In this paper we disambiguate the design stance as proposed by Daniel C. Dennett, focusing on its application to technical artefacts. Analysing Dennett’s work and developing his approach towards interpreting entities, we show that there are two ways of spelling out the design stance, one that presuppose also adopting Dennett’s intentional stance for describing a designing agent, and a second that does not. We argue against taking one of these ways as giving the correct formulation (...) of the design stance in Dennett’s approach, but propose to replace Dennett’s original design stance by two design stances: an intentional designer stance that incorporates the intentional stance, and a teleological design stance that does not. Our arguments focus on descriptions of technical artefacts: drawing on research in engineering, cognitive psychology and archaeology we show that both design stances are used for describing technical artefacts. A first consequence of this disambiguation is that a design stance, in terms of interpretative assumptions and in terms of the pragmatic considerations for adopting it, stops to be a stance that comes hierarchically between the physical stance and the intentional stance. A second consequence is that a new distinction can be made between types of entities in Dennett’s approach. We call entities to which the intentional designer stance is applied tools and entities to which the teleological design stance is applied instruments, leading to a differentiated understanding of, in particular, technical artefacts. (shrink)

The artistic design stance is an important part of art appreciation, but it remains unclear how it can be applied to artworks for which art historical context is no longer available, such as Ice Age art. We propose that some of the designer's intentions can be gathered noninferentially through direct experience with prehistoric artworks.

Bullot & Reber (B&R) put forth a design stance to fuse psychological and art historical accounts of visual thinking into a single theory. We argue that this aspect of their proposal needs further fine-tuning. Issues of transgression and coherence are necessary to provide stability to the design stance. We advocate looking to Art Education for such fundamentals of picture understanding.

How do people decide what category an artifact belongs to? Previous studies have suggested that adults and, to some degree, children, categorize artifacts in accordance with the design stance, a categorization system which privileges the designer’s original intent in making categorization judgments. However, these studies have all been conducted in Western, technologically advanced societies, where artifacts are mass produced. In this study, we examined intuitions about artifact categorization among the Shuar, a hunter-horticulturalist society in the Amazon region of (...) Ecuador. We used a forced-choice method similar to previous studies, but unlike these studies, our scenarios involved artifacts that would be familiar to the Shuar. We also incorporated a community condition to examine the possible effect of community consensus on how artifacts are categorized. The same scenarios were presented to university student participants in the UK. Across populations and conditions, participants tended to categorize artifacts in terms of a creator’s intent as opposed to a differing current use. This lends support to the view that the design stance may be a universal feature of human cognition. However, we conclude with some thoughts on the limitations of the present method for studying artifact concepts. (shrink)

Vaesen and van Amerongen (Philosophical Psychology 21:779-797, 2008) criticize Dennett’s design stance, arguing that as a cognitive thesis about artifact categorization, it is falsified by empirical findings. I assess their criticism in light of both further results and alternate findings the authors acknowledge (but did not discuss in detail). I argue that the design stance still stands in virtue of the conflicting character of these findings, and suggest shifting the domain of empirical scrutiny.

This paper focuses on the relationship between journalism and right wing populist discourses in the context of broadcast news interviews. We analyse a specific feature of question design in which the public is invoked as a source of opinionated positions in adversarial interviewing. Analysing data from a range of socio-political contexts, we identify a shift in adversarial questioning along a scale of ‘soft’ populism, that is the attribution of views and concerns to a generic public ‘in crisis’, to ‘hard’ (...) populism, where interviewers construct hypothetical scenarios in which populist positions are attributed to ‘some people’. We argue that the democratic role of journalists as public watchdogs, holding politicians and public figures accountable on behalf of the public, is challenged by this normalisation of populist moral order discourses in a routine journalistic practice, both drawing on and contributing to the propagation of populist agendas and anti-democratic populist rhetoric. (shrink)

This chapter explores the question of whether robots can make gestures that can be described as related to the intentionality of the robots themselves and not to the intentionality of their designers. For this exploration, robots are approached as entities designed by humans. Dennett’s stance framework is adopted for analysing descriptions of robot gestures and this framework is generalised to one in which not only single stances can be used to describe robots, but also pair of stances where one (...) is applied to the robot and one to its designers. Conclusions are that Dennett’s framework warrants descriptions of robot gestures in terms of robot intentionality and does more often so as compared to more fundamental approaches to agency in which it should be first determined that robots have agency. Yet, in the case of robots displaying unexcepted gestures, more fundamental approaches may warrant descriptions of robot gestures in terms of robot intentionality that cannot be adopted on Dennett’s approach. (shrink)

Artificial agents are progressively becoming more present in everyday-life situations and more sophisticated in their interaction affordances. In some specific cases, like Google Duplex, GPT-3 bots or Deep Mind’s AlphaGo Zero, their capabilities reach or exceed human levels. The use contexts of everyday life necessitate making such agents understandable by laypeople. At the same time, displaying human levels of social behavior has kindled the debate over the adoption of Dennett’s ‘intentional stance’. By means of a comparative analysis of the (...) literature on robots and virtual agents, we defend the thesis that approaching these artificial agents ‘as if’ they had intentions and forms of social, goal-oriented rationality is the only way to deal with their complexity on a daily base. Specifically, we claim that this is the only viable strategy for non-expert users to understand, predict and perhaps learn from artificial agents’ behavior in everyday social contexts. Furthermore, we argue that as long as agents are transparent about their design principles and functionality, attributing intentions to their actions is not only essential, but also ethical. Additionally, we propose design guidelines inspired by the debate over the adoption of the intentional stance. (shrink)

