There is a growing literature on the concept of e-trust and on the feasibility and advisability of “trusting” artificial agents. In this paper we present an object-oriented model for thinking about trust in both face-to-face and digitally mediated environments. We review important recent contributions to this literature regarding e-trust in conjunction with presenting our model. We identify three important types of trust interactions and examine trust from the perspective of a software developer. Too often, the primary focus of research in (...) this area has been on the artificial agents and the humans they may encounter after they are deployed. We contend that the humans who design, implement, and deploy the artificial agents are crucial to any discussion of e-trust and to understanding the distinctions among the concepts of trust, e-trust and face-to-face trust. (shrink)

To many who develop and use free software, the GNU General Public License represents an embodiment of the meaning of free software. In this paper we examine the definition and meaning of free software in the context of three events surrounding the GNU General Public License. We use a case involving the GPU software project to establish the importance of Freedom 0 in the meaning of free software. We analyze version 3 of the GNU General Public License and conclude that (...) although a credible case can be made that the added restrictions are consistent with the definition of free software, the case requires subtle arguments. Strong arguments against the added restrictions are less subtle, and may therefore be more convincing to many users and developers. We also analyze the Affero General Public License and conclude that it is inconsistent with the definition of free software. (shrink)

This long-awaited new edition contains eight of the dialogues of Plato, and is the first in a new five-volume complete edition of his works in the OCT series.

This paper will survey and assess the ways in which moral thinkers in the early modern tradition of casuistry considered a range of cases of conscience (casus conscientiae) relating to lying, deception, and witholding the truth. Arguing that the position of the casuists has been unjustly maligned — not least by Pascal's brillant yet partizan Les Proviniciales — casuistical theories of lying and simulation will be placed in a broad intellectual context which will examine attihules to mendacity among early modern (...) medical writers, political theorists, anbl philosophers. Contrasting casuistical theoriessuch as equivocation and mental reservation with the approach to lying of other early modern writers, the lecture will advancfcahe view that the casuists promulgated a conceptual outlook on the differences betweefc lying and deception which is of inherent interest, and which helps to clarify some of the salient issues that attend a philosophical account of lying. (shrink)