and ends up invoking the question of whether or not the production of performativity implicitly presupposes and tacitly epitomizes the semio-pragmatic implications/consequences (or, in Peircean terms, ‘bearings’) coextensive with cultural universes of experience. Were this the case, it would seem to call into question the very possibility of ‘making things only with words,’ or more explicitly, the alleged meaning of ‘linguistic acts.’. (shrink)

Gerald Doppelt claims that Deployment Realism cannot withstand the antirealist objections based on the “pessimistic meta-induction” and Laudan’s historical counterexamples. Moreover it is incomplete, as it purports to explain the predictive success of theories, but overlooks the necessity to explain also their explanatory success. Accordingly, he proposes a new version of realism, presented as the best explanation of both predictive and explanatory success, and committed only to the truth of best current theories, not of the discarded ones. Elsewhere I criticized (...) his new brand of realism. Here instead I argue that Doppelt has not shown that Deployment Realism cannot solve the problems raised by the history of science, explaining explanatory success does not add much to explaining novel predictive success, and Doppelt is right that truth is not a sufficient explanans, but for different reasons, and this does not refute Deployment Realism, but helps to detail it better. In a more explicit formulation, the realist IBE concludes not only to the truth of theories, but also to the reliability of scientists and scientific method, the order and simplicity of nature, and the approximate truth of background theories. (shrink)

In the mid-14th century, Henry of Herford wrote the Catena aurea entium, a work of remarkable length and composed of ten books – in turn divided into ansae extending over some 5000 questions. The present study aims to analyse some aspects that the recent critical edition of Book VI of the Catena has brought to light: firstly, the dependence on Albert the Great’s De mineralibus and the compilative method used by Henry in the reworking of his sources; secondly, the main (...) philosophical, medical and encyclopedic sources that structure the treatise on minerals (in which metals are also included); and lastly, the author’s personal contribution, especially highlighting the use of vernacular terms and the recounting of personal experiences, which became useful means in explaining certain natural phenomena such as the formation of fossils or the production of images and seals. (shrink)

Many formulations of scientific realism (SR) include some commitment to metaphysical realism (MR). On the other hand, authors like Schlick, Carnap and Putnam held forms of scientific realism coupled with metaphysical antirealism (and this has analogies in Kant). So we might ask: do scientific realists really need MR? or is MR already implied by SR, so that SR is actually incompatible with metaphysical antirealism? And if MR must really be added to SR, why is that so? And which additional arguments (...) scientific realists need to support it? After reviewing and classifying a number of different kinds of realisms, metaphysical and not, I answer that SR and MR are logically independent of each other, so that there is no logical inconsistency in holding SR while rejecting MR. However, I argue that the “no miracle” argument (NMA) not only is the “ultimate” argument for SR, but by the same token it also supports MR. Therefore one cannot effectively defend SR without also subscribing to MR, but this can be done at no additional argumentative cost. I show this by discussing not only the standard version of the NMA, but also three more versions which are not usually considered as such in the literature. (shrink)

The relation between the moral account of the capital vices and the philosophical analysis of the passions of the human soul undergoes an important turning point from the 11th century onwards during the recovery of medical knowledge in the medieval West. In this wave of fervour towards a physiological approach in the investigation of the nature of man, the vice of acedia - as described by the Christian moral tradition - and the melancholic temperament - the result of a millenary (...) reworking and technicalisation of medical knowledge - found a point of contact in the passion of sadness. If authors such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, following the Christian heritage, characterised acedia as an escalation of the passion of sadness, the medical tradition from Hippocrates and Galen to Avicenna and Constantine recognised sadness as one of the most distinctive manifestations of the melancholic temperament. The aim of this study is to demonstrate, by retracing some aspects of this interweaving of traditions after the year 1000, how Dante’s description of the sinners of acedia in Canto VII of the Inferno takes up the legacy of this hybridisation between the Christian description of acedia and the physiological description of melancholy. (shrink)

Os estudos acerca da estética musical de Eduard Hanslick geralmente enfatizam sua tese negativa, causadora de inúmeras controvérsias e discussões. A investigações de sua tese positiva é geralmente deixada de lado pelos musicólogos. Neste artigo são discutidos não apenas os fundamentos da tese negativa, mas também os da tese positiva, bem como as noções de forma, conteúdo e Conteúdo espiritual. Ao mesmo tempo, examinamos em que medida os pontos de vista de Hanslick são tributários das concepções de alguns autores franceses (...) do século XVIII, bem como de autores roânticos como Wackenroder, Tieck e Hoffmann. (shrink)

O presente artigo aborda a questão da tolerância religiosa no Iluminismo alemão, por meio da análise e interpretação de trechos selecionados da peça Nathan der Weise (1779), de Lessing. Pretende-se mostrar que essa obra tem sua origem intimamente ligada ao debate teológico (“Fragmentenstreit”) entre Lessing e o pastor Johann Melchior Goeze, de Hamburgo, podendo ser lida como uma reação e uma resposta às críticas e objeções deste último.