Although even very advanced artificial systems do not meet the demanding conditions which are required for humans to be a proper participant in a social interaction, we argue that not all human-machine interactions (HMIs) can appropriately be reduced to mere tool-use. By criticizing the far too demanding conditions of standard construals of intentional agency we suggest a minimal approach that ascribes minimal agency to some artificial systems resulting in the proposal of taking minimal joint actions as a case of a (...) social HMI. Analyzing such HMIs, we utilize Dennett’s stance epistemology, and argue that taking either an intentional stance or design stance can be misleading for several reasons, and instead propose to introduce a new stance that is able to capture social HMIs—the AI-stance. (shrink)

I examine the way in which Daniel Dennett (1987, 1995) uses his 'intentional' and 'design' stances to make the claim that intentionality is derived from design. I suggest that Dennett is best understood as attempting to supply an objective, nonintentional, naturalistic rationale for our use of intentional concepts. However, I demonstrate that his overall picture presupposes prior application of the intentional stance in a preconditional, ineliminable,'sense-giving' role. Construed as such, Dennett's account is almost identical to the account (...) of biological teleology offered by Kant in The Critique of Judgement, with the consequence that Dennett's naturalism is untenable. My conclusions lead to doubts concerning the legitimacy of any account attempting to naturalise intentionality by extracting normativity from biology and also point to a novel account of biological function. (shrink)

It is generally acknowledged by proponents of ‘new mechanism’ that mechanistic explanation involves adopting a perspective, but there is less agreement on how we should understand this perspective-taking or what its implications are for practising science. This paper examines the perspectival nature of mechanistic explanation through the lens of the ‘mechanistic stance’, which falls somewhere between Dennett’s more familiar physical and design stance. We argue this approach implies three distinct and significant ways in which mechanistic explanation can (...) be interpreted as perspectival: ‘phenomenon perspectivism’, ‘pattern perspectivism’ and ‘hierarchy perspectivism’. We evaluate the strength of the perspective-dependency implied by each of these, and along the way, discuss their significance for wider debates within the new mechanism literature, such as the nature of function attribution and an ontic vs epistemic understanding of explanation. (shrink)

We identify a pervasive contrast between implicit and explicit stances in logical analysis and system design. Implicit systems change received meanings of logical constants and sometimes also the notion of consequence, while explicit systems conservatively extend classical systems with new vocabulary. We illustrate the contrast for intuitionistic and epistemic logic, then take it further to information dynamics, default reasoning, and other areas, to show its wide scope. This gives a working understanding of the contrast, though we stop short of (...) a formal definition, and acknowledge limitations and borderline cases. Throughout we show how awareness of the two stances suggests new logical systems and new issues about translations between implicit and explicit systems, linking up with foundational concerns about identity of logical systems. But we also show how a practical facility with these complementary working styles has philosophical consequences, as it throws doubt on strong philosophical claims made by just taking one design stance and ignoring alternative ones. We will illustrate the latter benefit for the case of logical pluralism and hyper-intensional semantics. (shrink)

We identify a pervasive contrast between implicit and explicit stances in logical analysis and system design. Implicit systems change received meanings of logical constants and sometimes also the notion of consequence, while explicit systems conservatively extend classical systems with new vocabulary. We illustrate the contrast for intuitionistic and epistemic logic, then take it further to information dynamics, default reasoning, and other areas, to show its wide scope. This gives a working understanding of the contrast, though we stop short of (...) a formal definition, and acknowledge limitations and borderline cases. Throughout we show how awareness of the two stances suggests new logical systems and new issues about translations between implicit and explicit systems, linking up with foundational concerns about identity of logical systems. But we also show how a practical facility with these complementary working styles has philosophical consequences, as it throws doubt on strong philosophical claims made by just taking one design stance and ignoring alternative ones. We will illustrate the latter benefit for the case of logical pluralism and hyper-intensional semantics. (shrink)

When scientists attempt to explain observations of behaviour in humans and other animals, they often use language that evolved for informal discourse among people engaged in every day social interaction, like this: What does the infant/child/adult/chimp/crow perceive/understand/learn/intend? What is he/she/it conscious of? What does he/she/it experience/enjoy/desire? What is he/she/it attending to? Why did he/she/it do X, start Xing, stop Xing, speed up Xing...? Does he/she/it know that...? What did/does he/she/it expect will happen, if...? Similar comments can be made about the (...) terminology used in many philosophical discussions about minds, cognition, language, and the relationships between evolution and learning. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that transparency of machine learning algorithms, just as explanation, can be defined at different levels of abstraction. We criticize recent attempts to identify the explanation of black box algorithms with making their decisions (post-hoc) interpretable, focusing our discussion on counterfactual explanations. These approaches to explanation simplify the real nature of the black boxes and risk misleading the public about the normative features of a model. We propose a new form of algorithmic transparency, that consists in (...) explaining algorithms as an intentional product, that serves a particular goal, or multiple goals (Daniel Dennet’s design stance) in a given domain of applicability, and that provides a measure of the extent to which such a goal is achieved, and evidence about the way that measure has been reached. We call such idea of algorithmic transparency “design publicity.” We argue that design publicity can be more easily linked with the justification of the use and of the design of the algorithm, and of each individual decision following from it. In comparison to post-hoc explanations of individual algorithmic decisions, design publicity meets a different demand (the demand for impersonal justification) of the explainee. Finally, we argue that when models that pursue justifiable goals (which may include fairness as avoidance of bias towards specific groups) to a justifiable degree are used consistently, the resulting decisions are all justified even if some of them are (unavoidably) based on incorrect predictions. For this argument, we rely on John Rawls’s idea of procedural justice applied to algorithms conceived as institutions. (shrink)

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance of (...) a “living ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process. (shrink)

There are widespread calls for school education to put more emphasis on developing students’ appreciation of the power and limitations of science. Without effective teaching, there is a risk that sensationalist media claims will unduly influence students’ perceptions of the power of science to already explain and predict aspects of our daily lives. Secondly, schools have a role in preparing students for a future in which they are likely to work and play alongside increasingly humanlike machines. The study reported here (...) assessed the feasibility of a survey to discover students’ stances on the predictive and explanatory power of science in relation to personality, behaviour and the mind The study forms part of a larger project that seeks to identify ways that schools can develop students’ epistemic insight when they consider big questions about the nature of reality and human personhood. Beginning with a broad conceptualisation of personhood designed to pick up on questions in the science-religion dialogue, we drew on interviews and focus groups with students in upper secondary school to formulate a set of statements that seemed to be effective in stimulating discussion about the power and limitations of science. The questionnaire was administered to 311 secondary students. Students’ responses indicate that they were engaged by the theme and that they were generally not working with a secure overarching scientistic or nonscientistic framework. When we grouped students according to how they responded to the narrower theme of personality and behaviour, one in five of the cohort was labelled as strongly scientistic. We also found that in their comments at different points in the survey, the majority of students expressed ideas and everyday phrases associated with scientism. The article concludes with implications for future research and further recommendations for teachers. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is described as a new field of biotechnology that models itself on engineering sciences. However, this view of synthetic biology as an engineering field has received criticism, and both biologists and philosophers have argued for a more nuanced and heterogeneous understanding of the field. This paper elaborates the heterogeneity of synthetic biology by clarifying the role of design and the variability of design methodologies in synthetic biology. I focus on two prominent design methodologies: rational (...) class='Hi'>design and directed evolution. Rational design resembles the design methodology of traditional engineering sciences. However, it is often replaced and complemented by the more biologically-inspired method of directed evolution, which models itself on natural evolution. These two approaches take philosophically different stances to the design of biological systems. Rational design aims to make biological systems more machine-like, whereas directed evolution utilizes variation and emergent features of living systems. I provide an analysis of the methodological basis of these design approaches, and highlight important methodological differences between them. By analyzing the respective benefits and limitations of these approaches, I argue against the engineering-dominated conception of synthetic biology and its “methodological monism”, where the rational design approach is taken as the default design methodology. Alternative design methodologies, like directed evolution, should be considered as complementary, not competitive, to rational design. (shrink)

This paper investigates a special kind of social meaning-making manifest in how we experience static objects and properties of our everyday world. This happens, for example, when we recognize objects like vacuum cleaners, sliced tomatoes, and sneakers as placed in special sites in the environment. Given the compositional features of such images, we see them as designed to accomplish communicative functions. It is argued that object configurations of this kind are recognized as externalized ostensive cues. They are seen as having (...) been created with the intention of setting off an intersubjective mode of perception. This significantly changes the perceiver’s semiotic exploration of the scene. From a ‘private’ mode of sense-making mostly structured by reference to episodic, autobiographical experiential content, the perceiver takes a language stance. In other words, the perceiver adopts a qualitatively different meaning-constructing strategy in dealing with such images. Defending this claim, we present evidence from an empirical investigation of 20 participants’ construals of photographic images depicting everyday static objects. We show that a subset of these object configurations evoke a special kind of socially responsive attitude as manifested in participants’ introspective reports. The importance of these findings is brought out by discussion of parallels in neuro-cognitive work and how ostensive cues influence infant behavior. (shrink)

In times of increasing political polarization, the question of how teachers deal with controversial issues in their classrooms becomes more important than ever. Rejection, avoidance, or an overtly neutral stance on different positions on these issues can be detrimental to democratic education. In this study, we examine preservice teachers’ stances on different criteria for discussing controversial issues in their prospective classrooms and propose a specification of the approach of balancing different views on controversial issues that we call “committed balancing”: (...) a form of balancing that avoids according equal weight or importance to fundamentally unequal positions. To examine different stances that preservice teachers hold on controversy, we used a convenience sample of 162 German preservice teachers to develop the foundation for a standardized instrument that can be used to detect different ideas about the limits to controversial classroom discussions. We analyzed interviews with a subset of respondents to further examine their ideas about controversial issues in their future classroom practice. We found evidence of different strategies of (not) dealing with controversial issues as well as an emerging strategy of committed balancing. Our findings have practical implications for teachers and teacher educators in addressing controversial topics in the classroom. We suggest that “committed balancing” should be considered as a guide for how to approach these issues. (shrink)

Why is it that people simultaneously treat social robots as mere designed artefacts, yet show willingness to interact with them as if they were real agents? Here, we argue that Dennett's distinction between the intentional stance and the design stance can help us to resolve this puzzle, allowing us to further our understanding of social robots as interactive depictions.

This paper investigates a special kind of social meaning-making manifest in how we experience static objects and properties of our everyday world. This happens, for example, when we recognize objects like vacuum cleaners, sliced tomatoes, and sneakers as placed in special sites in the environment. Given the compositional features of such images, we see them as designed to accomplish communicative functions. It is argued that object configurations of this kind are recognized as externalized ostensive cues. They are seen as having (...) been created with the intention of setting off an intersubjective mode of perception. This significantly changes the perceiver's semiotic exploration of the scene. From a `private' mode of sense-making mostly structured by reference to episodic, autobiographical experiential content, the perceiver takes a language stance. In other words, the perceiver adopts a qualitatively different meaning-constructing strategy in dealing with such images. Defending this claim, we present evidence from an empirical investigation of 20 participants' construals of photographic images depicting everyday static objects. We show that a subset of these object configurations evoke a special kind of socially responsive attitude as manifested in participants' introspective reports. The importance of these findings is brought out by discussion of parallels in neuro-cognitive work and how ostensive cues influence infant behavior. (shrink)

This paper investigates a special kind of social meaning-making manifest in how we experience static objects and properties of our everyday world. This happens, for example, when we recognize objects like vacuum cleaners, sliced tomatoes, and sneakers as placed in special sites in the environment. Given the compositional features of such images, we see them as designed to accomplish communicative functions. It is argued that object configurations of this kind are recognized as externalized ostensive cues. They are seen as having (...) been created with the intention of setting off an intersubjective mode of perception. This significantly changes the perceiver's semiotic exploration of the scene. From a `private' mode of sense-making mostly structured by reference to episodic, autobiographical experiential content, the perceiver takes a language stance. In other words, the perceiver adopts a qualitatively different meaning-constructing strategy in dealing with such images. Defending this claim, we present evidence from an empirical investigation of 20 participants' construals of photographic images depicting everyday static objects. We show that a subset of these object configurations evoke a special kind of socially responsive attitude as manifested in participants' introspective reports. The importance of these findings is brought out by discussion of parallels in neuro-cognitive work and how ostensive cues influence infant behavior. (shrink)

This exploratory enquiry seeks to examine the largely unexplored potential of semiotics for intercultural training and education. The proposed three-partdiscussion describes the process by which semiotic theoretical principles were selected and progressively refined into an applied model which was then pilotedthrough a 2007 research initiative entitled Tools for Cultural Development. The case study involved six groups of French and Australian trainees from both theacademic and professional sectors, in collaboration with university, government and community partners. The first part of the article (...) summarizes a review of theliterature on approaches to cultural competence training. The study then outlines the transcoding process by which the stated objectives of intercultural educationwere reformulated in semiotic terms, particularly in reference to cultural semiotics on which the theoretical core of the applied model was subsequently based.Relevant principles from other semiotic schools as well as similar theoretical and methodological stances in the social sciences reinforced the established body of theory for the training design. The third part of the study discusses the process by which semiotic principles were further defined as skill-based outcomes and goals for workshop implementation. This pragmatic defining process facilitated development of questionnaires and surveys, thereby allowing participants to evaluate the training experience by examining their perceptions about the workshop outcomes at the beginning and end of the sessions. This article presents the quantitative results of the evaluation and, in discussing the gains and limits of data obtained, provides the context for a follow-up article on the qualitative findingsof the study. (shrink)

In this book, Dennett determines just how far we can push the idea that mental states are distinguished by intentionality, that is, by the fact that they have content in virtue of being about, or directed towards, the world at large. Intentionality is characteristic of such states as belief and desire, since all belief is belief of something or that something be the case. In contrast to the physical stance and the design stance, the intentional stance (...) is the predictive attitude or strategy philosophers or cognitive scientists adopt when, in order to explain the behavior of a sufficiently complex system, they treat it as if it had beliefs and desires and acted rationally on its beliefs to satisfy its desires. Dennett insists that this stance is essentially a heuristic that informs the formation of scientific theories which are void of mental state terms. For Dennett, the interesting question, whether we are considering mechanical systems, computer systems, enzymes, microorganisms, vervet monkeys, humans, or martians, is just how far should we go in employing the intentional strategy? At what point must we abandon a strict realism about beliefs, desires, and the other concepts of folk psychology? (shrink)

Taking the individual human being as a point of reference, this paper examines the sustainability of oneself as a contribution to human society and the biosphere in an evolving world. The proactive role as inquirer/researcher alias designer leads to active inquiry and design of one's life with influential consequences on the lives of other human beings and planetary life forms. To sustain a tenable position between the constructive and destructive forces of contemporary existence, a conscientious and ethical stance (...) becomes central in one's self?understanding of life fulfillment and the pragmatic nature of one's actions in the world. (shrink)

This exploratory enquiry seeks to examine the largely unexplored potential of semiotics for intercultural training and education. The proposed three-partdiscussion describes the process by which semiotic theoretical principles were selected and progressively refined into an applied model which was then pilotedthrough a 2007 research initiative entitled Tools for Cultural Development. The case study involved six groups of French and Australian trainees from both theacademic and professional sectors, in collaboration with university, government and community partners. The first part of the article (...) summarizes a review of theliterature on approaches to cultural competence training. The study then outlines the transcoding process by which the stated objectives of intercultural educationwere reformulated in semiotic terms, particularly in reference to cultural semiotics on which the theoretical core of the applied model was subsequently based.Relevant principles from other semiotic schools as well as similar theoretical and methodological stances in the social sciences reinforced the established body of theory for the training design. The third part of the study discusses the process by which semiotic principles were further defined as skill-based outcomes and goals for workshop implementation. This pragmatic defining process facilitated development of questionnaires and surveys, thereby allowing participants to evaluate the training experience by examining their perceptions about the workshop outcomes at the beginning and end of the sessions. This article presents the quantitative results of the evaluation and, in discussing the gains and limits of data obtained, provides the context for a follow-up article on the qualitative findingsof the study. (shrink)

Cultural evolution depends on both innovation (the creation of new cultural variants by accident or design) and high-fidelity transmission (which preserves our accumulated knowledge and allows the storage of normative conventions). What is required is an overarching theory encompassing both dimensions, specifying the psychological motivations and mechanisms involved. The bifocal stance theory (BST) of cultural evolution proposes that the co-existence of innovative change and stable tradition results from our ability to adopt different motivational stances flexibly during social learning (...) and transmission. We argue that the ways in which instrumental and ritual stances are adopted in cultural transmission influence the nature and degree of copying fidelity and thus also patterns of cultural spread and stability at a population level over time. BST creates a unifying framework for interpreting the findings of otherwise seemingly disparate areas of enquiry, including social learning, cumulative culture, overimitation, and ritual performance. We discuss the implications of BST for competing by-product accounts which assume that faithful copying is merely a side-effect of instrumental learning and action parsing. We also set out a novel “cultural action framework” bringing to light aspects of social learning that have been relatively neglected by behavioural ecologists and evolutionary psychologists and establishing a roadmap for future research on this topic. The BST framework sheds new light on the cognitive underpinnings of cumulative cultural change, selection, and spread within an encompassing evolutionary framework. (shrink)

The argument from design stands as one of the most intuitively compelling arguments for the existence of a divine Creator. Yet, for many scientists and philosophers, Hume's critique and Darwin's theory of natural selection have definitely undermined the idea that we can draw any analogy from design in artifacts to design in nature. Here, we examine empirical studies from developmental and experimental psychology to investigate the cognitive basis of the design argument. From this it becomes clear (...) that humans spontaneously discern purpose in nature. When constructed theologically and philosophically correctly, the design argument is not presented as conclusive evidence for God's existence but rather as an abductive, probabilistic argument. We examine the cognitive basis of probabilistic judgments in relationship to natural theology. Placing emphasis on how people assess improbable events, we clarify the intuitive appeal of Paley's watch analogy. We conclude that the reason why some scientists find the design argument compelling and others do not lies not in any intrinsic differences in assessing design in nature but rather in the prior probability they place on complexity being produced by chance events or by a Creator. This difference provides atheists and theists with a rational basis for disagreement. (shrink)

Many scientists have argued forcefully for the pointlessness of nature, something that challenges any doctrine of Creation. However, apparent design and comprehensibility are also to be found in nature; it is ambivalent. This trait is nowhere more evident than in the natural inclinations that lead to concupiscence and the “seven deadly sins” in human beings. These inclinations are dealt with as pertaining to the “pre-fallen” condition of nature and human beings. As a framework to make sense of the goodness (...) of creation in this context, Paul Tillich's notion of the “vital trends of nature” is called to the fore. Being at the intersection of a philosophy of religion and a philosophy of nature, this notion hints at the goodness of Creation in fragment and anticipation. -/- . (shrink)

Neuroscientist Maxwell Bennett and philosopher Peter Hacker defend the need to eradicate the mereological fallacy of cognitive neuroscience. This fallacy attributes to the parts of an animal psychological predicates that make sense only when applied to the whole animal. In contrast, philosopher Daniel Dennett argues that it is possible to explain behavior and cognitive abilities by applying the Intentional Stance to the brain, a stance that attributes increasingly simple psychological capacities to increasingly less intelligent homunculi. So, among other (...) things, taking the intentional stance requires i) attributing psychological predicates to the brain and its parts, and ii) gradually replacing psychological predicates with non-psychological predicates.If the criticism of Bennett and Hacker is accepted, these requirements lead to two dilemmas. According to the first, the intentional stance would be inapplicable or fallacious: because it implies incurring in the mereological fallacy, and to deny is equivalent to rejecting the intentional stance. The horns of the second dilemma are dualism and explanatory vacuity: can be interpreted in a dualistic sense because it presupposes the distinction between psychological and non-psychological predicates; however, failing to respect generates an infinite regress. In this article I intend to show that both dilemmas are resolved by focusing on the details of the relationship between the intentional stance and the design stance. (shrink)

Fundamental questions in value sensitive design include whether and how high-tech products/artefacts could embody values and ethical ideals, and how plural and incommensurable values of ethical and social importance could be chosen rationally and objectively at a collective level. By using a humanitarian cargo drone study as a starting point, this paper tackles the challenges that VSD’s lack of commitment to a specific ethical theory generates in practical applications. Besides, it highlights how mainstream ethical approaches usually related to VSD (...) are incapable of solving main ethical dilemmas raised by technological design for well-being in democratic settings. Accordingly, it is argued that VSD’s ethical-democratic import would substantially be enhanced by the espousal of a procedural ethics stance and the deliberative approach to value and welfare entailed by Amartya Sen’s capability approach. Differently from rival ethical–political theories, its normative and meta-ethical foundations better handle human diversity, value-goal pluralism, conflicting vested interests as well as the epistemic-moral disagreements typical of contemporary complex democracies. Particularly, Sen’s capability approach procedural-deliberative tenets result in an “objective-impartial” choice procedure selecting a “hierarchy” of plural incommensurable values and rational goals thus, suitable to validate an applied science such as welfare-oriented technological design in concrete social environments. Conclusions suggest that refining VSD with a capability-based procedural approach to ethics fosters the concern for democracy and social justice while preserving vital scientific-technical standards. Major advantages are at an applied level to delivering ethically and socially justified, but yet highly functional technologies and high-tech products/artefacts. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of the social brain and the endorphin-based bonding mechanism that underpins it for the evolution of religion. I argue that religion evolved as one of the behavioural mechanisms designed to facilitate community bonding when humans first evolved the larger social groups of ~150 that now characterise our species. This is not a matter of facilitating cooperation, but of engineering social cohesion – a very different problem. Analysis of the size of C19th utopian communities suggests that (...) a religious basis both allowed larger groups to form and greatly enhanced their longevity. I suggest that religion evolved in two stages: an early immersive form with no formal structure based on trance-dancing (a form still evident in the rituals and practices of many hunter-gatherers) and a later form which had more formal structures and gave rise to our modern doctrinal religions. I argue that the modern doctrinal religions did not replace ancestral immersive religions but rather that the doctrinal component was overlaid on the ancient immersive form, thereby giving rise to the mystical stance that underlies all world religions. I suggest that it is this mystical stance that causes the constant upwelling of cults and sects within world religions. (shrink)

Abstract Daniel Dennett advocates the use of the intentional stance in adaptationist biology and in cognitive ethology. He sees intentional system theory as closely related to decision theory and game theory. In biological decision and game theory models, nature ?chooses? the strategy by which the animal chooses a course of action. The design of the animal imposes constraints on the model. For Dennett, by contrast, the description of nature's rationale imposes constraints on the design of the animal. (...) Dennett's oversimplified conception of nature's rationale undermines the usefulness of the intentional stance as a tool in cognitive ethology. Intentional system theory can be made more useful in investigating animal cognition by modifying its application to questions of biological function. (shrink)

What role can technology play in cultivating a disciplinary stance — raising questions, planning investigations, interpreting data and constructing explanations in a way that reflects disciplinary values and principles? How can overt and tacit expert scientific knowledge be captured, represented and used to design software that enables novices to assume a disciplinary stance in their investigations? We present The Galapagos Finches software designed to foster a biological and evolutionary stance. Our approach, Discipline-Specific Strategic Support , translates (...) the main variable types, comparison types and relationships in a discipline into manipulable objects in the interface. Pre/post-tests show how DSSS helps achieve a balance between content and process goals. A contrastive-case microanalysis of high, medium and low-achieving students' inquiry shows progress toward a disciplinary stance. Our study shows how software representations carry multiple levels of meaning, and that the efficacy of learning technologies hinges on reflection at both the navigation and disciplinary-signification levels. (shrink)

Clinical equipoise has been proposed as an ethical principle relating uncertainty and moral leeway in clinical research. Although CE has traditionally been indicated as a necessary condition for a morally justified introduction of a new RCT, questions related to the interpretation of this principle remain woefully open. Recent proposals to rehabilitate CE have divided the bioethical community on its ethical merits. This paper presents a new argument that brings out the epistemological difficulties we encounter in justifying CE as a principle (...) to connect uncertainty and moral leeway in clinical ethics. The argument proposes, first, that the methodology of hypothetical retrospection is applicable to the RCT design and that it can accommodate uncertainty. As currently understood, however, HR should give up its reliance on the assumption of uncertainty transduction, because the latter assumes the principle of indifference, which does not accommodate uncertainty in the right way. The same principle is then seen to distort also the received interpretations of CE. (shrink)

Andrés Rivadulla argues for an instrumentalist approach to the use of theoretical models in the physical sciences, which, on his view, have not to be conceived of as intended representations of the phenomena, but just as useful tools for explaining and predicting those phenomena. He analyses two examples of theoretical models employed for those aims. The first one is the supernova model, intended mainly as explanatory. The second one is the atomic central field shell model, where the postulated internal structure (...) for atoms—their electronic configuration- made the prediction and discovery of new noble gases possible. He concludes that theoretical models can be regarded as artifacts designed with the specific purpose of facilitating calculations. (shrink)

Community technology design has been deeply affected by paradigm shifts and dominant discourses of its seminal disciplines, such as Human Computer Interaction, Cultural and Design theories, and Community Development as reflected in Community Narratives. A particular distinction of community technology design endeavours has been their cultural stance, which directs the agendas, interactions, and outcomes of the collaboration. Applying different cultural lenses to community technology design, shifts not only practices but also directs the levels of awareness, (...) thereby unfolding fundamentally distinct cultural engagement approaches. Previous community technology design research indulged in cross-, inter-, and multicultural approaches to community engagement; it was occupied with meticulously deconstructing and reconstructing perspectives, interactions, roles, and agendas. We argue that when deeply immersed in joint design activities in long-term collaborations, we look beyond individual cultures and enter a transcultural mode of engagement. A transcultural community technology design endeavour supports a continuous creation and re-creation of new meanings, originating from individual entities yet being diffused and continuously reflected within the existing design space. We suggest that within community technology design, a context with abundant cultural diversity, a heightened awareness becomes a necessity. We exemplify different instantiations of the cultural engagement approaches within our long-term collaborations and technology design projects with indigenous communities in Malaysian Borneo and Namibia. A transcultural approach to indigenous knowledge preservation and digitisation efforts with indigenous communities opens up a controversial debate about protecting versus integrating local epistemologies. (shrink)

This article suggests several design principles intended to assist in the development of ethical algorithms exemplified by the task of fighting fake news. Although numerous algorithmic solutions have been proposed, fake news still remains a wicked socio-technical problem that begs not only engineering but also ethical considerations. We suggest employing insights from ethics of care while maintaining its speculative stance to ask how algorithms and design processes would be different if they generated care and fight fake news. (...) After reviewing the major characteristics of ethics of care and the phases of care, we offer four algorithmic design principles. The first principle highlights the need to develop a strategy to deal with fake news on the part of the software designers. The second principle calls for the involvement of various stakeholders in the design processes in order to increase the chances of successfully fighting fake news. The third principle suggests allowing end-users to report on fake news. Finally, the last principle proposes keeping the end-user updated on the treatment in the suspected news items. Implementing these principles as care practices can render the developmental process more ethically oriented as well as improve the ability to fight fake news. (shrink)

Projet En développant son « empirisme constructif », Bas Van Fraassen est devenu une référence incontournable pour la philosophie des sciences contemporaine. Après la vague de critiques qui, vers les années 1960, avait fait perdre à l'empirisme logique sa prédominance dans le champ des idées, le réalisme scientifique semblait s'être imposé comme le seul compte rendu acceptable du travail et des orientations de la recherche. Quine avait beau énoncer ce que pourrait être un empirisme affranchi de ses deux « dogmes (...) » (l'intangibilité de la distinction vérités analytiques / vérités synthétiques, et la réduction des constructions aux « faits »), le programme d'une philosophie des sciences empiriste renouvelée restait à l'état d'esquisse. Mais par trois ouvrages successifs, Scientific Image (1980), Laws and symmetry (1989), et Quantum mechanics an empiricist view (1991), Van Fraassen a posé les bases d'un empirisme viable, parce que capable de prendre en charge la plupart des spécificités dont se prévaut le réalisme contre l'empirisme classique ou logique, et de rendre raison des développements les plus actuels de la physique. Contre l'empirisme classique ou logique, les réalistes font d'abord valoir que la réduction de toute réalité et de tout acte de référence aux phénomènes, ne rend justice ni à la pratique du langage courant ni à celle des sciences. Lorsque quelqu'un procède à une dénomination, il ne cherche pas à désigner par là une tranche d'apparaître, ou quelque ensemble fini et répertorié d'apparitions; il pointe vers "quelque chose" dont les modalités de manifestation sans fin assignable sont pour partie anticipées et pour partie ouvertes. De même, quand un chercheur scientifique parle de l'objet de ses investigations, il ne limite pas son discours à un ensemble fini de résultats d'expérience obtenus sous des conditions instrumentales actuellement disponibles; il renvoie à une entité dont la variété des manifestations futures est prévue aussi complètement que possible (et avec un succès croissant) par des cadres conceptuels et théoriques révisables. Face à cette objection, Van Fraassen fait jouer un rôle capital aux modèles dans sa version de l'empirisme.. (shrink)

This paper juxtaposes biosemiotic and anthropological perspectives to consider the issue of dwelling and living, with particular reference to nonhuman agency and design. The author discusses the fundamental issues and theoretical concepts associated with this issue before making comparisons with reference to a case study and defining a stance on the agency of animate and inanimate nature, with particular regard paid to dwelling. The Zoepolis project is an artistic one, on the borderline of the humanities, the natural sciences (...) and art, thus it combines three seemingly irreconcilable spheres to address issues associated with the subjectivity of living entities, and with the processes of their inhabiting and designing. (shrink)

Studies on mind-wandering frequently use reading as an experimental task. In these studies, reading is conceived as a cognitive process that potentially offers a contrast to mind-wandering, because it seems to be task-related, goal-directed and stimulus-dependent. More recent work attempts to avoid the dichotomy of successful cognitive processes and processes of mind-wandering found in earlier studies. We approach the issue from the perspective that texts provoke modes of cognitive involvement different from information processing and recall account that underlies many early (...) mind-wandering studies. After all, reading itself is an umbrella term for activities that are characterised by a variety of phenomenological and functional signatures. We conceptualise reading and mind-wandering in relation to each other through the framework of enculturated predictive processing, which is informed by research in literary studies. Earlier accounts think of reading predominantly in terms of the construction of situation models to organise textual information. By contrast, enculturated predictive processing foregrounds shifting stances readers can take in relation to the text. Characters featuring in literary texts might be mind-wandering themselves, or passages in literary style might make the construction of a clearly defined situational model impossible. Furthermore, we take into account that texts often elicit mind-wandering through the construction of task-relevant and attention-driven virtual scenarios in readers’ minds. This more complex account of reading can enrich recent attempts to understand mind-wandering as a complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon. The study of mind-wandering can benefit, we argue, from a closer attention to the process of reading and to the texts it deploys as stimuli. The emerging perspective from enculturated predictive processing and literary studies makes distinctions in reading that in turn enable research on mind-wandering to ask more precise questions about (1) different kinds of mind-wandering, (2) different modes of reading, and (3) how and where they interconnect across time. (shrink)

Studies on mind-wandering frequently use reading as an experimental task. In these studies, reading is conceived as a cognitive process that potentially offers a contrast to mind-wandering, because it seems to be task-related, goal-directed and stimulus-dependent. More recent work attempts to avoid the dichotomy of successful cognitive processes and processes of mind-wandering found in earlier studies. We approach the issue from the perspective that texts provoke modes of cognitive involvement different from the information processing and recall account that underlies many (...) early mind-wandering studies. After all, reading itself is an umbrella term for activities that are characterized by a variety of phenomenological and functional signatures. We conceptualize reading and mind-wandering in relation to each other through the framework of enculturated predictive processing, which is informed by research in literary studies. Earlier accounts think of reading predominantly in terms of the construction of situation models that organize textual information. By contrast, enculturated predictive processing foregrounds shifting stances readers can take in relation to the text. Characters featuring in literary texts might be mind-wandering themselves, or passages in literary style might make the construction of a clearly defined situational model impossible. Furthermore, we take into account that texts often elicit mind-wandering through the construction of task-relevant and attention-driven virtual scenarios in readers' minds. This more complex account of reading can enrich recent attempts to understand mind-wandering as a complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon. The study of mind-wandering can benefit, we argue, from a closer attention to the process of reading and to the texts it deploys as stimuli. The emerging perspective from enculturated predictive processing and literary studies makes distinctions in reading that in turn enable research on mind-wandering to ask more precise questions about (1) different kinds of mind-wandering, (2) different modes of reading, and (3) how and where they interconnect across time. (shrink)

This paper takes a cognitive perspective to assess the significance of some Late Palaeolithic artefacts (sculptures and engraved objects) for philosophicalconcepts of art. We examine cognitive capacities that are necessary to produceand recognize objects that are denoted as art. These include the ability toattribute and infer design (design stance), the ability to distinguish between themateriality of an object and its meaning (symbol-mindedness), and an aesthetic sensitivity to some perceptual stimuli. We investigate to what extent thesecognitive processes played (...) a role in the production and appreciation of somerecently discovered Palaeolithic artefacts. (shrink)

Research seeking a scientific foundation for the theory of art appreciation has raised controversies at the intersection of the social and cognitive sciences. Though equally relevant to a scientific inquiry into art appreciation, psychological and historical approaches to art developed independently and lack a common core of theoretical principles. Historicists argue that psychological and brain sciences ignore the fact that artworks are artifacts produced and appreciated in the context of unique historical situations and artistic intentions. After revealing flaws in the (...) psychological approach, we introduce a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation. This framework demonstrates that a science of art appreciation must investigate how appreciators process causal and historical information to classify and explain their psychological responses to art. Expanding on research about the cognition of artifacts, we identify three modes of appreciation: basic exposure to an artwork, the artistic design stance, and artistic understanding. The artistic design stance, a requisite for artistic understanding, is an attitude whereby appreciators develop their sensitivity to art-historical contexts by means of inquiries into the making, authorship, and functions of artworks. We defend and illustrate the psycho-historical framework with an analysis of existing studies on art appreciation in empirical aesthetics. Finally, we argue that the fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure can be amended to meet the requirements of the framework. We conclude that scientists can tackle fundamental questions about the nature and appreciation of art within the psycho-historical framework. (shrink)